Joseph Banks accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage round the world from 1768-1771. A gifted and wealthy young naturalist, Banks collected exotic flora from Madeira, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, the Society Islands, New Zealand, Australia and Java, bringing back over 1,300 species that had never been seen or studied by Europeans. On his return, Banks commissioned more than 700 superlative engravings between 1772-1784. Known collectively as Banks’ Florilegium, they are some of the most precise and exquisite examples of botanical illustration ever created. Studholme introduces a selection of the images and explains the process of producing them.
Jonathan Shaw (Estados Unidos) nació fruto de la relación entre la leyenda del jazz Artie Shaw y la estrella de Hollywood Doris Dowling. Durante su adolescencia frecuentó a Charles Bukowski y entró en una espiral de delincuencia juvenil. A los 19 años viajó por Centroamérica y Sudamérica, donde vivió durante años. En 2008 publicó su primera novela, Narcisa, que pronto se convirtió en un libro de culto con una legión de fans entre los que se encuentran Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop y Jim Jarmusch. Recientemente publicada en México, la novela narra la pasional historia de amor entre Cigano, un ex-toxicómano, y Narcisa, una prostituta adicta a las drogas. Jonathan conversará con el editor y escritor Diego Rabasa.
So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) is popular and therefore important, whether we love or loathe it. Consequently, an impressive number of books about SCAM are already available. Most of them, however, are woefully uncritical, overtly promotional and dangerously misleading. Not so this one. Edzard’s book was written by someone who received SCAM as a patient, practised SCAM as a doctor, and researched SCAM as a scientist. It provides an insider’s perspective by covering aspects of SCAM that most books avoid, and by questioning the many tacitly accepted assumptions and wild extrapolations that underpin SCAM. The text is factual, occasionally dosed with a touch of humour or satire. The aim is not only to inform but also to entertain – as he does in his other books Trick or Treatment, More Harm Than Good and A Scientist in Wonderland.
Miller came to prominence when she successfully took the British government to the Supreme Court, challenging its authority to trigger Article 50, the formal notification to leave the EU, without parliamentary approval. Guyana-born Miller became the target of racist and sexist abuse, and physical threats. Rise is an unflinching account of what it means to stand up for justice, and for yourself, no matter what the cost. She discusses her book and why she felt compelled to write it. Chaired by Peter Florence.
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A brief tour of lightning research, from generating powerful lightning bolts in Europe’s only university-based lightning laboratory, to the role of new materials in protecting commercial aircraft in flight from direct strikes, and to whether increased lightning due to global warming affects tree mortality in the tropics. Mitchard will bring us lots of exciting images and videos, from exploding piggy banks to the Nigerian rainforest, live Tesla coil demonstrations with music and the appearance of a tree struck nine times that survived.
El escritor argentino Martín Kohan es autor de obras como Bahía Blanca, El país de la guerra y la reciente Fuera de lugar. Por su parte, el mexicano Álvaro Enrigue es autor de dos libros de cuentos y varias notables novelas, entre ellas, la ganadora del Premio Herralde 2013: Muerte súbita, permio que también recibió en el año 2007 Kohan con Ciencias morales. Ambos escritores conversan con Ricardo García Mainou, columnista y crítico cultural mexicano del periódico El Economista.
The author and illustrator introduces the much-loved character of Claude and gives a behind-the-scenes view of the making of the new TV series about him. Come and learn how to draw him and meet the new detective, the star of Mr Penguin.
For the first time since the Second World War, younger generations can expect less fulfilled lives than their elders. They may not be their betters, but in the second decade of the 21st century they surely are better heeled. Traditionally, society’s way of controlling the young has been to send them off to war. They would either die or learn ‘duty’. Now we send as many as 50% to university, from which they emerge encumbered with debt. Sutherland and Valentine attempt to defuse a ticking generational time-bomb.
Ed Vere is an award-winning, best-selling writer and illustrator of picture books. He will be reading from Banana! , where you will discover that getting what you want can be tricky if you don’t ask in the right way, and also from Bedtime for Monsters, a very funny tale with a big twist.
The renowned US writer and journalist David Rieff, author of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (2003), Against Remembrance (2012) and Swimming in a Sea of Death, in which he deals with the loss of his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, presents his new book, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies. In this work he reflects on historical memory and the voluntary option of forgetting with regard to traumatic historical events, questioning the ethical obligation to remember as the individual’s responsibility. In conversation with Jaime Abello Banfi.
The biographer celebrates the centenary of the birth of the versatile musical genius, America’s greatest conductor and the composer of West Side Story. Burton was given exclusive access to Bernstein’s rich legacy of letters and papers, and the book draws on hundreds of interviews with family, friends and colleagues to reveal his fascinating and complex personality. The event is chaired by Humphrey Burton’s daughter, the broadcaster and author of Year of Wonder.
Levete is a RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect, founder and principal of AL_A, an international design and architecture studio. She describes her approach to two exceptional urban projects – The Exhibition Road project at the V&A in London, creating a new exhibition space and re-connecting the museum to open public space on Exhibition Road; MAAT, the new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon is a new outward-looking museum located on the banks of the Tagus in Belém, the district from where the Portuguese great explorers set off.
Chaired by Amol Rajan.
