Previous events
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MAR 28
Kenny MacAskill MP and Maggie Craig at Aye Write!- CANCELLED
The French Revolution lit a spark in Scotland, inspiring radicals and working people, uniting them in opposition to the King. Leading radicals like Thomas Muir were transported to Botany Bay. But the radicals fought back and formed the United Scotsmen, seeking widespread political reform. MP Kenny MacAskill’s Radical Scotland meticulously details this...
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MAR 22
Asa Bennett at The Lewes Festival
Despite the last days of Rome being around 1,500 years ago, the shadow of its empire - and what those who lived in it had to say - still looms large over modern politics. Indeed, we would not think of politics as it is without our Classical ancestors. The word comes directly from the ancient Greek word polis, which refers to a city or state. Someone...
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MAR 21
Jack Straw at The Lewes Festival- CANCELLED
Amongst British diplomats, there's a poignant joke that Iran is the only country in the world which still regards the United Kingdom as a superpower. For many Iranians, it's not a joke at all. The past two centuries are littered with examples of Britain reshaping Iran to suit its own ends, from dominating its oil, tobacco and banking industries to removing...
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MAR 21
Norman Baker at The Lewes Festival
The royal family is the original Coronation Street - a long-running soap opera with the occasional real coronation thrown in. Its members have become celebrities, like upmarket versions of film stars and footballers. But they have also become a byword for arrogance, entitlement, hypocrisy and indifference to the gigantic amount of public money wasted...
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MAR 12
40 Years of Yes Minister! Jonathan Lynn with Ayesha Hazarika
On both sides of the Atlantic, the political environment has taken an us into unchartered territory. On one side, reality star turned political leader Donald Trump presides over a turbulent Twitter presidency. Meanwhile at home, the UK remains deeply embroiled in a polarising and uncertain Brexit process. With reality looking stranger than fiction...
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MAR 12
Anthony Seldon at Words by the Water
Theresa May had the clearest, yet toughest, agenda of any Prime Minister since the Second World War: delivering Brexit. What followed defies belief or historical precedent. Drawing on a comprehensive series of interviews with May’s closest aides and allies Downing Street’s official historian, Anthony Seldon, decodes the enigma of the Prime Minister’s...
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MAR 05
Kenny MacAskill with Topping Books
The Political Martyrs memorial in Edinburgh looms large on the city’s skyline but its history is relatively unknown – and that is not by accident. As Edinburgh’s New Town was constructed, a narrative of kilts and loyalty was created for Scotland, with its radical history deliberately excluded. The French Revolution lit a spark in Scotland, inspiring radicals...
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MAR 04
Jewish Book Week with Geoffrey Robertson
For millennia, conquerors and oppressors have plundered precious art and artefacts from their creators and owners, from the Parthenon Marbles of Greece; to the treasures looted from the Old Summer Palace during the British Opium Wars with China. For centuries they have been admired in national museums worldwide, away from their cultural home. This...
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MAR 03
Naked Ambition: Kaya Mar Live Painting and Signing Session
Attentive observers of the past ten years of British politics may not have heard of Kaya Mar, but chances are they will have seen one of his pictures – at a rally, or in an agency photograph syndicated around the world, or via a viral tweet. His paintings in oils are unlikely pearls of surreal satire, gleaming in the murky political waters in which...
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MAR 02
What's Next For Iran?
In 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown. His replacement, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the birth of the Islamic republic of Iran. Today, ordinary Iranians live with an economy exhausted by sanctions and corruption, the media strictly controlled, and a hardline regime seeking to maintain its power by demonising outsiders. 40 years...
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