5 Speakers, 15 Minutes Each - October 2025

Esther Freud is the author of nine previous novels, and her work has been translated into thirteen languages. Her first novel Hideous Kinky was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After publishing her second book she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Her other novels include The Sea House, Mr Mac and Me, and I Couldn’t Love You More. Freud's first full length play, Stitchers, was produced in London in 2018; her first book for children, Enchanted Beach, will be published in the summer of 2025. Her latest novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, is a 'delicate and profound' exploration of love, family and freedom in all its forms.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s last work of non-fiction was The Pike: Gabriele D’annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of Warwhich won the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Political Biography of the Year Award and the Costa Biography Award. In 2020 it was named ‘biography of the decade’ in the Sunday Times. Since then Lucy has also written the novel Peculiar Ground (set largely in the seventeenth century) which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her new book, The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of The Duke of Buckingham, is a biography of one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic seventeenth-century Englishmen at the heart of political and royal life.

Jeremy King was Searcy’s youngest ever manager at the age of 21.As a pair, Jeremy and Chris Corbin have created some of the most iconic and highly-regarded establishments in London, including The Wolseley, The Delaunay, Brasserie Zédel, Colbert, Fischer’s, Bellanger and Soutine. Prior to opening The Wolseley, they owned and managed some of London’s most famous restaurants, including Le Caprice, The Ivy and J Sheekey.Jeremy was awarded an OBE in the 2014 for services to the hospitality industry and voluntary services to the Arts. His new book, Without Reservation: Lessons from a Life in Restaurants, offers wit and wisdom from his distinguished 40-year career, hosting everyone from Princess Diana and Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol and Laurence Olivier.

Philippe Sands is Professor of Public Understanding of Law at UCL, visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a practising barrister at 11 KBW. He has been involved in many significant international cases in recent years, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo, Chagos and the Rohingya. He is the author of Lawless World, Torture Team, East West Street (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction) and Sunday Times bestsellers The Ratline and The Last Colony. His new book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia, uncovers a chilling historical crime that has real world impact today.