5 Speakers, 15 Minutes Each - March 2026

Martin Gayford is an art critic, writer and curator. He is the author of Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), Venice: City of Pictures and Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939 –1954, and acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michaelangelo. His latest book, with Tracey Emin, is My Heart is This: Tracey Emin on Painting.

Megha Mohan became the BBC’s first global gender and identity correspondent in 2018, covering women’s rights, LGBT communities, race and ethnicity for the BBC’s language services worldwide. She is also the co-founder of Second Source, a network of women journalists from underrepresented backgrounds. Her new book, Herlands, is a landmark exploration of women-led communities worldwide, and what they can teach us about how to live, think and govern.

Dr Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. His books include The Incurable Romantic, The Act of Living and Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and The Discovery of the Modern Mind, which was a book of the year in The Times. His new book, Wise, asks how we can embrace and accept our mortality when our brains are hard-wired to resist it, and how we can achieve meaning beyond the midpoint of life.