<img src='' title='Event Category: Lectures and talks' alt='' id='templ_icon_' width='' height='' /> Event Category: Lectures and talks

As we mark the 250th anniversary of American Independence, the writer and academic Sarah Churchwell asks: How’s it playing out? Is this what the Founding Fathers would have wanted? And how does America tell its story from Birth of a Nation to the Great Gatsby, and from Hamilton to Trump?

Sarah Churchwell is the author of Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream, The Wrath To Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells and Careless People: Murder Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby. She hosts the Goalhanger podcast Journey Through Time with David Olusoga.

Chaired by Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then a book-signing and informal conversation. It is also being live-streamed. For livestream tickets, visit here.

In honour of Earth Day, come and join a conversation with the 23-year-old British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist and diversity activist Mya-Rose Craig. She talks about her campaigning, her presidency of Black2Nature and her love for birds “because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies”.

She is “lyrical, poignant and insightful” – Margaret Atwood.

Chaired by Caitlin McNamara.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute Q&A. In addition to being this being an online livestream, it can be streamed up to 30 days after the event has taken place.

For in person tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

In honour of Earth Day, come and join a conversation with the 23-year-old British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist and diversity activist Mya-Rose Craig. She talks about her campaigning, her presidency of Black2Nature and her love for birds “because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies”.

She is “lyrical, poignant and insightful” – Margaret Atwood.

Chaired by Caitlin McNamara.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then a book-signing and informal conversation. It is also being live-streamed. For livestream tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

The New York Times best-selling author and award-winning podcaster says: “I have been a professor at Duke University for twenty years, studying the stories we tell ourselves about our own health, wealth and happiness. And I’m on a mission to give us a friggin’ minute to be human.”

After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached – for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day. So, she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler. The Duke University professor, host of the Everything Happens podcast and author of No Cure for Being Human and Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved.

Chaired by Sam Wells.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute Q&A. In addition to being this being an online livestream, it can be streamed up to 30 days after the event has taken place.

For in person tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

The New York Times best-selling author and award-winning podcaster says: “I have been a professor at Duke University for twenty years, studying the stories we tell ourselves about our own health, wealth and happiness. And I’m on a mission to give us a friggin’ minute to be human.”

After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached – for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day. So, she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler. The Duke University professor, host of the Everything Happens podcast and author of No Cure for Being Human and Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved.

Chaired by Sam Wells.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then book-signing and informal conversation. It is also being live-streamed. For livestream tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

Moving between the present day and a future reshaped by climate catastrophe, Ian McEwan discusses his new novel What We Can Know, which imagines a Britain fragmented into island archipelagos after the seas have risen.

In this drowned landscape, academic Tom Metcalfe pores over the archives of a lost world, captivated by the richness of human life before the flood. Ian McEwan’s books include Atonement, Lessons, Saturday and the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam.

The author discusses his new book with Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute Q&A. In addition to being this being an online livestream, it can be streamed up to 30 days after the event has taken place.

For in person tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

Moving between the present day and a future reshaped by climate catastrophe, Ian McEwan discusses his new novel What We Can Know, which imagines a Britain fragmented into island archipelagos after the seas have risen.

In this drowned landscape, academic Tom Metcalfe pores over the archives of a lost world, captivated by the richness of human life before the flood. Ian McEwan’s books include Atonement, Lessons, Saturday and the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam.

The author discusses his new book with Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then a book-signing and informal conversation. It is also being live-streamed. For livestream tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

In her mesmerising books Story of a Murder and The Five, the historian and Baillie Gifford Prize-winner, Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to the women in the stories of the crimes perpetrated by Dr Crippen and Jack the Ripper and massively enriches the histories. She talks about re-balancing the narratives, what the stories tell us about gender and social justice in 19th and 20th century London, and what that means for today.

Hallie’s earlier works The Covent Garden Ladies and Lady Worsley’s Whim have been the inspiration for the television series Harlots and The Scandalous Lady W. She has also written two novels and is a historical adviser for period drama.

She hosts the Bad Women podcast and the BBC Radio 4 series Intimate Histories.

Chaired by Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute Q&A. In addition to being this being an online livestream, it can be streamed up to 30 days after the event has taken place.

For in person tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

In her mesmerising books Story of a Murder and The Five, the historian and Baillie Gifford Prize-winner, Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to the women in the stories of the crimes perpetrated by Dr Crippen and Jack the Ripper and massively enriches the histories. She talks about re-balancing the narratives, what the stories tell us about gender and social justice in 19th and 20th century London, and what that means for today.

Hallie’s earlier works The Covent Garden Ladies and Lady Worsley’s Whim have been the inspiration for the television series Harlots and The Scandalous Lady W. She has also written two novels and is a historical adviser for period drama.

She hosts the Bad Women podcast and the BBC Radio 4 series Intimate Histories.

Chaired by Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then book-signing and informal conversation. It is also being live-streamed. For livestream tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.

In the first of several conversations marking the 250th anniversary of American Independence, multi-award-winning writer and journalist Gary Younge analyses the state of the union and the question of race in USA.

Younge’s books include Pigeonholed: Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance, Another Day in the Death of America, No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South, Dispatches from the Diaspora and Who Are We? How Identity Politics Took Over the World. Formerly Editor at Large at The Guardian, he won the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2023.

Chaired by Peter Florence.

The interview lasts for an hour followed by a 30-minute Q&A. In addition to being this being an online livestream, it can be streamed up to 30 days after the event has taken place.

For in person tickets, visit here.

Buy all nine conversations for just £45 – a saving of over £40! You can book any combination of in-person and online livestream tickets – the offer will automatically be added when you reach the checkout – but please note that it will only apply if you buy all nine at the same time.