The Sanest Guy in the Room: Don Black & Michael Grade
Speakers: Don Black, Michael Grade Don Black is the songwriter’s songwriter, a composer’s dream collaborator, and the man behind some of the late twentieth century’s greatest musical numbers. Called ‘the Pelé of lyricists’ by Robbie Williams, Don’s stellar career has seen him win an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Tony and an Ivor Novello Award, […]
The Pandemic Century
Speakers: Mark Honigsbaum, Zoe Strimpel The last one hundred years, from the Spanish flu of 1918 to Covid-19, has been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. Author Mark Honigsbaum talks about scares, both infamous and less known, combining reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and […]
Clothes…and Other Things That Matter
Speakers: Alexandra Shulman, Matthew Stadlen ‘As I thought about what to do with the clothes, I became more interested in what the different items had meant to me. About why I had bought them. What I hoped I might feel wearing them. Why some things I had bought again and again. Why we wear the […]
The Volunteer
Speakers: Jack Fairweather, Helen Fry Combines the verve of a thriller with the detailed evidence of the sober, hideous truth.’ – The Telegraph In the summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a […]
Has Labour Really Changed? The Future of the Labour Party
Speakers: Sarah Baxter, David Kogan, David Triesman In the midst of a global pandemic, the Labour party has a new leader, a new shadow cabinet and a new general secretary. The replacement of Jeremy Corbyn by Keir Starmer is regarded as a new dawn for the party. But how real is this? How can Labour […]
Who Wants to be a Jewish Writer?
Poet, leading literary critic and Columbia University teacher Adam Kirsch is one of our foremost experts on Jewish thought and history. His stunning new collection brings together his essays on poetry, religion, and the intersections between them, as he explores the definition of Jewish literature and the relationship between poetry and politics, asking questions such […]
To Kill A Man
Speakers: Jonathan Freedland, Marina Vaizey The latest thriller from smash-hit author Sam Bourne, To Kill a Man is packed with “plot twists and insights into political campaigning, the Me Too movement and the darker side of the internet” [The Times]. Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland, an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He has […]
House of Glass: Hadley Freeman in conversation with Lisa Appignanesi
Speakers: Hadley Freeman, Lisa Appignanesi In this online event in conversation with Lisa Appignanesi, Hadley Freeman talks about her exquisite and moving memoir, House of Glass, an exploration of assimilation, identity and home. After her grandmother died, Hadley travelled to her apartment to try and make sense of a woman she’d never really known. Sala […]
A B Yehoshua in conversation with David Herman
Speakers: AB Yehoshua, David Herman One of the world’s most renowned novelists, A.B. Yehoshua has been dubbed, together with Amos Oz and David Grossman ‘one of the three tenors of Israeli literature’. In conversation with literary critic David Herman he discusses his life and work, and his new novel, The Tunnel, an exploration of identity, […]
Einstein on the Run
Speakers: Andrew Robinson In the autumn of 1933, Albert Einstein was living alone in an isolated holiday hut in Norfolk, ‘on the run’ from Nazi death threats. There, he toiled peacefully at mathematics while occasionally stepping out for walks or to play his violin. Andrew Robinson tells the story of the world’s greatest scientist’s long […]
Enemies of the People? How Judges Shape Society
Speakers: John Dyson, Dinah Rose, Philippe Sands, Joshua Rozenberg Do judges use the power of the state for the good of the nation? Or do they create new laws in line with their personal views? When newspapers reported a court ruling on Brexit, senior judges were shocked to see themselves condemned as enemies of the […]
Family Business
Speakers: Peter Conradi, Charlotte Mendelson Peter Conradi’s ‘masterpiece’ of a memoir ranges from his European Jewish forebears who came to Britain in the Victorian era to novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, whose biography Conradi wrote. He writes movingly of their close relationship, of his public school and life on a kibbutz, of participating in the […]