The Conversation is a series of weekly conversations exploring the biggest topics of the day from global conflict to the climate crisis with Britain’s leading thinkers, scientists, philosophers, historians, war correspondents and writers.
Tuesdays at 6.30pm
14 January to 22 April 2025 at St Martin in the Fields.
Running from 14th January to 22nd April 2025, The Conversation features talks with bestselling writers including Hanif Kureishi, Ahdaf Soueif, Paul Lynch and Robert Macfarlane; acclaimed historians Tom Holland, Bettany Hughes, Marion Turner and Helen Castor; theatre director Nicholas Hytner, war correspondents Lindsey Hilsum, Fergal Keane and Åsne Seierstad; as well as scientists and philosophers David Spiegelhalter, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Roman Krznaric, Gaia Vince and Monica Feria-Tinta.
The Conversation will explore conflict and empathy, inequality and power, climate crisis and wonder through storytelling and action. The first half of the evening is an hour long interview with a leading thinker, followed by a second hour where the guest speaker joins the audience around Crypt Café tables to take the conversation further.
The Conversation is programmed by Peter Florence and takes place at London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields church every Tuesday. The line-up for 2025 will feature talks with 15 of the UK’s brightest minds, and 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.
Peter Florence, festival director with the mantra ‘trust the room’, invites you to carry on the conversation and engage directly with the speaker following each event.
Tickets cost £15 and the talks are also available to be live streamed and watched from anywhere in the world for £10.
Full information on The Conversation is available here: stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation
The Conversation is a series of weekly events discussing conflict and empathy, inequality and power, climate crisis and wonder.
THE CONVERSATION 2025
14th January: Channel 4 News International Editor, Lindsey Hilsum talks about the pity of war and its fatal attraction and her latest book I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line.
“I was standing outside an apartment block that had been split apart by a missile.The words of a poem came to me when I could no longer find my own.”
Lindsey Hilsum has spent nearly four decades covering conflict from Rwanda and Kosovo to Ukraine and Palestine.Throughout those years she has always carried a book of poetry. She describes interviewing warlords in Bosnia, meeting child soldiers in Uganda, and giving testimony in Rwanda.
21st January: Cambridge Professor and ‘statistics national treasure’ David Spiegelhalter takes us through the principles of probability and his latest book The Art of Uncertainty.
28th January: Award winning nature and landscape writer, Robert Macfarlane will discuss the plight of Britain’s rivers, the power of protest and advocacy and his new book Is a River Alive.
4th February: Astronomer Maggie Aderin-Pocock demystifies stunning images from the universe, explaining what we’re learning from the world’s most powerful space telescope and her latest book Webb’s Universe: The Space Telescope Images That Reveal Our Cosmic History.
11th February: The Oscar winning playwright, screenwriter and author of The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi discusses his memoir Shattered his wildly inspiring memoir of illness and defiance. On Boxing Day 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, in a pool of blood, he was horrified to realise he had lost the use of his limbs. He could no longer walk, write or wash himself. While confined to hospital wards, he felt compelled to write, but being unable to type or to hold a pen, he began to dictate to family members the words which formed in his head. The result is an extraordinary series of dispatches from his hospital bed.
18th February: Egyptian author of The Map of Love, Ahdaf Soueif invites you to a powerful conversation about language and action, freedom and hope and purpose.
25th February: Social philosopher Roman Krznaric unearths insights and inspiration from the last 1000 years of world history to help us confront the most urgent challenges facing humanity today in his new book History for Tomorrow.
4th March: Oxford English Professor Marion Turner explores how Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales illuminates 14th-century London life, exploring power and prosperity in society.
11th March: Paul Lynch discusses his 2023 Booker-winning novel Prophet Song, a deeply moving exploration of family’s survival in a dystopian Ireland.
18th March: The director of the Bridge Theatre’s new production of Richard II, Nicholas Hytner discusses Shakespeare’s examination of humanity and power with the historian Helen Castor.
Richard II is charismatic, eloquent and loved by his friends but a disastrous King – dishonest, capricious and politically incompetent. Echoing down the centuries is the perennial problem: how to deal with a ruler who has a rock-solid right to rule but is set on wrecking the country he leads. Shakespeare’s subtle, ambiguous and powerful play revolves round two startlingly modern figures: Richard, an autocrat who believes he is divinely sanctioned, and Henry Bolingbroke, a hard-headed pragmatist who has genuine authority.
New production of Richard II, opens on 10th February at The Bridge Theatre, London starring Jonathan Bailey.
25th March: The historian and classicist Bettany Hughes discusses her latest book The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
1st April: Norwegian war Correspondent and author of The Bookseller of Kabul Åsne Seierstad maps the lead-up to the Taliban return in 2021, how the first year of Taliban rule unfolded, and where this leaves Afghans today, and tomorrow.
8th April: Historian and presenter of The Rest is History, Tom Holland discusses the vivid lives of the Caesars, following Holland’s translation of Suetonius’ renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, being published in February 2025: Suetonius The Lives of the Caesars.
15th April: From Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, to Ukraine and Gaza Fergal Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty years. He discusses his book The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD.
Fergal’s acute‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’, a condition arising from exposure to multiple instances of trauma experienced over a long period has caused him to suffer a number of mental breakdowns and hospitalisations. Countless promises to do otherwise, he has gone back to the wars again and again.
22nd April: We celebrate Earth Day 2025 with the dynamic and inspirational environmental writer and BBC host Gaia Vince author of Adventures In The Anthropocene and the global rights lawyer and author Monica Feria-Tinta author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future that recounts her groundbreaking legal work on restorative environmental justice. Gaia, who offers the radical and super-positive rethinking of migration as a solution to our climate crisis – the ultimate adaptation. She suggests how the relocation of hundreds of millions of people in the 21st century could, if managed well, allow us to adapt habitats and create global economic wealth.
Ticket Info
Location: St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ.
Dates: 14th January – 22nd April 2025
Time: Tuesdays from 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Price: £15 for in person tickets. £10 for online tickets
Ticket Link: https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/
Box Office: 020 7766 1100 BoxOffice@smitf.org
Book now, fascinating topics and speakers – it’s bound to be a sell out!
