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Lewes Speakers Festival 2025
17th, 18th and 19th of January 2025 at the All Saints Centre, Lewes
Friday 17th January 2025
Iain Dale in conversation with Alex Puffette
The Dictators: 64 Dictators, 64 Authors, 64 Warnings from History
Friday 17th January 15.30 – 16.40
Were the signs that Putin is a ruthless dictator there all along? How should we deal with President Xi of China? Given the world seems to be moving more and more towards authoritarian rule, this is the right moment to seek warnings, and lessons, from history.
In this talk Iain Dale draws from 64 essays by historians, academics, journalists and politicians about elected and unelected dictators, wartime and peacetime dictators, those driven by ideology and those with a reputation for sheer brutality. How did these tyrants, autocrats and despots seize power - and how did they exercise it? And how did they lose it? Very few dictators die peacefully in their own beds, after all.
Only by examining these figures from the 6th century BC to the present, from ancient Greece to present day Saudi Arabia, do patterns start to emerge. We can see the shared character traits, the common conditions and the patterns of behaviour that have enabled dictators to seize power - time and time again.
The lessons from this talk are acutely relevant to world politics today: it is indeed a warning from history. Will we take heed? Or will history, in fact, teach us that history teaches us nothing?
Iain Dale is an award-winning broadcaster and was presenter of the Evening Show on LBC Radio. He is the author/editor of more than 30 books and co-host of the For the Many podcast and the Iain Dale Book Club podcast. He was named Radio Presenter of the Year for 2013 and 2016 and is the former Managing Director of Biteback Publishing. He hosts the theatre show Iain Dale All Talk.
Alex Puffette works as a political researcher for Iain Dale.
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A Q&A Session will follow.
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Baroness Lola Young
Eight Weeks: Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds
Friday 17th January 17.00 – 18.10
This talk is based on a deeply moving and inspiring memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young of Hornsey, from her childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first black women in the House of Lords.
Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice, and a crossbench peer. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children's homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood.
In this talk, through her care records, fragments of memory, and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, Lola assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in a system that often made her feel invisible and unwanted. Alongside glimpses into her life as a peer, activist, and campaigner it tells the powerful story of her determination to defy the odds.
In particular, she looks at: how you can weave the scattered part of yourself into a narrative from memories, anecdotes and care notes; the workings of the UK care system and its blind spots, the backdrop of casual racism in the 1950s and 60s and race issues in today’s Britain.
This talk is a spirited, eye-opening account of being a child in care and a black child in a white family, and is a vital part of contemporary Black British history.
Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey became one of the first black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in north London, she studied at the New College of Speech and Drama, then worked as an actress, before becoming Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Later, she worked in arts administration before receiving an OBE in 2001 and becoming an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is an active campaigner against modern slavery and unethical fashion. In 2017 she was on the Man Booker Prize judging panel, and she is also Chancellor of the University of Nottingham.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
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Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC
Rough Justice: A gripping insight into Britain's criminal courts
Friday 17th January 18.30 – 19.40
​A Q&A Session will follow.
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Lucia Osborne-Crowley
The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell
Friday 17th January 20.00 – 21.10
This talk, which is based on the book that the Guardian recommended as ‘brilliantly unsettling begins with the words: 'I understand – and sympathise with – the feeling you might have that you already know the Jeffrey Epstein story. But I am not here to tell you a story about Jeffrey Epstein, or even Ghislaine Maxwell. I am here to tell you the stories of ten women, many of whom have never spoken at length before, about the real impact of sexual trauma on their lives.'
In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and now faces twenty years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of the only reporters allowed into the courtroom every day.
This talk is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome.
Giving voice to four women and their testimonies, and supplemented by exclusive interviews, this presentation brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her news reporting and literary work have appeared in Granta, GQ, The Sunday Times, HuffPost UK, the Guardian, ABC News, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and others. She currently works as a court reporter for Law360, a US newswire covering courts and crime across the world. She is also a trained lawyer.
Her book: ‘My Body Keeps Your Secrets’ was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize for Literature in 2022.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
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Saturday 18th January 2025
Giles Milton
The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War
Saturday 18th January 9.50 – 11.00
Based on the book that was a BBC Radio 4 book of the week and highly recommended by: Katja Hoyer, James Holland, Andrew Roberts and Dan Snow, this talk is delivered by the internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton. He describes the remarkable true story of the Allies' secret mission to wartime Moscow.
In the summer of 1941, as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin's forces faced a catastrophic defeat which would make the Allies' liberation of Europe virtually impossible. To avert this disaster, Britain and America mobilized an elite team of remarkable diplomats with the mission of keeping the Red Army in the war.
Into to the heart of Stalin's Moscow Roosevelt sent Averell Harriman, the fourth richest man in America and his brilliant young daughter Kathy. Churchill dispatched the reckless but brilliant bon vivant Archie Clark Kerr - and occasionally himself - to negotiate with the Kremlin's wiliest operators. Together, this improbable group grappled with the ingenious, mercurial Stalin to make victory possible. But they also discovered that the Soviet dictator had a terrifying masterplan for the post-war world.
Giles Milton is the best-selling author of twelve works of narrative history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and have been serialised on both the BBC and in British newspapers.
Milton's works of narrative history rely on personal testimonies, diaries, journals and letters to make sense of key moments in history, recounted through the eyes of those who were there.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Orlando Whitfield in conversation with Kellie Miller
All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art
Saturday 18th January 11.20 – 12.30
This talk, which is based on the Radio 4 book of the week gives a dazzling insider’s account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his former friend and fellow dealer.
The book is in development as a series for the American pay television network ‘HBO’.
Orlando Whitfield and Inigo Philbrick met in 2006 at London’s Goldsmiths University where they became best friends. By 2007 they had started I&O Fine Art.
Orlando would eventually set up his own gallery and watch as Inigo quickly immersed himself in a world of private jets and multimillion-dollar deals for major clients. Inigo seemed brilliant, but underneath the extravagant façade, his complicated financial schemes were unravelling. With debt, lawsuits, and court summonses piling up, Inigo went into a tailspin of lies and subterfuge. At around the same time, Orlando would himself experience a nervous breakdown and leave the art world for good. By 2019 things had spiralled enough out of control for Inigo to flee to the remote island nation of Vanuatu, 300 miles west of Fiji. Within a year, he was arrested by the FBI and extradited to America, where he was sentenced to seven years in prison for having committed more than $86 million in fraud.
This talk describes what is at once a shocking and compulsive story of ambition and downfall, a cautionary tale, and an intimate portrait of friendship and its loss.
Orlando Whitfield graduated from Goldsmiths University in 2009. He started dealing art while still a student and worked in and around the art market for fifteen years. His writing has appeared in the Paris Review and the White Review. All That Glitters is his first book.
Kellie Miller is an international artist, curator, critic and gallery owner. Kellie Miller Arts (KMA) is an award-winning gallery representing and supporting over 100 artists.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Professor Neil D. Lawrence
The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI
Saturday 18th January 12.50 - 14.00
This talk is based on the book that is hugely recommended by Stephen Fry who writes: 'The clarity, authority, wit and insight Lawrence brings to bear are like torches shining into the turbulent darkness of a subject we all wonder at, but which we mostly feel unable to even to think or talk about with any confidence. Hugely recommended'
What does Artificial Intelligence mean for our identity? Our fascination with AI stems from the perceived uniqueness of human intelligence. We believe it's what differentiates us. Fears of AI not only concern how it invades our digital lives, but also the implied threat of an intelligence that displaces us from our position at the centre of the world.
Neil Lawrence's visionary talk shows why these fears may be misplaced. Atomism, proposed by Democritus, suggested it was impossible to continue dividing matter down into ever smaller components: eventually we reach a point where a cut cannot be made (the Greek for uncuttable is 'atom'). In the same way, by slicing away at the facets of human intelligence that can be replaced by machines, AI uncovers what is left: an indivisible core that is the essence of humanity.
Human intelligence has evolved across hundreds of thousands of years. By contrasting our capabilities with machine intelligence this talk reveals the technical origins, capabilities and limitations of AI systems, and how they should be wielded. Not just by the experts, but ordinary people. Understanding this will enable readers to choose the future we want - either one where AI is a tool for us, or where we become a tool of AI.
Neil Lawrence is the DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Computer Science and Technology. He is co-host of "Talking Machines" podcast and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Paul Roberts
Ancient Rome in Fifty Monuments
Saturday 18th January 14.20 - 15.30
This talk gives a sweeping new history of the city of Rome, told through its emperors and the monuments they built to make their mark on one of the great capitals of the classical world.
‘What is worse than Nero? What is better than Nero’s Baths?’ – so wrote the poet Martial in the first century AD, demonstrating the power that buildings have on public consciousness. In ancient Rome, who built a monument and why mattered as much as its physical structure. Over centuries and under many different emperors, a small village in Italy was transformed into the crowning glory of an empire. Seeking out the personalities behind the great building projects is key to understanding them.
With this firmly in mind, Paul Roberts takes the listener on a tour of ancient Rome, vividly evoking the sights and sounds of the city: from the roar of the crowds at the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, to the dazzling gleam of the marble- and mosaic-covered baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. He tells this story emperor by emperor, drawing out the political, social and cultural backdrop to the monuments and ultimately the very human motivations that gave rise to their construction – and destruction. These fascinating buildings are further brought to life with reconstructions that show how the ancients themselves would have experienced them.
When and why were these monuments built? What did they add to the lives of the people who used them? What impact did they have on the shape of the city? Roberts expertly weaves together the latest archaeological research with social and cultural history, to tell the story of the Eternal City, always in some way rising, falling and being rebuilt.
Paul Roberts is Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum. He is also a governing body Fellow at Wolfson College. Formerly, he was Roman Curator (1994-2007) and Senior Roman Curator (2007-2015) in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, London, where he curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013).
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Professor Kerry Brown
The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power
Saturday 18th January 15.50 – 17.00
This talk provides a vivid history of the relationship between Britain and China, from 1600 to the present. It is based on the book described by Sir Vince Cable as ‘beautifully written and meticulously researched’.
The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy, and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time?
From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full. Britain has always sought to dominate China economically and politically, while China's ideas and exports—from tea and Chinoiserie to porcelain and silk—have continued to fascinate in the west. But by the later twentieth century, the balance of power began to shift in China's favour, with global consequences. Brown shows how these interactions changed the world order—and argues that an understanding of Britain's relationship with China is now more vital than ever.
Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. Prior to this he worked at Chatham House from 2006 to 2012, as Senior Fellow and then Head of the Asia Programme. From 1998 to 2005 he worked at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing. He is the author of 20 books on modern Chinese politics.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Penny Mordaunt
Greater: Britain After the Storm
Saturday 18th January 17.20 – 18.30
This talk is based on the book that won the parliamentary book award for best non-fiction book. It was described by Richard Branson as ‘utterly uplifting’. Boris Johson called it ‘invigorating’. Tony Blair described it as ‘highly readable’ and it was described as ‘interesting and enjoyable’ by Elton John.
We’re used to hearing that we live in an age of unprecedented division, that the great storms that have engulfed British politics over the past ten years have driven us further apart than ever, with no hope of finding common ground.
Penny Mordaunt disagrees. In this lively and insightful presentation, she argues that although differences of opinion are a natural part of healthy political debate, some of our current division is caused by a need for political reform. A wave of scandals have corroded public confidence in leadership in all walks of life, fuelled by a hyper-individualistic social media landscape – but by rebuilding public trust we can restore national pride and positive, competent politics.
This talk lays out a plan for Britain. Delving into our history, our institutions and our culture, it explains how we arrived at this point and how the British character points the way towards practical national missions.
It explores Britain’s role in the world and how to balance global and local priorities; makes the case for the United Kingdom based on the mutuality that binds us; and calls for modernising reform in politics, government and markets. It describes the role of social media in culture wars and calls for a relentless focus on aspiration and a social enterprise revolution. Above all, it reminds us of the many reasons we have to be optimistic.
Penny Mordaunt was the UK Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North. She is a former Secretary of State for Defence and for International Development and a governor at the World Bank. She served as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve and is now Honorary Commander of 2nd Mine Countermeasures Squadron. Before her election, her career spanned the public, voluntary and private sector.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Andrew Pierce
Finding Margaret: Solving the mystery of my birth mother
Saturday 18th January 18.50 – 20.00
This talk is based on the Sunday Times bestselling book which is highly recommended by his friend Joan Collins, Jeremy Vine who called it a ‘warm and vivid read’ and Vanessa Feltz who described it as a ‘moving odyssey’.
This presentation tells the story of journalist and broadcaster Andrew Pierce’s search for his birth mother. As he was approaching fifty, Pierce decided that it was finally time to track down his biological mother. He knew that he had lived in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Cheltenham for more than two years and was adopted at the age of three by a family who loved and nurtured him. As his career in journalism flourished and despite feeling like he was betraying the adoptive parents who loved him so much, Pierce began to tentatively search for his birth mother, only to find that she had done everything she could to ensure he would never find her.
When he finally managed to meet her, the mystery only deepened, leading him to Ireland in search of the man who may or may not have been his father. During his search, Pierce also realises the extent of the mistreatment he suffered at the orphanage and attempts to forge a relationship with the woman who gave him away.
Andrew Pierce is a well-known and popular presenter with over 300,000 social media followers. He is also a leading columnist and consultant Editor for the Daily Mail.
From Monday to Wednesday he reviews the morning news and front pages on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (sparring with his frenemy Kevin Maguire).
In addition, he has his own show on GB News, Britain’s Newsroom, every day from Monday to Thursday, 9.30am to 12 noon. The show gets the highest news channel viewing figures at that time each day. He also co-hosts The Reaction each week with Sarah Vine for Mail+ TV.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Professor Paul Moorcraft
Israel’s Forever War: Israel, Palestine and the Last Hopes for Peace
Saturday 18th January 20.20 – 21.30
No war in living memory has stirred up such anger, fear and loathing as the long-running Israel–Palestine conflict, and peace in the region has never seemed further away. The 7th October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel had far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for the Middle East and for the world. As the war has expanded to take in other players in the area, the future of Israel as a regional superpower is now in doubt and the chances of all-out war between Israel and its neighbours is becoming a reality.
This talk explains the background to the Hamas–Israel war and asks whether the international system can contain two simultaneous wars in Europe and the Levant. It examines the wars that preceded this one, the rise of Hamas and the roles Hezbollah, Iran and Syria play in the conflict. Paul Moorcraft considers the war’s impact on Israeli society, the economy and the Israel Defense Forces, while also looking at how media and propaganda shape our view of the war and how the conflict affects the whole region’s relationships with the West.
Paul Moorcraft brings all perspectives together in an expert and balanced analysis, examining the potential outcomes of the war and arguing that the two-state solution should be revived. Peace has never looked more impossible – but the alternative, a forever war, is even more impossible.
Professor Paul Moorcraft has written over fifty books on security issues. He was previously a senior instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and later at the Defence Academy. He also worked for the Ministry of Defence both in Whitehall and in the field in the Middle East. Besides teaching full-time at ten major international universities, he has also worked as a war correspondent in thirty war zones. He is a frequent broadcaster on defence issues for the BBC and was formerly a regular pundit for Sky News Arabia.
Professor Moorcraft has lived on both the Gazan and the Lebanese borders and in the Arab quarter of Old Jerusalem when he was a student. Unusually, he worked alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan and accompanied them in close combat during the Russian occupation. He has covered many of the major events in the Middle East, from the siege of Jenin in 2002 – when he was smuggled into the refugee camp by the Palestine Liberation Organization – to joining George Galloway on his secret visit to Baghdad on the eve of the war against Saddam Hussein in 2002, before returning to Iraq to record the British occupation in Basra.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
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Sunday 19th January 2025
Shalina Patel
The History Lessons
Sunday 19th January 9.50 – 11.00
Shalina Patel is described by Anita Rani and Sathnam Sanghera as the history teacher we all wished we had at school.
Over the last few years, historians have increasingly sought to provide us with richer and more inclusive understandings of the past. We’ve seen nationwide debate on the role of history, especially in the classroom. On the frontlines of this teaching, award-winning teacher Shalina Patel has tirelessly championed the hidden histories often left out of the school curriculum.
Creating the immensely popular @thehistorycorridor on Instagram, she’s amassed 23k followers keen to discover new perspectives on the history they were taught at school. In this talk, Patel takes the listener through lesser-known examples from the history curriculum that her students experience today, from the Medieval period to the Second World War via Tudor courts, giving listeners a deeper and wider view of history, shaped by her ongoing research.
It will appeal to anybody seeking to expand their historical knowledge and look beyond the usual narratives to celebrate the stories and people that may be less familiar - but no less fascinating.
Shalina Patel is an historian, writer and award-winning history teacher. She has been pioneering the decolonisation of the History curriculum for years, winning numerous awards including the Silver Pearson Teaching Award and the GG2 Inspire Award for Work in Education. In 2020, Shalina created the @thehistorycorridor Instagram account, posting bitesize history lessons for people looking to reclaim their historical education, garnering a host of well-known fans including Sara Pascoe, Sathnam Sanghera and Bella Mackie. As well as working on a range of history documentaries for TV, including The Black Panthers of WW2 narrated by David Harewood, Shalina has featured regularly in the UK media including the Guardian, Cosmopolitan and across the BBC including BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine and BBC’s Teach Me A Lesson podcast. Shalina is also a trustee of Chalke Valley History Festival and currently teaches History at a large mixed comprehensive school in London.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
Professor Christopher Phillips
Battleground: 10 Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East
Sunday 19th January 11.20 - 12.30
The Middle East is in crisis. The shocking events of the war in Gaza have rocked the entire region. More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring had raised hopes of a new beginning but instead ushered in a series of civil wars, coups, and even harsher autocracies. Tensions were exacerbated by the meddling of outsiders, as regional and global powers sought to further their interests. The United States, for so long the dominant actor, had stepped back, leaving a vacuum behind it to be fought over.
This talk which is based on the book that was highly recommended by the FT and Sunday Times.
Christopher Phillips explores geopolitical rivalries in the region, and the major external powers vying for influence: Russia, China, the EU, and the US. Moving through ten key flashpoints, from Syria to Palestine, Phillips argues that the United States’ overextension after the Cold War, and retreat in the 2010s, has imbalanced the region. Today, the Middle East remains blighted by conflicts of unprecedented violence and a post-American scramble for power – leaving its fate in the balance.
Christopher Phillips is professor of international relations at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of four books and the historical consultant for ‘Syria: the World’s War’, a documentary that aired on BBC2 in 2018. He regularly consults governments, private companies and NGOS and has appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, BBC News, Al-Jazeera, Sky News and Channel 4 News.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Sue Prideaux
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
Sunday 19th January 12.50 - 14.00
Based on a book that was long listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction 2024 and described as ‘scintillating’ by the FT, ‘phenomenal’ by Prospect magazine and ‘vivid’ by the Telegraph, Sue Prideaux gives a talk on the life of the artist Paul Gaugin.
Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti.
In this talk, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.
Prideaux conjures Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist's family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.
Sue Prideaux is Anglo-Norwegian. Her first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and she has spoken on Munch for the World Monuments Fund, at literary festivals, at the Royal Academy in London and at MOMA in New York for CBS television, and for Korean TV. She has written on Munch for the Royal Academy, Sotheby’s, the Art Newspaper and other publications.
While writing about Munch, Sue became increasingly fascinated by his friend August Strindberg. Strindberg: A Life was published by Yale in March 2012. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction and won the Duff Cooper prize.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Sir Robin Niblett
The New Cold War: How the Contest Between the US and China Will Shape Our Century
Sunday 19th January 14.20 – 15.30
Based on the book that is described as ‘illuminating’ by Hillary Clinton and ‘essential reading’ by Peter Frankopan, Robin Niblett presents on our entrance into a new Cold War. The contest between America and China is global and unbridgeable, and it encompasses all the major instruments of statecraft - economic, political and military. It has its tinder box: Taiwan. And both protagonists are working hard to draw allies to their side from across the world.
We stand at its beginning. But this Cold War is nothing like the conflict between the Soviet Union and the West which defined the second half of the twentieth century. We need new ideas to navigate its risks and avoid a globally devastating hot war. In this urgent and necessary talk, Robin Niblett argues that only by looking back can we learn the lessons to guide us through this new reality: he goes through the ways in which the New Cold War is different and offers five rules for navigating its onset.
How we manage this contest will determine not only whether there is still space for international cooperation to deal with our many global challenges, from the climate emergency to the technological revolution, but also who will lead the twenty-first century and, quite simply, the course of all our futures.
Sir Robin Niblett is a Distinguished Fellow with Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and Senior Adviser with Hakluyt, the London-based strategic advisory firm.
He is a leading expert on the relations between Europe the US and Asia and their implications for risk management by governments and private institutions.
He is also Senior Adviser to the Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS); Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute and serves on the International Advisory Board of Brown Advisory, the US investment firm.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Ian Williams
Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy
Sunday 19th January 15.50 – 17.00
This is the terrifying story of China’s vampire economy. It is a talk based on the book described by Nigel Inkster, former director of operations and intelligence, MI6
as a ‘hard-hitting exposé …which…demonstrates how the Chinese Communist Party’s obsession with exercising uncontested power has led to pervasive corruption and unintended consequences for China's own population and the world at large'.
State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world’s most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom.
Rules and agreements mean little. Markets are distorted, statistics fabricated, foreign industrial secrets and technology systematically stolen. Companies and entrepreneurs, at home and abroad, are bullied – often with the collusion of the victims themselves. The Party is in every boardroom and lab, with businesses thriving or dying at its will.
All this is part of realising President Xi Jinping’s ambition of China becoming the world’s pre-eminent economic, technological and military power.
Ian Williams was foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News, based in Russia (1992–1995) and then Asia (1995–2006). He then joined NBC News as Asia Correspondent (2006–2015), when he was based in Bangkok and Beijing. As well as reporting from China over the last 25 years, he has also covered conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Ukraine. He won an Emmy and BAFTA awards for his discovery and reporting on the Serb detention camps during the war in Bosnia. He is currently a doctoral student in the War Studies department at King’s College, London, focusing on cyber issues.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Professor Danny Dorling
Peak Injustice: Solving Britain’s Inequality Crisis
Sunday 19th January 17.20 - 18.30
Danny Dorling will talk about his two most recent books, why he wrote them and what they state.
He is interested in what others think could be done and if they agree or disagree with his summary of what life in Britain for children is now so often like. Most children’s lives can appear very poor to the better-off.
Danny Dorling begins by asking this question: "If we found seven typical 5-year-olds to represent today’s UK, what would their stories reveal?”. The book, Seven Children, is about injustice and hope. In it, using a mixture of facts and fiction, Danny Dorling constructs seven ‘average’ children from millions of statistics—each child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Dorling’s seven were born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europe’s most socially divided nation. They turned five in 2023, amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Their country has Europe’s fastest-rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged.
Yet aspirations endure. When this talk is delivered the children will all be aged six. Danny Dorling puts his story in a wider national context than the lives of children in a second more academic book: Peak Injustice, which asked what happened in the last six years in a wide range of policy areas affecting everyone in the UK, not just children.
Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. His previous books include Inequality and the 1% and Slowdown.
Before a career in academia Danny Dorling was employed as a play-worker in children's play-schemes and in pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, a former Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a current patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Stanley Johnson
In the footsteps of Marco Polo
Sunday 19th January 18.50 – 20.00
As an Oxford undergraduate in the early 1960s, Stanley Johnson, along with two friends, embarked on an ambitious journey to retrace the steps of the 13th-century explorer Marco Polo. Their goal was to follow Polo’s legendary route from Venice to Beijing. Stanley’s talk begins with this adventurous expedition from over 60 years ago. Guided by Marco Polo’s vivid descriptions in his renowned book “The Travels,” Stanley, Tim Severin, and Michael de Larrabeiti ventured through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, inching closer to the Chinese border. Their aim was to traverse the Silk Road, mirroring the path taken centuries earlier by Marco Polo and his family—his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo.
Drawing from the detailed notes Stanley kept during the journey, the first part of the book captures the exhilarating sense of adventure felt by the three young men as they set out for the Orient. Despite their enthusiasm, they were unable to reach China, as the road through the Pamirs proved impassable by motorcycle.
Fast forward 62 years, and the story took a new turn. Stanley recounts how he and his youngest son, Max, resumed Marco Polo’s trail in Far West China, beginning where Polo himself entered the country around 1272.
This modern adventure, documented in collaboration with Chinese television companies and the independent production company One Tribe TV, culminated in a film of Stanley and Max’s journey. The premiere is scheduled for July 3rd at the Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, London.
Stanley’s talk is enriched by his own photographs, capturing the remarkable journey he and Max undertook. They traced Marco Polo’s steps from the High Pamirs to Kashgar in Xinjiang Province, across the Gobi Desert into Inner Mongolia, and finally to the Summer Palace of Kublai Khan in Xanadu, concluding their trek in Beijing.
The Polos spent over four years traveling from Venice to Beijing. In total, Marco Polo served the Great Khan in China for 17 years. Throughout their journey, Stanley and Max were continually amazed by the accuracy of Marco Polo’s observations, both along the route and within China itself.
Marco Polo’s detailed account of China during his time is of immense historical significance. Stanley notes that Polo is revered in China as a crucial bridge-builder between East and West. In this context, Stanley’s work—while being an informed, lively, and amusing chronicle of a personal dream realized—holds special relevance today.
Stanley Johnson is a former MEP and Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee. He has also worked for the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Commission in Brussels. He is also father of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
He has appeared in numerous reality television shows, including I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and Celebrity Mastermind where his specialist topic was the works of Sophocles.‘In the Footsteps of Marco Polo’ is his 26th book.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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