5 Speakers, 15 Minutes Each - October 2022
Sam Knight joins us to talk about his first book, THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU, which reveals the strange, true and unsettling tale of a 1960s psychiatrist obsessed with investigating why some people seemed able to predict disaster. A story of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural, it is a journey to the outer edges of reason and the human mind. Sam is a staff writer for the New Yorker, has won two Foreign Press Association awards and was shortlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize for political writing. His 2017 Guardian Long Read on the events that will follow the death of the Queen, ‘London Bridge is Down’, was viewed four million times.
Jack Parlett is a writer, poet and academic. His books include The Poetics of Cruising and Fire Island: A Queer History, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the Best Books of the Year in the New Yorker. He completed a PhD on cruising and poetry at Cambridge University, where he now teaches English, and has held fellowships and residencies at Oxford University and Harvard University. His latest book is Flamboyance: The Art of Burning Brightly.
Philip Lymbery is Chief Executive of leading international farm animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming, as well as being a Visiting Professor at the University of Winchester, award-winning author and animal advocate. He was appointed an ambassadorial ‘Champion’ for the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021. He has played a leading role in many major animal welfare reforms, including Europe-wide bans on veal crates for calves and barren battery cages for laying hens. He has also spearheaded Compassion’s engagement with more than 1,000 food companies worldwide, leading to significant improvements in the lives of more than two billion farm animals every year. His first book Farmageddon was listed as a Book of the Year by The Times, while the second book in the trilogy, Dead Zone, was selected as a ‘Must Read’ by the Daily Mail. His new book is Cultivated Meat: To Secure Our Future.
Lucy Siegle is a journalist, broadcaster and eco expert. She is the Observer and Guardian’s Ethical Living columnist, the BBC’s The One Show’s resident environmental expert, and set up the Observer Ethical Awards in 2005. In BE THE ULTIMATE FRIEND OF THE EARTH, she tackles ten big topics involved in our quest to reach net zero. She explores how every one of us can be an ally to the planet; how we can discover how our consumer habits and lifestyles really impact the environment – and how we can all be engines for change. Along the way, she introduces the projects, the places and the people already living as if this planet was precious.
Katy Hessel is an art historian and the author of The Story of Art without Men, the international bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Year 2022. She runs @thegreatwomenartists on Instagram, hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, interviewing artists such as Tracey Emin and Marina Abramovic, and is a columnist for the Guardian. Hessel is a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and a Trustee of Charleston. In 2024, she launched Museums Without Men, an audio series highlighting works by women artists in museum collections worldwide, such as The Met and Tate Britain. Her latest book is How To Live An Artful Life.