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 scholar. He recently held a Junior Research Fellowship in English at University College, Oxford. He completed a PhD in English at Cambridge University, which he adapted as a monograph entitled The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr, published by the University of Minnesota Press. His second book, Fire Island: Love, Loss and Liberation in an American Paradise, was published by Granta Books (UK) and Hanover Square Press (US) in May 2022, and named by The New York Times as an Editor's Pick. His debut poetry pamphlet was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Boston Review, Literary Hub, Poetry London, and elsewhere.

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, broadcaster and curator dedicated to celebrating women artists from all over the world. In 2015, Katy founded an Instagram account called @thegreatwomenartists, which has grown to almost 300,000 followers, and hosts a podcast of the same name with over 1.5 million listens. Katy has lectured at Tate, National Gallery, Christie’s and University of Cambridge; presented films for the BBC and Royal Academy; and collaborated with Dior on a podcast series featuring interviews with Tracey Emin and Judy Chicago. She lives in London and sits on the Board of Trustees at Charleston, the former home of the Bloomsbury Group. To coincide with publication of the book, Katy is curating The Story of Art as it’s Still Being Written, an exhibition at Victoria Miro, London, featuring artists from the final chapter of the book. The exhibition will run from 8 September – 1 October 2022