Speakers: Jonathan Miller, Kate Bassett

Jonathan Miller is one of the most multitalented Britons of his generation: an internationally celebrated opera and theatre director, a physician, writer and TV personality. Noted for his dazzling intelligence and anti-establishmentarian wit, he is one of postwar Britain’s most intriguing intellectuals.

In what will be only the second public conversation between Miller and his unofficial biographer, Kate Bassett – Miller has not read the book – he will contemplate the nature of the gaze and the relationship between looking at pictures and looking in pictures. These are ideas he has continued to develop since curating the 1998 National Gallery exhibition “Mirror Image: Jonathan Miller On Reflection”.

Miller will also discuss the nature of action; what he considers to be crucial skills in the craft of stage directing, and his theory of ‘subsequent performances’, which explains why there is no such thing as a definitive production and how dramas can be ‘renovated’ or gain ‘afterlives’ through ever-modulating productions and subjective viewings