God Is Not Great
Christopher Hitchens presents his case against religion to a London audience. He talks to Ian McEwan.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture
What is the future of journalism in our newly wrangled world? Hirsch is Wallis Annenberg Chair at The University of Southern California. She is the author of Brit(ish) and Equal to Everything, and hosts the About The British Empire podcast on audible. She writes for the Guardian, and broadcasts internationally. Chaired by Rosie Boycott.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture
What is the future of journalism in our newly wrangled world? Hirsch is Wallis Annenberg Chair at The University of Southern California. She is the author of Brit(ish) and Equal to Everything, and hosts the About The British Empire podcast on audible. She writes for the Guardian, and broadcasts internationally. Chaired by Rosie Boycott.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture: Twilight of Democracy- Disinformation, Polarization and the Digital Future
Instead of civic organizations, we join internet mobs. Instead of reasoned conversation, the voices of the angriest, most divisive participants are amplified. Rational voices are hard to hear; radicalization spreads quickly. Unsurprisingly, an internet controlled by a tiny number of secretive companies in Silicon Valley does not reflect democratic values of openness, accountability and respect for human rights. Instead, the current rules of online conversation are undermining our democracies. Why don’t we change them?
Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Anne Applebaum is author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, New York.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture: Twilight of Democracy- Disinformation, Polarization and the Digital Future
Instead of civic organizations, we join internet mobs. Instead of reasoned conversation, the voices of the angriest, most divisive participants are amplified. Rational voices are hard to hear; radicalization spreads quickly. Unsurprisingly, an internet controlled by a tiny number of secretive companies in Silicon Valley does not reflect democratic values of openness, accountability and respect for human rights. Instead, the current rules of online conversation are undermining our democracies. Why don’t we change them?
Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Anne Applebaum is author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, New York.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture 2018
The LBC talkshow host has become one of the most exacting and powerful voices calling out political lies and speaking truths to both power and prejudice. He discusses the weaponising of fake news and ignorance, the power of dialogue and the urgent need for journalistic vigilance and authority. O'Brien is writing a book on these issues entitled How to be Right, to be published by Penguin Random House in November 2018.
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture 2018
The LBC talkshow host has become one of the most exacting and powerful voices calling out political lies and speaking truths to both power and prejudice. He discusses the weaponising of fake news and ignorance, the power of dialogue and the urgent need for journalistic vigilance and authority. O'Brien is writing a book on these issues entitled How to be Right, to be published by Penguin Random House in November 2018.
Why Orwell Matters
The great and prolific contrarian, scrouge of Henry Kissinger and Mother Theresa, hawkish advocate of American military action against Al Qaeda, and literary superstar, champions the cause of the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Down and Out In Paris and London and KeepThe Aspidistra Flying.
The Economist Debate: History will be kinder to Bush and Blair than to Chirac and Shroeder
Jon Snow chairs the debate on security, democracy, diplomacy and piety in early in early twenty-first century.
Experience
John Updike writes of novels: 'Amis is trying to construct a large, reaching, ambitious set of books - trying to cover the world in fiction'. In his autobiographical portrait Experience Amis writes about his father, his writing, his cousin Lucy Partington who was murdered by the Wests and the literary world. He talks to the journalist Christopher Hitchens.
The Story is America
One of America's most brilliant political journalists, Klein was the anonymous author of the outrageous and unexaggerated satire Primary Colours and has just Published The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. Halberstam's War In A Time of Peace explores America's role as the only international super-power and the effects of a generational shift in national leadership, the modern media's emphasis on entertainment over foreign news, and the leap in military technology and American economic prosperity that has rendered foreign policy largely irrelevant to many US citizens. Hitchens writes for Vanity Fair. Freedland writes for The Guardian and is the author of Bring Home the Revolution.
Freedoms of Speech
Vigorous late-night debate around the Danish cartoons, David Irving, and contrarian culture. Tharoor is Under-Secretary General for Communications at the UN and a novelist. Chaired by Joan Bakewell.
Linda Colley talks to Christopher Hitchens
The historian discusses her stories of the flipside if Imperialisim: the soldiers and settlers seized in India and North America, the men and women captured from Devon and Cornwall by Moroccan slavers, or taken at sea by Barbarycorsairs. She explores the parallels with empire today, and the West's relationship with Islam.
The great historian discusses his memoir Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life. 'Autobiography does not come much more sumptuous than this. Eric Hobsbawm writes with elegant, witty precision. His memory - not just for people and dates, but looks and sounds and the feel of things - is prodigious.' (The Observer)
The Blasphemy Debate
Joan Bakewell chairs a debate on the boundaries of freedom of speech, religious tolerance, multiculturalism and orthodoxy.
The iconoclastic journalist talks about the end of political correctness and ranges around sexual politics. Hitchens is the author of the savage and brilliant portrait of Bill Clinton, No-one Left to Lie to and the radical The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice. He is a feature writer for Vanity Fair and Washington correspondent of the London Evening Standard. Having recently appeared on the fly leaf of The Mating Season, as introducer, alongside the name of the author, PG Wodehouse, he may die happy. He talks to Colin MacCabe.
Late Night Hitch
The Christopher Hitchens stand-up gig. Lenny Bruce meets Wodehouse. Bullies beware.
Love Poverty War collects the majestic ire and love of this great contrarian. The objects of his attention include Michael Moore, David Irving and the Kennedys on the one side and Joyce, Proust and Borges on t'other.
The Booker-winner and author of Atonement discusses his new novel Saturday.
The Rights of Man
The contrarian traces the history of The Rights of Man from the publication of Part One in 1791 in London and its rapturous reception across the Atlantic. He analyses the meaning it has acquired since its creation, and its significance as the cornerstone of contemporary debates about our basic human rights.