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Lewes Speakers Festival 2025
9th, 10th and 11th May 2025 at All Saints Centre, Lewes
Friday 9th May 2025
Professor Matt Goodwin
Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them
Friday 9th May 15.30 – 16.40
Sunday Times best-selling author Matt Goodwin returns to the festival with a talk based on his explosive new book on the culture of universities.
Depressed tutors and disillusioned students. Cheating parents, funding crises and faculty misconduct. Culture wars and campus protests. Welcome to the broken world of academia. Welcome to Bad Education.
Our universities are broken. Established as sanctuaries of truth and higher learning, they are now decaying institutions that are failing a generation of young people. Consumed by funding and admissions crises, dominated by dogma and governed by self-interest, their founding principles have been corrupted. This explosive talk shows us why, and what we must do to fix them.
Matt Goodwin spent decades working as an academic in some of the world’s leading universities, delivering underfunded courses to increasingly disengaged lecture theatres, sitting on rudderless committees, counselling depressed colleagues and concerned students, watching standards slip and academic integrity decline.
At the heart of this crisis is an increasingly politicised campus. Once bastions of free speech, forums for open debate and incubators of bold new ideas, our universities are increasingly becoming monocultures, ruled by an ideology that is silencing respected voices, stifling discussion and violently shutting down diverse opinion, betraying intellectual freedom.
Unflinching, shocking and urgent, this first-hand account provides an insider's view of how the founding principles of academia are in decline and why we should all consider what this means for the students of today, tomorrow and the world they will shape.
Matt Goodwin is Honorary Professor at the University Kent and a GB News Presenter. The author of four books, including the Sunday Times bestseller National Populism, he appears regularly in print and broadcast media including the Sunday Times and the BBC. He has advised more than 200 organisations on political issues. He lives in London.
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A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Ambassador Leigh Turner in conversation with Andrew Monaghan
Lessons in Diplomacy: Politics, Power and Parties
Friday 9th May 17.00 – 18.10
This talk is based on the book which was described as ‘fascinating and well-informed’ by Alexander Van der Bellen, Federal President of Austria. Its author Leigh Turner is defined by Roger Glover of the internationally acclaimed rock band Deep Purple as someone who ‘rocks!’
Is a diplomat’s life really as glamorous as a royal visit, or as dramatic as a coup d’état in Turkey? Leigh Turner is a former British ambassador who led posts in Ukraine, Turkey and Austria. In this witty globe-trotting talk about one of the most intriguing careers a person can have, Leigh relates his interactions with royalty of both the aristocratic and celebrity kind, and with the brilliant and extraordinary people he came across.
Offering astute reflections on Brexit, Russia’s war with Ukraine and the chaos of modern politics, he sheds new light on the intricacies of modern statecraft, including what we all can learn from a good diplomat or ambassador. In this entertaining presentation, you’ll discover how diplomats really work with spies, how immunity allows killers to escape justice, how Russia broke up the Soviet Union and then nursed its resentment at the consequences -- and how to throw, and be invited to, a great cocktail party.
Leigh Turner is a former British Ambassador to Ukraine. He also held diplomatic posts in Vienna, Moscow and Berlin and was British Consul-General in Istanbul, Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Dr. Andrew Monaghan is a researcher and analyst in the field of international politics. He is a Russianist in the area studies style, with a preference for old-fashioned Kremlinology. His particular interests are Russian domestic politics, strategy and biography, and he has written extensively on Russian Grand Strategy, UK-Russia Relations, and the Euro-Atlantic community’s relationship with Russia, particularly modern deterrence.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Michelle Ogundehin in conversation with Kellie Miller
Four steps to a home that heals and makes you happy
Friday 9th May 18.30 – 19.40
This talk is based on the book that Mary Portas described as giving ‘strong, clever, intelligent advice with soul’ and Arianna Huffington claimed was “an essential step-by-step guide to creating a home we love”. Fashion supremo Donna Karan also said that it ‘connected the dots between comfort, wellness, calm, rejuvenation, self-care and warm hospitality, showing that physical personal space has a spiritual relationship to ourselves’.
What does home mean today? How can we harness its power for health and happiness? How can we make it the ultimate foundation for the life we life we dream of having? Michelle will answer all these questions and more as she believes that it is only from such a space that you can achieve the emotional balance that will assist in finding your true purpose and fulfil your potential.
But, while there is much discussion today of pollution in our wider environment, in truth, we spend a staggering 90% of our time indoors, and indoor air can be up to five times more polluted than outside. It’s part of an overwhelming misunderstanding about the impact on our health of our domestic environments, especially for our children whose bedrooms rank as some of the most polluted.
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Why don’t we hear more about this? Because discussions about the pillars of health typically revolve around nutrition, sleep and exercise, maybe meditation or other forms of stress relief with valid reason — they are all vital components of wellbeing. However, consideration of the space in which these activities commonly come together, your home, is frequently missing from the equation. This visionary talk will redress that balance and preview Michelle’s eagerly anticipated second book: Better Home Better Health: How your Home might be killing you.
Michelle Ogundehin is internationally renowned as a thought-leader on interiors, wellbeing, trends and style. Dubbed 'the interiors guru' by The Sunday Times, she defines herself as a writer and author who also does TV. She is Head Judge on the BBCs Interior Design Masters, and a contributing Editor to the FT’s ‘How to Spend It’ magazine.
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.
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​A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Hugo Rifkind
Rabbits
Friday 9th May 20.00 – 21.10
This talk is based on Hugo’s breathtaking new novel. It is perfect for fans of’ ‘Saltburn’.
Tommo has just started at a new school—a training ground for the Scottish elite—when his friend Johnnie's brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There's a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo.
A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It's the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals.
Awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister currents beneath the surface and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.
Hugo Rifkind is a columnist, critic and leader writer for The Times. He also presents a Saturday morning show on Times Radio from 10am-1pm. Formerly a columnist for The Herald, The Spectator and GQ, he joined The Times in 2005 as a diarist and features writer. He now writes a weekly opinion column, the weekend TV review and My Week, a diary parody. He has won two Press Awards, three Comment Awards and one Stonewall Award
​A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Saturday 10th May 2025
Dr Terri Apter
Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations
Saturday 10th May 9.50 – 11.00
'Why does my daughter rebuff my advice?'
'Why was my dad never this patient with me?'
'I didn’t expect to feel all this.'
The birth of a grandchild is a cause for celebration. But when a child becomes a parent themselves, existing family structures are radically altered. Old tensions between parents and their adult children may come into sharp relief, while new relationships with in-laws must be navigated carefully. And at the heart of two families is a small person, whose life will benefit hugely from the love of their grandparents.
In this warm, wise guide to being a modern grandparent, leading psychologist Terri Apter builds on cutting edge research as well as her own experience as a grandparent. Drawing on case studies from across the world, Apter examines the crucial and changing role that grandparents play in our society, from those grandparents who find themselves caring for a grandchild, to how to support a grandchild through their parents’ divorce.
This innovative talk is for grandparents and for their adult children as they reimagine their relationships with each other, and become the best parents – and grandparents – that they can be.
Dr Terri Apter is a psychologist, writer and Fellow Emerita of Newnham College Cambridge. She is the author of many critically acclaimed books on family dynamics, including Altered Loves: Mothers and Daughters During Adolescence (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and The Confident Child (winner of the Delta Kappa Gamma International Educator’s Prize). Her reviews and articles have appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, the Financial Times, the New York Times Book Review, and the Psychologist, and she is a regular blogger for Psychology Today. Raised in Chicago, she moved to the UK to study at Edinburgh University and Cambridge University, where she has worked ever since.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Jonathan Fenby
China’s Heritage – Two Millennia of Exceptionalism
Saturday 10th May 11.20 – 12.30
From tea to the Terracotta Warriors, from the mighty Yangtze and Yellow Rivers to the great cities of Beijing and Shanghai, from inventions such as paper and printing to the Great Wall, China has an unequalled heritage stretching back over more than two millennia. Jonathan Fenby, author of eight books on the country, will explore the past achievements and the natural and man-made wonders which act as foundations for its emergence as a today’s global super-power. This talk draws together articles by leading scholars on the country’s achievements as well as portraying its people and their lives over the centuries. It also draws on his Penguin History of Modern China which chronicles the decline and renaissance of a nation that has always believed itself to be exceptional.
Jonathan Fenby has published twenty books, mainly on modern global history, China and France. In a journalistic career spanning four decades, he was Editor of The Observer, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong (during the handover from Britain to China) and Reuters World Service. He also held senior editorial posts at The Economist, The Independent and The Guardian and has been a foreign correspondent in Vietnam, Germany and France where he spent twelve years working for Reuters, The Economist and The Times.
After returning to the UK from Hong Kong in 2000, he was a founding partner of the analytical economic-political service Trusted Sources where he headed China research and regularly visited the People’s Republic as well as travelling globally to see clients.
Made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000 for services to journalism, he has also been awarded the Légion d’Honneur and Ordre du Mérite for his writings on France.
He broadcasts frequently in the UK, US, France and Asia, and speaks at conferences on China and European affairs.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Howard Jacobson
What Will Survive of Us
Saturday 10th May 12.50 - 14.00
This talk is based on the book which was highly recommended by the Observer, The Telegraph and the Sunday Times.
Love can change your life. Can it survive marriage and middle age?
Lily falls in love with Sam the minute she sets eyes on him. It takes Sam a day or two longer. Curious, because Lily – independent, headstrong and rational – has never quite believed in love; while Sam – confident, passionate, romantic – thought he understood it inside out.
Lily is an award-winning television documentary maker. Sam is an award-winning playwright. Both are in relationships that have quietly expired, but their encounter makes Lily and Sam come alive again. As they begin to work together on the page and on screen, an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist.
Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds and, for Lily, offers her a surprising form of liberation. But what will happen to them when familiarity, illness and age begin to take their toll? What will survive? Taking us to the edge of desire, love and betrayal across a lifetime, What Will Survive of Us reveals what is left of us when we strip away every layer.
Howard Jacobson has written seventeen novels and six works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question.
An award-winning writer and broadcaster, he lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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OUTSIDE ACTIVITY
** Strictly limited to 60 places **
Jack Cornish
A guided walk around Lewes with Jack Cornish as your guide
Saturday 10th May 13.45 -15.30
This 4.5 mile circular walk starting at the All Saints Centre will uncover some of the history to be found in the urban passages and country footpaths around Lewes. We will walk alongside the River Ouse and the Cockshut Stream, taking in the Lewes Railway Land Reserve, through the history of Lewes' venerable monastic history, the gardens of a grand 16th century house and ramble along to discover some of Lewes' famous twittens.
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Along the way, you will hear about how historic paths are being reclaimed across England and Wales and discover some paths which have been recently put back on the map in Lewes so that they can be used and enjoyed for generations to come.
Jack Cornish is head of paths at the Ramblers, leading the Ramblers work to protect, expand and improve our path network. Jack joined the Ramblers in 2017, having recently completed a 1,550 mile walk all the way across Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Jack is the author of ‘The Lost Paths', a personal journey and exploration of the deep history of English and Welsh paths and how this millennia-old network was created, has evolved, and been transformed. An important part of Jack’s focus at the Ramblers has been the flagship Don’t Lose Your Way project which identified over 49,000 miles of paths that could be lost forever because they are not legally recorded as public rights of way. Jack has regularly appeared in the media including the BBC, Country Living magazine and The Guardian.
Jack lives in southeast London, from where he sets out to complete another mission, a potential futile attempt to walk all the streets, squares and paths of the capital city.
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There will be Q&A throughout the talk, followed by a book signing
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Frances Welch
The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse: The curious destinies of Queen Victoria's granddaughters
Saturday 10th May 14.20 - 15.30
The Princesses of Hesse were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. After the sudden death of her daughter Alice, Queen Victoria took an obsessive interest in the marriage prospects of the four girls she left behind. Very little went according to plan. Fortunately, Queen Victoria did not live to see her direst fears for the girls’ spouses being realised. She died in January 1901, just before her beloved Hesse granddaughters became caught up in the maelstrom of early 20th century Europe.
The youngest sister, Alix, married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; she was assassinated, along with the rest of her family, in a cellar in Ekaterinburg.
The second, Ella, married the Russian Grand Duke Serge. After he was assassinated, she became a nun, only to be assassinated by the Bolsheviks twenty-four hours after Alix in 1918.
The third, Irene, married the Kaiser's brother, Prince Henry, and was entangled in the 1918 German uprisings.
The eldest sister, Princess Victoria, married Prince Louis Battenberg, and became the mother of Lord Louis Mountbatten and grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Their lives were all dramatic, and this group biography shows how they interacted as sisters, forever jostling for status and relaying the politics and intrigues that surrounded them.
Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen letters from the sisters as well as from their grandmother Queen Victoria, this talk takes us on a sweeping journey across the tumultuous landscape of the turn of the century - from the dramas of the Russian Court to the Russian Revolution, and through both World Wars in which they often found themselves on opposing sides.
Both intimate and epic in scope, this biography sheds new light on the four sisters' lives, illuminating a remarkable period of history in the process.
Frances Welch has written for the Sunday Telegraph, Granta, The Spectator and the Financial Times. She is co-author of 'Memories of Revolution: Russian Women Remember' and author of 'The Romanovs & Mr Gibbes: The story of the Englishman who taught the children of the last Tsar', 'A Romanov Fantasy: Life At The Court of Anna Anderson' and 'The Russian Court at Sea: The Voyage of HMS Marlborough 1919' and 'Rasputin: A Short Life' which was presented the Lewes Speakers Festival previously.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Craig Brown
A Voyage Around the Queen
Saturday 10th May 15.50 – 17.00
This talk is based on the Sunday Times bestseller and comes from one of the funniest writers of our time - the award-winning author of ‘One Two Three Four’ turns his attention to Queen Elizabeth II in an unforgettable and fascinating biography. It is described by the Sunday Times as an ‘unusual masterpiece’ and a ‘crown jewel among Royal biographies’ by the Observer.
Virginia Woolf compared her to a caterpillar; Anne Frank kept pictures of her on the wall of her annex; Jimi Hendrix played her tune; Haile Selassie gave her a gold tiara; Dirk Bogarde watched Death in Venice with her; Andy Warhol envied her fame; and Donald Trump offended her.
Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who has ever lived. When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. She mirrored their hopes and anxieties. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist; to the awestruck, charismatic; and to the cynical, humdrum. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, her presence could fill presidents and rock gods with terror. For close to a century, she inhabited the psyche of a nation.
Combining biography, essays, cultural history, dream diaries, travelogue and satire, the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most public yet private of sovereigns.
Craig Brown is a prolific journalist and author. He has been writing his parodic diary in Private Eye since 1989. He is the only person ever to have won three different Press Awards—for best humourist, columnist, and critic—in the same year. He has been a columnist for The Guardian, The Times, The Spectator, and The Daily Telegraph, among others. He currently writes for The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. His New York Times bestseller, ‘Hello Goodbye Hello was translated into ten languages.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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THE SECOND OUTSIDE ACTIVITY OF THE DAY
** Strictly limited to 60 places **
Jack Cornish
SECOND EVENT OF THE DAY: A guided walk around Lewes with Jack Cornish as your guide
Saturday 10th May 16.45 -18.30
This 4.5 mile circular walk starting at the All Saints Centre will uncover some of the history to be found in the urban passages and country footpaths around Lewes. We will walk alongside the River Ouse and the Cockshut Stream, taking in the Lewes Railway Land Reserve, through the history of Lewes' venerable monastic history, the gardens of a grand 16th century house and ramble along to discover some of Lewes' famous twittens.
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Along the way, you will hear about how historic paths are being reclaimed across England and Wales and discover some paths which have been recently put back on the map in Lewes so that they can be used and enjoyed for generations to come.
Jack Cornish is head of paths at the Ramblers, leading the Ramblers work to protect, expand and improve our path network. Jack joined the Ramblers in 2017, having recently completed a 1,550 mile walk all the way across Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Jack is the author of ‘The Lost Paths', a personal journey and exploration of the deep history of English and Welsh paths and how this millennia-old network was created, has evolved, and been transformed. An important part of Jack’s focus at the Ramblers has been the flagship Don’t Lose Your Way project which identified over 49,000 miles of paths that could be lost forever because they are not legally recorded as public rights of way. Jack has regularly appeared in the media including the BBC, Country Living magazine and The Guardian.
Jack lives in southeast London, from where he sets out to complete another mission, a potential futile attempt to walk all the streets, squares and paths of the capital city.
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There will be Q&A throughout the talk, followed by a book signing
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Monica Macias
Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity
Saturday 10th May 17.20 – 18.30
The extraordinary true story of a West African girl’s upbringing in North Korea under the protection of President Kim Il Sung.
In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was transplanted from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea. She was sent by her father Francisco, the first president of post-Independence Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung.
Within months, her father was executed in a military coup; her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. At military boarding school, Monica learned to mix with older children, speak fluent Korean and handle weapons on training exercises.
After her university education at Pyongyang University of Light Industry, she went in search of her roots, passing through Beijing, Seoul, Madrid, Guinea, New York and finally London – forced at every step to reckon with damning perceptions of her adoptive homeland. Optimistic yet unflinching, Monica’s astonishing and unique story challenges us to see the world through different eyes.
Monica Macias is the daughter of Francisco Macias, the first president of Equatorial Guinea following its independence from colonial Spanish rule. She has lived in several countries around the world and now resides in south London. ‘Black Girl from Pyongyang’ is her first book to be published in English, and she will be the subject of a forthcoming documentary film.
In 2013, Monica gained media attention with the publication of her memoir, "I'm Monique from Pyongyang" written in Korean. The book provided a glimpse into her life in both North and South Korea, shaping her unique perspectives on the two countries' issues.
In March 2023, Monica released her second memoir: ‘Black Girl from Pyongyang’, which garnered even greater recognition. In this book, Monica shared the results of her interviews with more than 3000 people who knew her father directly and indirectly challenging the official narrative surrounding his legacy. She also revealed her exceptional relationship with Kim Il Sung, whom she considers her second father, and the challenges of reconciling her upbringing with the realities of Western perceptions of dictatorship.
Monica has emerged as a prominent voice on North Korean issues, sharing her personal experiences and insights at conferences and events around the world, including at institutions such as LSE, SOAS, Seoul University, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and Yale University. She believes in the power of sharing experiences and knowledge to foster mutual respect and understanding, ultimately contributing to the resolution of social and interstate conflicts.
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A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Norman Baker
The Strange Death of Dr Kelly
Saturday 10th May 18.50 – 20.00
“Anyone can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a suicide.” – Old KGB saying
The high-profile death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly twenty-one years ago, amid the tumult of Britain’s controversial invasion of Iraq, plunged the New Labour government into crisis and led to the resignation of the BBC’s Director General. An informal inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding Kelly’s death cleared the government of wrongdoing but was widely dismissed as a whitewash.
The Strange Death of David Kelly argues that neither the medical evidence nor David Kelly’s state of mind and personality supported the verdict of suicide.
Analysing the official process instigated after Kelly's death, putting the entire episode into its political context and scrutinising the actions of the government in launching the Iraq War, the new edition of the instant bestseller which this talk is based on was fully updated in 2024 to include the latest evidence and theories surrounding this most mysterious and political of deaths.
Norman Baker was the Lib Dem MP for Lewes from 1997 to 2015 and established a reputation as one of the most dogged and persistent parliamentary interrogators the modern House of Commons has known.
Following the 2010 general election, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, then Minister of State for Crime Prevention at the Home Office. He is the author of … And What Do You Do? What the Royal Family Don’t Want You to Know and a political memoir, Against the Grain. He is an established singer-songwriter and has released three albums and also hosts three weekly music shows on his local FM station.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Gabriel Gatehouse
The Coming Storm: A Journey into the Heart of the Conspiracy Machine
Saturday 10th May 20.20 – 21.30
Is this how democracy dies?
This talk is based on the book ‘The Coming Storm’ which is Gabriel Gatehouse’s brilliant exploration of how conspiracy theories are tearing America apart. It’s a story that takes you down a rabbit hole - one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through - to unpack an epochal shift in political culture that starts in the earliest years of the Clinton administration and reached a crescendo on 6 January 2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. But that event wasn’t the wild finale of a chaotic Trump presidency many hoped for - it was only the beginning.
This talk gets under the skin of these conspiracy theories to show us a radical new kind of politics emerging, a movement that has coalesced around a loose alliance of tech bros, internet trolls and white supremacists. At a perilous moment in the history of American democracy, Gatehouse tells us some dark truths about our present, and provides clues about our future.
Louis Theroux describes Gabriel Gatehouse as ‘a brilliant spelunker of the rabbit holes of American political culture. A spellbinding storyteller and reader of the runes of the strange times we live in.”
Gabriel Gatehouse is a BBC journalist and broadcaster. He is the former International Editor of ‘Newsnight’, and co-host of ‘Ukrainecast’ on BBC Sounds. Over the past decade and a half, he has reported from almost every conflict around the world, from Ukraine to Syria, Libya to Iraq. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, most recently the 2019 Prix Europa (for ‘The Puppet Master’, his five-part investigation into Vladislav Surkov, aka ‘Putin’s Rasputin’) and the 2020 Foreign Press Association award for his coverage of the Hong Kong protests. He has reported extensively from the United States on the rise of Donald Trump. He is the writer and presenter of the hit podcast ‘The Coming Storm', which launched in January 2022 to critical acclaim. It was the most popular BBC podcast in the first quarter of 2022, with around 3 million downloads on BBC Sounds, and more on other platforms such as Spotify and iTunes. It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2022.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Sunday 11th May 2025
Cathy Scott-Clark
Russia’s Man of War: The Extraordinary Viktor Bout
Sunday 11th May 9.50 – 11.00
An intrepid reporter’s fast-paced investigation into the extraordinary life of Viktor Bout, the much-mythologised Russian fixer known as the ‘Merchant of Death’.
Viktor Bout was a warlord’s warlord, according to MI6, the US National Security Council and the CIA―a terrorist facilitator, and the world’s most prolific arms dealer. They tracked him everywhere, smuggling weapons from North Korea and the former Soviet Union into the world’s bloodiest conflict zones, from Liberia to Afghanistan. Intelligence services called him a secret KGB asset; the White House, the most dangerous man in the world. But Bout strenuously denied this, describing himself as a businessman.
Washington hunted Bout for more than a decade, before finally trapping him and jailing him for 25 years. Then, in December 2022, the story took an unlikely turn: President Biden pardoned Bout and sent him home to Moscow, in a prisoner exchange to rescue basketball superstar Brittney Griner, jailed in Russia on drugs charges. Soon enough, Bout cosied up with doomed Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and the Russian governors Putin had installed in occupied Ukraine.
Has America’s extraordinary decision to swap Bout undermined Western interests? Has Putin put him back to work in his old business? Through candid interviews with US investigators and Viktor Bout himself, this talk reveals the true story of the ‘Merchant of Death’.
Cathy Scott-Clark is an award-winning investigative journalist and author, and an Emmy-winning filmmaker. She has worked with HBO, the BBC, The Sunday Times and The Guardian, and has co-authored books with Adrian Levy including The Exile: The Flight of Osama bin Laden; The Siege: The Attack on the Taj; and CIA exposé The Forever Prisoner.
​A Q&A Session will follow.
Diana Darke
Islamesque: The Forgotten Craftsmen Who Built Europe's Medieval Monuments
Sunday 11th May 11.20 - 12.30
This presentation is based on the book which is described as ‘magnificently lively, detailed and bold, a real revolution in how we think about the development of medieval art and architecture’ by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Who really built Europe’s finest Romanesque monuments? Clergymen presiding over holy sites are credited throughout history, while highly skilled creators remain anonymous. But the buildings speak for themselves.
This groundbreaking talk explores the evidence embedded in medieval monasteries, churches and castles, from Mont Saint-Michel and the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Durham Cathedral and the Basilica of Santiago de Compostela. Tracing the origins of key design innovations from this pre-Gothic period―acknowledged as the essential foundation of all future European construction styles―Diana Darke sheds startling new light on the masons, carpenters and sculptors behind these masterpieces.
At a time when Christendom lacked such expertise, Muslim craftsmen had advanced understanding of geometry and complex ornamentation. They dominated high-end construction in Islamic Spain, Sicily and North Africa, spreading knowledge and techniques across Western Europe. Challenging Euro-centric assumptions, Darke uncovers the profound influence of the Islamic world in ‘Christian’ Europe, and argues that ‘Romanesque’ architecture, a nineteenth-century art historians’ fiction, should be recognised for what it truly is: Islamesque.
Diana Darke has spent four decades in the Middle East. Her books include 'Islamesque' and 'Stealing from the Saracens', 'My House in Damascus' and 'The Ottomans'. A non-resident scholar at Washington DC's Middle East Institute, she holds degrees in Arabic and in Islamic Art and Architecture.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Hilary Bradt in conversation with Mike Unwin
Taking the risk: My adventures in travel and publishing
Sunday 11th May 12.50 - 14.00
This talk is based on Hilary Bradt’s engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trail-blazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters… and success.
From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset.
Barely into her twenties, Hilary Bradt thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 Hilary explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes. The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu in Peru unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook.
From 1977, the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides. This was just as well, because Hilary’s career in occupational therapy ended when potential employers noticed that time taken off for travel exceeded periods of employment. During the 1980s, Bradt Guides grew and became successful – but that didn't stop Hilary travelling, including as a tour leader.
Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilary’s lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher.
Hilary Bradt’s first 25 years of running Bradt Guides was combined with leading adventure and natural history tours to South America, Africa and Madagascar. Today, Bradt Guides has more than 200 titles in print. In addition to an MBE, Bradt has been given four lifetime achievement awards and was made an Officer of the National Order of Madagascar for services to tourism.
Mike Unwin is an award-winning writer who specialises in travel and the natural world, with a particular focus on Africa. He has published 40 books for both adults and children which include the Bradt Guide to Southern African Wildlife (Bradt) and Around the World in 80 Birds. As a journalist, he writes regularly write for numerous leading publications, including The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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David Torrance
The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain's First Labour Government
Sunday 11th May 14.20 – 15.30
This talk is based on the Waterstones Book of the Year and is highly recommended by The Economist, Simon Heffer, Andrew Marr (who described it as ‘meticulously researched’) and Chris Mullin. It considered ‘superb’ by The New Statesman.
In 1923, five short years since the end of the First World War, and after the passing of the Act which gave all men the vote, an inconclusive election result and the prospect of a constitutional crisis opened the door for a radically different sort of government: men from working-class backgrounds who had never before occupied the corridors of power at Westminster. Who were these 'wild men'? Ramsay MacDonald, their leader and Labour's first Prime Minster, was the illegitimate son of a Scottish farm labourer; Arthur Henderson was a Scottish iron moulder; J. H. Thomas, a Welsh railwayman; John Wheatley, an Irish-born miner and publican; and William Adamson, a Fife coal miner. Never before had men from such backgrounds occupied the corridors of power in Westminster.
This presentation tells the story of that first Labour administration - its unexpected birth, fraught existence, and controversial downfall - through the eyes of those who found themselves in the House of Commons, running the country for the people. Blending biography and history into a compelling narrative, David Torrance reassesses the UK's first Labour government a century after it shook up a British establishment still reeling from the War - and how the establishment eventually fought back.
This is an extraordinary period in British political history which echoes down the years to our current politics and laid the foundations for the Britain of today.
David Torrance is a constitutional specialist at the House of Commons Library and a widely published historian of Scottish and UK politics. A former journalist, he has written biographies of the SNP politicians Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, as well as a semi-authorized biography of the former Liberal leader David Steel. Like all good Scotsmen, he lives and works in London!
He specialises in the topic of Scottish independence and the constitutional debate more generally. He is also the author of a number of well-received books on Scottish politics including 'We in Scotland' - Thatcherism in a Cold Climate (2009), Salmond: Against the Odds (2010 & 2011) and his most recent, The Battle for Britain - Scotland and the Independence Referendum (2013).
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Paul Cooper
Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline
Sunday 11th May 15.50 – 17.00
Based on the highly acclaimed podcast with over 1 million subscribers, this presentation brilliantly explores how a range of ancient societies rose to power and sophistication, and how they tipped over into collapse.
Across the centuries, we journey from the great empires of Mesopotamia to those of Khmer and Vijayanagara in Asia and Songhai in West Africa; from Byzantium to the Maya, Inca and Aztec empires of the Americas; from Roman Britain to Rapa Nui. With meticulous research, breathtaking insight and dazzling, empathic storytelling, historian and novelist Paul Cooper evokes the majesty and jeopardy of these civilizations and asks what it might have felt like for a person alive at the time as they witnessed the end of their world.
Paul Cooper has worked as an archivist, editor and journalist, and has a PhD in the cultural and literary significance of ruins. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The BBC, The Atlantic, National Geographic, New Scientist and Discover Magazine.
His first novel, River of Ink, was published in January 2016, and his second novel, All Our Broken Idols was released in May 2020.
He writes, produces and hosts the Fall of Civilizations podcast, which has charted in the top ten British podcasts, and gained upwards of 100 million listens since it launched in 2019.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Michael Sheridan in conversation with Julian Baggini
The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China
Sunday 11th May 17.20 - 18.30
Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong notes that: 'Michael Sheridan is one of the best informed and wisest writers on China'.
In this talk, he presents an eye-opening portrait of Xi Jinping, the man who presides over 1.4 billion people and the second largest economy on earth. Born a 'princeling' to one of Communist China's ruling families, the young Xi was exiled to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. He fought his way back to the top by stealth, privilege and guile. In 2012, following the spectacular fall of his rival Bo Xilai, Xi Jinping became the leader of China.
Sheridan takes the listener from the poor, isolated country of Xi's youth to the military and economic superpower of today. In Xi's new China, family mafias struggle for power amid murder, corruption and sex scandals as ministers and generals vanish in purges. No one is safe in his techno-security state. Xi is an absolute ruler whose word is law on everything from war and peace to the ruthless campaign against Covid-19. He aims to dominate world trade, to defeat Western democracy and to make China the supreme power in the East. A loner and a risk-taker, he is the most consequential leader of our time.
Drawing on intimate stories from the closed world of China's leading families and two decades of first-hand reporting, Michael Sheridan sheds new light on the history and politics of China. This presentation reveals that behind the façade of the Chinese Communist Party there is a modern dynasty and a new emperor.
Michael Sheridan first reported from Hong Kong and China in June 1989 and later served as the Far East correspondent of the Sunday Times for 20 years, covering the rise of China, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the city’s struggle for democracy. Earlier, he worked for Reuters, ITN and the Independent, reporting on war in the Middle East, global diplomacy and European politics, with postings in Rome, Beirut and Jerusalem. His work has also appeared in the Spectator, Tablet, Vanity Fair and the Hong Kong Economic Journal. In 2021 he published The Gate to China, a critically acclaimed history of Hong Kong.
Dr Julian Baggini is the author, co-author or editor of over 20 books including The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well, The Godless Gospel, How The World Thinks, The Virtues of the Table and The Ego Trick and The Edge of Reason. He was the founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, as well as for the think tanks The Institute of Public Policy Research, Demos and Counterpoint. He is Academic Director of the Royal institute of Philosophy and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent.
A Q&A Session will follow.
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Julian Baggini
How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy
Sunday 11th May 18.50 – 20.00
How we live is shaped by how we eat. You can see this in the vastly different approaches to growing, preparing and eating food around the world, such as the hunter-gatherer Hadza in Tanzania whose sustainable lifestyle is under threat in a crowded planet, or Western societies whose food is farmed or bred in vast intensive enterprises. And most of us now rely on a complex global food web of production, distribution, consumption and disposal, which is now contending with unprecedented challenges.
The need for a better understanding of how we feed ourselves has never been more urgent. In this wide-ranging and definitive talk, philosopher Julian Baggini expertly delves into the best and worst food practices in a huge array of different societies, past and present. His exploration takes him from cutting-edge technologies, such as new farming methods, cultured meat, GM and astronaut food, to the ethics and health of ultra processed food and aquaculture, as he takes a forensic look at the effectiveness of our food governance, the difficulties of food wastage and the effects of commodification.
Extracting essential principles to guide how we eat in the future, he advocates for a pluralistic, humane, resourceful and equitable global food philosophy, so we can build a food system fit for the twenty-first century and beyond.
Dr Julian Baggini is the author, co-author or editor of over 20 books including The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well, The Godless Gospel, How The World Thinks, The Virtues of the Table and The Ego Trick and The Edge of Reason. He was the founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, as well as for the think tanks The Institute of Public Policy Research, Demos and Counterpoint. He is Academic Director of the Royal institute of Philosophy and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent.
A Q&A Session will follow.
Click Here to purchase tickets
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Sunday 11th May 2025 13.00 – 17.00
at the Corn Exchange Room in Lewes Town Hall.
The Aardman model-maker workshops - the creators of
Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run and Morph.
The Aardman model-maker workshops.
Three separate events in which you can make your own character to take home
and animate it at home using their Aardman Animator app.
Sunday 11th May 13.00 - 14.00
Feathers McGraw
Click HERE to book
Sunday 11th May 14.30 - 15.30
Gromit
Click HERE to book
