2022 Programme

The Arts Club Stage

10:00-11:00  

This scepter’d isle: the Crown in the Carolean age

Wesley Kerr (c), Tina Brown, Robert Hardman and Camilla Tominey on the challenges facing King Charles III

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Great Hall

10:00-11:00 

Adventures in the Human Heart

William Boyd on his literary voyage through love and time with Sam Leith

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The Arts Club Stage

11:30-12:30    

The War Doctor

David Nott, the ‘Indiana Jones of surgery’, talks to Wyre Davies about life on the frontline of war medicine

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Great Hall

11:30-12:30    

The visible man

Vogue Editor Edward Enninful tells Catherine Ostler about his fashionable life

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The Arts Club Stage

13:00-13:45     

British business: boom or bust?

Anne McElvoy (c), Luke Johnson, Octavius Black and Michael Gove discuss how to escape recession, avoid revolution and return to growth

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The Arts Club Stage

14:00-15:00     

The Press Baron: power without responsibility?

Andrew Roberts talks to Michael Gove about the remarkable story of Lord Northcliffe, the greatest of all the press barons and a force of power in early 20th century global politics – and the birth of modern journalism

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Great Hall

14:00-15:00    

From Shakespeare to Succession

The patriarch of British actors Brian Cox tells Anne McElvoy  about his journey from Dundee to Logan Roy via a lascivious Princess Margaret

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The Arts Club Stage

15:30-16:30    

The World: what the past says about the future

Catherine Ostler (c), Peter Frankopan, Aindrea Emelife, Ben Okri and Simon Sebag Montefiore discuss the meaning of world history, the role of family and what will happen next

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Great Hall

15:30-16:30     

You’ve been framed

Yana Peel (c), Katy Hessel, Nicholas Cullinan and Flora Yukhnovich paint women back into the picture

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The Arts Club Stage

17:00-18:00    

The last king

HM King Simeon of the Bulgarians, the last WW2 head of state and a man who has been both king and elected prime minister, recounts his extraordinary life to Robert Hardman, from a Bulgaria crushed by Hitler and Stalin, to exile and the EU

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Great Hall

17:00-18:00 

The examined life

Alice Thomson (c), Jonathan Bate, Andrea Elliott, Julia Samuel and Abi Morgan on navigating childhood, marriage and the rest of the emotional landscape

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The Arts Club Stage

18:30-19:30  

Slava Ukraini!

Martin Ivens (c), Serhii Plokhy, Olesya Khromeychuk, Yana Sofovich and Radek Sikorski on war, Zelensky and Ukraine’s place in European history

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Great Hall

18:30-19:30  

Timeless Classics: the eternal inspiration of the ancient world

Jonathan Bate (c), Daisy Dunn, Robert Harris, Jessie Burton and Andrea Marcolongo on why all roads still lead to Rome

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The Arts Club Stage

10:00-11:00    

Ladies in waiting

Kate Mosse (c) Natalie Livingstone, Catherine Ostler, Lucasta Miller and Susan Jonusas on why female protagonists are vital in history (and the most fun)

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Great Hall

10:00-11:00  

The Lyricist

Ireland’s finest writer Sebastian Barry discusses his craft with Roy Foster

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The Arts Club Stage

11:30-12:30  

Putin’s bloody gamble: will the tyrannical tsar survive his lethal game?

Simon Sebag Montefiore (c), Mark Galeotti, Mikhail Zygar and Jonathan Haslam discuss Russia’s brutal imperialist war

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Great Hall

11:30-12:30

The Escape Artist and the triumph of truth

Jonathan Freedland tells Jake Wallis Simons about the man who escaped Auschwitz to reveal the truth of the Holocaust to the world – and why it still matters

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13.00 – 13.45 (The Churchill Suite)

The Sunday Salon: luminous minds, new ideas. What is creativity now?

Chair: Elif Shafak Panellists: Merve Emre, Inaya Folarin Iman, Susan Jonusas, Luke Pepera and Jamie Susskind

By invitation

The Arts Club Stage

14:00-15:00     

Eastern Powers: China and India

William Dalrymple and Peter Frankopan discuss how and why the all-powerful India and China fell victim to the empires of Europe – and the dangers and opportunities of their 21st century ascendancy

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Great Hall

14:00-15:00    

Losing the plot: how to make modern fiction

Merve Emre (c), Sebastian Barry, Ben Okri, and Susie Boyt on the novel approach

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The Arts Club Stage

15:30-16:30     

The King of the thriller

Robert Harris talks to Albert Read about fiction, history, politics and his many movie adaptions

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Great Hall

15:30-16:30     

Toxic femininity?

Antonia Romeo (c), Louise Perry, Joanne Cash, and Inaya Folarin Iman on surfing the many waves of feminism

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The Arts Club Stage

17:00-18:00     

Gossip, sex, power and malice: the blast of the Channon cannon

Andrew Roberts talks to Simon Heffer about Chips Channon, the master diarist and mischief-maker of 20th century politics

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