In January 2025 St Martin-in-the-Fields and Peter Florence (Director of Hay Festival from 1988 – 2020) will launch The Conversation – a new London Literary Event featuring series of weekly conversations with 15 of the UK’s brightest minds tackling some of the biggest political, social and environmental challenges of our time, from global conflict to the climate crisis.
Starting on 14th January, The Conversation will take place every Tuesday evening for 15 weeks until 22nd April and will feature Britain’s leading thinkers including the award winning writers Hanif Kureishi, Ahdaf Soueif, Paul Lynch and Robert Macfarlane; theatre director Nicholas Hytner, acclaimed historians Tom Holland, Bettany Hughes, Marion Turner and Helen Castor; war correspondents Lindsey Hilsum, Fergal Keane and Åsne Seierstad; as well as science writers, climate activists and philosophers David Spiegelhalter, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Roman Krznaric, Gaia Vince and Monica Feria-Tinta.
The format of The Conversation breaks new ground in literary events, with the first half of the evening follows the standard format of an hour-long interview, followed by a second hour where the guest speaker joins the audience around small tables to keep the conversation going. Each conversation will be hosted by Peter Florence, alongside Claire Armitstead, formerly Associate Editor at The Guardian, journalist and campaigner Caitlin McNamara and Georgina Godwin of Monocle.
Tickets are £15, and each event will be live streamed and can be watched online for £10, available from the St Martin-in-the-Fields website: https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/