The programme for the 2021 Beyond Borders International Festival is now live! Join us for a programme featuring Lady Anne Glenconner and Jim Naughtie, Elif Shafak, Sarah Helm, and Allan Little, Joyce Cairns, Edi Stark, and Alice Strang, William Dalrymple, Sir Geoff Palmer,and Alex Renton, Jonathan Powell, Lord Karan Bilimoria and Stephen Dunbar-Johnson.
Enjoy the talks live-streamed in the Walled Garden Clouds Marquee, where there will also be music from Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes, Nigel Osborne and The Micro Band, as well as literary, poetry and foraging walks, art exhibitions, local produce at market stalls, and Youth Climate Summit Events!
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 10:00 am - 10:50 am
Venue: Walled Garden
Join Catherine Maxwell Stuart and Alasdair Allan on a walk from Toll Wood and hear about his book exploring the history, language and literature of the Scottish Borders
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Venue: Walled Garden
All of the Main Tent events will be streamed in the Walled Garden Clouds Marquee. You can also enjoy music, exhibitions, food and drink, market stalls and Youth Climate Summit events! See more:
Literary Walk: Tweed Rins Tae the Ocean with Alasdair Allan and Catherine Maxwell Stuart
Morning Meditation with Rajesh Rai
Lunchtime Music Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes: Songs of Separation
Youth Climate Summit
Market Stalls
Enjoy a selection of local produce, including:
There will also be a stall featuring work from local writers, focussing on Green Recovery and Health.
Exhibitions
New York Times: Carbon’s Casualties
Josh Haner has travelled across the globe to document the effects of climate change. Dramatic drone footage coupled with still photography on the ground captures diverse environments as they are reshaped around the world, weaving a visual narrative of the ultimate legacy of climate change: the loss of our planet’s heritage.
Against All Odds: Scottish Women Can Paint (High Gallery)
“Women can’t paint,” was a statement made by Georg Baselitz when asked why women were so underrepresented in art museums and major exhibitions. This exhibition and series of interviews with and about seven prominent Scottish women artists sets out to disprove that belief and try to understand how a group of dedicated women painters have managed to create some of the best paintings produced in Scotland during the last half of the 20th century.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Venue: Walled Garden
The Youth Climate Summit will give young people a space to convene, express their passions, discuss future climate related projects, and raise awareness about some of the solutions to climate change. In particular, the Summit will focus on sustainable fashion and plant-based diets, through informative stalls and interactive activities, including:
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 11:00 am - 11:50 am
Venue: Main Marquee
Listen as Edi Stark unravels the journey of Scottish women artists in the 20th and 21st centuries with Joyce Cairns, the first female President of the Royal Scottish Academy and Alice Strang, curator of the National Galleries of Scotland’s landmark exhibition ‘Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965’. They will be joined by Andrew Brown, whose filmed interviews with seven female Scottish artists will premiere at Beyond Borders, accompanied by an exhibition at Traquair House. Callum Stark introduces. Sponsored by Creative Scotland.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 12:10 pm - 1:00 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Join Allan Little as he talks to British-Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, about her book How to Stay Sane in the Age of Division and writer and journalist Sarah Helm, as they explore the truth about divided societies, including in places like Turkey and Gaza.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 1:05 pm - 1:55 pm
Venue: Walled Garden Clouds Marquee
Listen to Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes as they perform an enchanting selection of Songs of Separation.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 2:00 pm - 2:50 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Listen as Stephen Gethins and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs’ Juliet Kaarbo debate Scotland’s foreign policy footprint and where it steps next. Allan Little asks the questions.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 3:20 pm - 4:10 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Watch veteran BBC journalist Jim Naughtie as he delves into the remarkable life of best-selling author of Murder on Mustique Lady Anne Glenconner as she recounts her time as Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret and her life and marriage to Lord Glenconner of the Glen.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 4:15 pm - 4:40 pm
Venue: Walled Garden
Alasdair Allan MSP reads from his book Tweed Rins to the Ocean and takes part in a Q&A session about the history, literature, and language of what he contends is the oldest national land border in the world.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 4:40 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 5:45 pm - 6:30 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
The Youth Climate Summit will host a discussion forum to give young people the space to convene, share their experiences as climate activists and think up future climate-related projects. This event will be open to the public for the first 20 minutes to allow the public to engage with the youth climate activists.
Date: Saturday 28th August
Time: 5:45 pm - 6:30 pm
Venue: Walled Garden Clouds Marquee
Round off the day with a selection of tunes from the Micro Band!
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 9:45 am - 10:45 am
Venue: Walled Garden
Experience a taste of the Scottish Borders as Fi Martynoga leads a foraging walk around the grounds of Traquair House
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Venue: Walled Garden
All of the Main Tent events will be streamed in the Walled Garden Clouds Marquee. You can also enjoy music, exhibitions, food and drink, market stalls and Youth Climate Summit events! See more:
Foraging Walk with Fi Martynoga
Morning Meditation with Rajesh Rai
Lunchtime Music curated by Nigel Osborne
Youth Climate Summit
Market Stalls
Enjoy a selection of local produce, including:
There will also be a stall featuring work from local writers, focussing on Green Recovery and Health.
Exhibitions
New York Times: Carbon’s Casualties
Josh Haner has travelled across the globe to document the effects of climate change. Dramatic drone footage coupled with still photography on the ground captures diverse environments as they are reshaped around the world, weaving a visual narrative of the ultimate legacy of climate change: the loss of our planet’s heritage.
Against All Odds: Scottish Women Can Paint (High Gallery)
“Women can’t paint,” was a statement made by Georg Baselitz when asked why women were so underrepresented in art museums and major exhibitions. This exhibition and series of interviews with and about seven prominent Scottish women artists sets out to disprove that belief and try to understand how a group of dedicated women painters have managed to create some of the best paintings produced in Scotland during the last half of the 20th century.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 10:00 am - 10:40 am
Why did those that seemed so close to seizing the crown fail to do so, or were they as close as they seemed? Steve Richards explores the soaring hopes and dashed ambitions of political figures who were for a time as talked about as the Prime Ministers…and highlights the lessons of leadership that arise from their Shakespearean rise and fall.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 11:00 am - 11:50 am
Venue: Main Marquee
In a session curated by the New York Times and local youth climate activists, listen to CBI President, Lord Karan Bilimoria and St Andrews Professor Ali Watson OBE as they share their perspectives on the role of nature and business in solving the climate crisis. While President of International, New York Times Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, sets out what we can expect from the NYT Hub at COP26.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 12:10 pm - 1:00 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Listen as Magnus Linklater leads a conversation with former head of the Metropolitan Police Bernard Hogan-Howe and John Taylor, who has spent over 50 years working in the intelligence and security world, including close contact with human sources like Oleg Gordievsky. Both will talk about their extraordinary careers, and they examine the state of play in domestic and international security.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 1:15 pm - 1:45 pm
Venue: Walled Garden
Lunchtime music in the Walled Garden with Nigel Osborne, Rihab Azar, Melissa Bradd, and Preetha Narayanan
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 2:00 pm - 2:50 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Join Allan Little with Eldridge Adolfo, Advisor to the EU Envoy to Afghanistan, Afghan rights campaigner Samina Ansari, Beyond Borders Fellow Mariam Safi , and William Dalrymple, as they discuss the crisis in Afghanistan.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 3:20 pm - 4:10 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Watch Jim Naughtie, social entrepreneur Tim Phillips, philosopher Oscar Guardiola-Rivera and author Aminatta Forna as they discuss America’s historical legacy in the making of the modern world and whether American Exceptionalism actually exists or is just a convenient myth. With contributions from Razia Iqbal and Sir Kieran Prendergast from abroad.
Date: Sunday 29th August
Time: 4:40 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: Main Marquee
Listen to Steve Richards as he quizzes Jonathan Powell about his role in helping to make peace in some of the most volatile regions of the world as well as giving his take on Brexit, UK politics where ‘global Britain’ goes next.
Alasdair Allan has been an SNP MSP since May 2007 representing the constituency of the Western Isles. Alasdair gained a PhD in Scots Language from Aberdeen University in 1998. Previous to becoming an MSP, Alasdair was senior media relations officer for the Church of Scotland. He regularly wrote Gaelic columns in various newspapers and was named Gaelic journalist of the year in 2006. In addition he was also the National Secretary of the SNP from 2003 to 2006 before he resigned to fight for the Western Isles seat.
Catherine Maxwell Stuart is the Director of Heritage at Beyond Borders Scotland. She is currently the 21st Lady of Traquair. She lives at Traquair House where she was born and brought up. Over the past 20 years she has been actively involved in tourism, the arts, heritage and business both locally and nationally. She has been a board member of the Scottish Enterprise Borders, the Broadcasting Council for Scotland and non-Exec director of Border TV. She also sat on the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Records and Archives and currently is Chair of the Scottish Borders Area Tourism Partnership.
Andrew Brown founded the 369 Gallery in 1978 to promote the work of young Scottish artists and The Gilded Balloon, one of Edinburgh’s best-known Fringe Festivals venues. In the 1980s he was prominent in forging artistic links between Britain and the former Soviet Union, mounting the first ever exhibition of contemporary Russian art in the UK. A distinguished watercolourist in his own right, he is active in Scottish cultural affairs and has written extensively on British art.
Born in Edinburgh, Cairns studied painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1966-71), and at the Royal College of Art, London (1971-74). Following a fellowship at Gloucester College of Art and Design she studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 1976 she returned to Aberdeen to teach Drawing and Painting at Gray’s School of Art until 2004 when she left to complete a substantial body of work culminating in the exhibition War Tourist at Aberdeen Art Gallery. Born in Edinburgh, Cairns studied painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1966-71), and at the Royal College of Art, London (1971-74). Following a fellowship at Gloucester College of Art and Design she studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 1976 she returned to Aberdeen to teach Drawing and Painting at Gray’s School of Art until 2004 when she left to complete a substantial body of work culminating in the exhibition War Tourist at Aberdeen Art Gallery. Cairns was elected President of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2018 and is the first woman to hold the position in the history of the academy.
Award winning broadcaster Edi Stark is one of Scotland’s most highly regarded journalists
Edi Stark is one of the most respected and award-winning radio programme makers in the UK.
In the prestigious, Sony Radio Academy industry awards (now the ARIAS) she has won Gold twice: Stark Talk with Joe Simpson for the Speech Award and Never too old to care in The News Special Award.
In the highly competitive Speech Broadcaster of the Year Award, against celebrated UK household names, she has won the Silver Award and is three times recipient of the Bronze Award.
She has been shortlisted in The Cetic Media awards three times and has an honorary degree from Aberdeen University.
In 1999, after a successful staff career in independent radio and freelance presentation for BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland, she established her own independent radio company, Stark Productions, which produces documentaries and the flagship conversation series Stark Talk for BBC Radio Scotland.
She grew up in Edinburgh and after studying English Literature, her career began as a school librarian in the Gorbals in Glasgow and Livingstone in West Lothian where she loved introducing pupils to books individually suited to them that could enrich and change their lives.
When she applied for a job at the new Northsound Radio in Aberdeen, she hoped to be a music librarian and researcher, but the Managing Director liked her voice and took her on board, with no radio experience, to create dynamic speech content to reflect and be relevant to the community. She says that it still feels like she’s learning and it remains a privilege to ask searching questions, highlight social issues, encourage involvement in the arts and culture and give voice to people’s lives.
Alice Strang focus on British, particularly Scottish, art from approximately 1900 to 1975, with a special interest in women artists. She has over twenty-five years’ experience as a national gallery senior curator and as an international auction house specialist.
She has been responsible for many major exhibitions, accompanied by publications, including those on modern Scottish women painters and sculptors, the Scottish Colourists F. C. B. Cadell, S. J. Peploe and J. D. Fergusson, 20th-century Scottish Art and modern British art.
Alice is also a BBC Expert Woman and a Saltire Society Outstanding Woman of Scotland.
Allan Little is an award-winning Scottish journalist and presenter who has reported from more than 80 countries including from a variety of war zones, revolutions and natural disasters. After graduating from Edinburgh University, Mr Little joined BBC Scotland as a news and current affairs researcher before moving to London to train as a radio reporter. He specialised in foreign reporting for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ Programme, including accounts from the revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe. He then worked as a reporter for BBC News, reporting from hostile environments such as the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait, former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Rwanda and Zaire. Mr Little also worked as the BBC Moscow correspondent and reported on the 1995 Afghanistan earthquakes before becoming the BBC’s Africa and later, Paris correspondent. He has won several awards, including three Gold Sony Radio Academy Awards for Reporter of the Year, the Bayeux War Correspondent of the Year, and in 2012 he won both the Thomas Reuters prize for Reporting Europe for his Radio 4 documentary, ‘Europe’s Choice’ and the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism. Mr Little is a veteran Special Correspondent for the BBC and will be chairing the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Sarah Helm, grew up in North Yorkshire and studied English at Cambridge. She then worked as a journalist for The Sunday Times and The Independent, first focussing on criminal justice, human rights and the Northern Ireland conflict, before being posted abroad as a foreign correspondent, covering the Israel-Palestine conflict and the war in Bosnia. Her first book, A Life in Secrets, is a biography of Vera Atkins, the World War Two intelligence officer for SOE, who sent women agents behind Nazi lines, and hunted for the missing. Her next book, If This is a Woman, is about Ravensbrück the Nazi Concentration camp for Women, told largely through the words of the last survivors.
Her play, Loyalty, a drama about conflicting loyalties set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, was staged at the Hampstead Theatre. She now freelances for several publications and is working on a new book about Gaza. Sarah lives in London with her husband, Jonathan Powell, and their two children.
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 55 languages. Her latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall’s inaugural book club, The Reading Room. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She also holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College.
Shafak is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. She was a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker. Shafak contributes to major publications around the world and she was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people “who will give you a much needed lift of the heart”. Shafak has judged numerous literary prizes, including PEN Nabokov prize and she has chaired the Wellcome Prize
Barbara Dickson and Rab Noakes met one lunchtime in Sandy Bell’s pub in Edinburgh. They were both 17 and learned quickly, over a drink, that their lives had overlapped somewhat. At the heart of their love of songs they were both avid Everly Brothers fans, living about 30 miles apart, oblivious of each other until then. That was to change forever.
Subsequently, they’ve performed live, sang on each other’s records, made media appearances, and have remained friends for over 50 years. Both inhabit diverse careers and have won awards and praise for their solo work in many fields.
In recent years they have toured as a duo on a number of occasions. Their last show in that format was in November 2019.
COVID restrictions have meant there’ve been no shows at all. That makes this appearance at Beyond Borders all the more valuable, and eagerly anticipated by Barbara and Rab. There’ll be old songs, new songs, happy songs and blue songs.
All performed with the rich resonance that reflects their lasting connection.
Photo: Kris Kesiak
Allan Little is an award-winning Scottish journalist and presenter who has reported from more than 80 countries including from a variety of war zones, revolutions and natural disasters. After graduating from Edinburgh University, Mr Little joined BBC Scotland as a news and current affairs researcher before moving to London to train as a radio reporter. He specialised in foreign reporting for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ Programme, including accounts from the revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe. He then worked as a reporter for BBC News, reporting from hostile environments such as the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait, former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Rwanda and Zaire. Mr Little also worked as the BBC Moscow correspondent and reported on the 1995 Afghanistan earthquakes before becoming the BBC’s Africa and later, Paris correspondent. He has won several awards, including three Gold Sony Radio Academy Awards for Reporter of the Year, the Bayeux War Correspondent of the Year, and in 2012 he won both the Thomas Reuters prize for Reporting Europe for his Radio 4 documentary, ‘Europe’s Choice’ and the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism. Mr Little is a veteran Special Correspondent for the BBC and will be chairing the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Stephen Gethins is a member of the Scottish National Party and served as Special Adviser to Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond for four years until 2012. Prior to this, Mr. Gethins has worked on democratization and peace building in the former Soviet Union, particularly in the Caucuses and Balkans. He has also served as a Political Advisor with the Committee of the Regions in the European Union, a position in which he worked with local authorities from across Europe. In his work at the Scottish Europa, he helped Scottish organisations gain influence in the EU.
Juliet Kaarbo is Professor of International Relations with a Chair in Foreign Policy at the University of Edinburgh. She is founding co-director of Edinburgh’s Centre for Security Research. She previously held posts at the University of Kansas and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Her research focuses on leader personality and decision making, group dynamics, foreign policy analysis and theory, parliaments and parties, and national roles and has recently appeared in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Political Psychology, Cooperation and Conflict, and Foreign Policy Analysis. Her books and co-edited volumes include Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Choices (2012), Domestic Role Contestation, Foreign Policy, and International Relations (2016) and the Oxford Handbook of Political Executives (2020). She has served as Associate Editor of the journals Foreign Policy Analysis and British Journal of Politics and International Relations. She was the 2018 Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis in the International Studies Association (ISA) and has been elected as an ISA Vice President for 2022-23. Professor Kaarbo has written about and provided expert parliamentary testimony on the international dimensions of Scottish independence, Brexit, and the role of the UK parliament in foreign and security policy.
James Naughtie is a British radio presenter and radio news presenter for the BBC. He began his career as a journalist at the Aberdeen ‘Press and Journal’ before moving to the London offices of ‘The Scotsman’. He became its Chief Political Correspondent before working for ‘The Washington Post’ and ‘The Guardian’. Mr Naughtie later moved into Radio Presenting and has anchored every BBC Radio UK election results programme since 1997, and worked on every US presidential election since 1988. He has been the main presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and his radio presenting has earned him two Sony Radio Awards: Radio Personality of the Year in 1991 and Voice of the Listener and Viewer Award in 2001. That same year, Mr Naughtie received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sterling and was appointed as its chancellor in 2008. He retired from regular presenting duties in 2016 and is currently the BBC’s Special Correspondent responsible for charting UK constitutional reform, as well as the BBC news’ Book Editor.
Lady Glenconner is now 87. She was born Lady Anne Coke in 1932, the eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, and growing up in their ancestral estate at Holkham Hall in Norfolk. A Maid of Honour at the Queen’s Coronation, she married Lord Glenconner in 1956. They had five children together of whom three survive. In 1958 she and her husband began to transform the island of Mustique into a paradise for the rich and famous. They granted a plot of land to Princess Margaret who built her favourite home there. She was appointed Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret in 1971 and kept this role – accompanying her on many state occasions and foreign tours – until her death in 2002. Lord Glenconner died in 2010, leaving everything in his will to a former employee. She now lives in a farmhouse near Holkham, Norfolk. In 2019 her memoir, Lady in Waiting, became an immediate Sunday Times bestseller and since then she has published her first novel, Murder on Mustique in 2020.
Alasdair Allan has been an SNP MSP since May 2007 representing the constituency of the Western Isles. Alasdair gained a PhD in Scots Language from Aberdeen University in 1998. Previous to becoming an MSP, Alasdair was senior media relations officer for the Church of Scotland. He regularly wrote Gaelic columns in various newspapers and was named Gaelic journalist of the year in 2006. In addition he was also the National Secretary of the SNP from 2003 to 2006 before he resigned to fight for the Western Isles seat.
William Dalrymple is a Scottish-born bestselling author and historian. While studying at the University of Cambridge, he mirrored – on foot – the route of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Mongolia and wrote his first book, ‘In Xanadu’ about the journey. This became a bestseller and he won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award. He wrote several books about his travels, particularly around India, and his historical works have also earned him several notable awards. Among them are the Wolfson Prize, the Scottish Book of the Year Prize and three honorary doctorates of letters from the Universities of St Andrews, Lucknow and Aberdeen. His most recent written work is ‘Koh-i-noor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond’.
Professor Sir Geoff Palmer was born in Jamaica. He came to London as an immigrant in 1955. After various difficulties, he worked and attended evening classes to improve his qualifications. He subsequently entered Leicester, Edinburgh, and Heriot Watt Universities were he gained BSc, PhD and DSc degrees, respectively. He worked at the Brewing Research Foundation on cereals and malted barley. He invented the barley abrasion process, pioneered the use of the Scanning Electron Microscope in the study of cereals in malting and was the first European to receive the American Society of Brewing Chemists award for research. Professor Palmer was also involved in the setting up of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at the Heriot Watt University. Sir Geoff is the author of many scientific papers and has published books on grain science and the history of Slavery in the West Indies. He serves on the Boards of various charitable organisations. He is the Freeman of Midlothian and the Honorary Consul for Jamaica in Scotland. Professor Palmer was awarded the OBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2014 for contributions to science, charity, and human rights.
Alex Renton has worked for national and international newspapers as a war correspondent, food writer and investigative journalist. His previous book was Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class. He lives in Edinburgh with his family.
Fi Martynoga is an environmental activist, journalist, museum researcher and a renowned figure in Scottish nature, sustainability, history and food circles.
Steve Richards is a British TV presenter and political columnist who has written for the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, and Spectator. An insightful observer of the British political scene, he has produced many television talks on influential political leaders and major political turning points. Mr Richards regularly presents Radio 4’s,‘Week in Westminster’and hosts a vibrant one man stand up show, ‘Rock n Roll Politics’. He has also written numerous books, including his latest,‘The Rise of the Outsiders: How the Anti-Establishment is on the March’, which charts the rise of new political mavericks from Corbyn to Trump, exploring factors from globalization and fake news to immigration and stagnant wages.
Lord Bilimoria is a British Indian entrepreneur and a life peer, and is one of the two founders and chairman of Cobra Beer. After studying at Osmania University, he moved to London where he qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young then studied at Cambridge. In 1989 he founded Cobrar Beer in his flat in Fulham with his friend arjun Reddy. He came up with the concept after seeing a lack of beer that could accompany a meal. In 2005 he helped establish the Cobra Foundation, an independent charity that provides health, education and community support for young people in south Asia. He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London in 2001.
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson is the President of International at the The New York Times Company. Having been appointed to lead the company’s global expansion in 2013, he is responsible for the oversight and strategic development of the Times Company’s international businesses. He served as Executive Vice President of the International Herald Tribune S.A.S. from September 2006 where he was responsible for conference and advertising revenue, the newspaper’s circulation and marketing departments, and commercial operations in Asia. Mr Dunbar-Johnson has held several business development roles around the world during his twelve years working for The Financial Times, including Advertising Manager in France and Vice President of Advertising in the Americas.
John Taylor has worked in the intelligence and security world for 50 years. He spent 30 of those in Britain’s foreign service and on retirement established his own company which went on to train and advise intelligence and security services around the world. He is now a senior research fellow at Kings College London where he lectures on their Masters’ course.
As he retired from public service, John fell into the bad company of Psychologists at University College London and has now written five books with them on diverse subjects including why people do bad things at work, remote profiling of people’s personalities and his most recent ‘The Psychology of Spies and Spying: Trust, Treason and Treachery’ expected to be published this Autumn.
He now advises companies and governments on strategic development subjects, the Insider Threat and personality profiling.
Bernard Hogan-Howe was born into the Sheffield east end. After leaving school he worked in a Medical Laboratory for the NHS before joining the police service. He went on to become Chief Constable of Merseyside, Her Majesties Inspector of Constabularies with responsibility for Serious and Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism. In 2011 he was appointed by Royal Warrant as Metropolian Police Commissioner responsible for 50,000 officers and staff. In Merseyside crime was reduced by a third and in London by a fifth. In 2013 he was knighted and in 2017 raised to the House of Lords. He is a Non Executive Director of the Cabinet Office and recently acted as advised to the New Zealand Royal Commission on the Christchurch Terrorist attacks on mosques He has an MA (Oxon) in Jurisprudence and an MBA from Sheffield University. He is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College Oxford University.
Magnus Linklater CBE is a Scottish journalist, writer and former newspaper owner. He was born in Orkney and studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Mr Linklater has worked as an Editor for the Evening Standard, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Scotsman and The Times. Linklater is also a former chairman of the Scottish Arts Council 1996-2001 and holds honorary degrees from Napier, Aberdeen and Glasgow Universities. He has presented Eye to Eye on BBC radio Scotland and written numerous books on Scottish history and current affairs from, ‘The Nazi Legacy’ to ‘The Secret Life of Jeremy Thorpe.’
William Dalrymple is a Scottish-born bestselling author and historian. While studying at the University of Cambridge, he mirrored – on foot – the route of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Mongolia and wrote his first book, ‘In Xanadu’ about the journey. This became a bestseller and he won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award. He wrote several books about his travels, particularly around India, and his historical works have also earned him several notable awards. Among them are the Wolfson Prize, the Scottish Book of the Year Prize and three honorary doctorates of letters from the Universities of St Andrews, Lucknow and Aberdeen. His most recent written work is ‘Koh-i-noor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond’.
Timothy Phillips is a social entrepreneur who has launched several innovative organizations in the non-profit and for-profit sectors that address critical emerging global issues. In 1992, he co-founded Beyond Conflict (formerly the Project on Justice in Times of Transition), a pioneering and widely respected conflict resolution and reconciliation initiative that has made important contributions to the consolidation of peace and democracy around the world. In the private sector, he was a founder of Energia Global International Ltd. (EGI), which was a leader in the development and operation of privately-owned renewable energy facilities in Central and South America in the early 1990s. He helped launch and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Club of Madrid, which was founded in 2001 with the support of 30 current and former heads of state and government to promote the consolidation of democracy around the world.
Aminatta Forna is the award-winning author ‘The Hired Man’, ‘The Memory of Love’, which was awarded the Commonwealth Prize for “Best Book” in 2011,’Ancestor Stones’, and a memoir ‘The Devil that Danced on the Water’. In March, she was announced as the recipient of the 2014 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize (Fiction). She also serves as Professor for Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera is a writer and senior lecturer in international law and affairs at Birkbeck College, University of London. After leading the student movement that initiated a wave of constitutional reform throughout Latin America in the late 1990’s, he continued his studies in the United Kingdom where he obtained an LLM with Distinction at University College London, and a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He is the writer of the award-winning ‘What If Latin America Ruled the World?’ which was listed as one the best non-fiction books of 2010 by The Financial Times. Mr Guardiola-Rivera is also the co-editor of the contemporary art and theory journal ‘Naked Punch: An Engaged Review of Arts & Theory’, and has engaged with an extensive range of publications and broadcasters, including Granta, El Espectador (COL), the BBC World Service Nightwaves, and Al-Jazeera to name but a few. He is currently the Assistant Dean of Research at the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London and is recognized as one of the most representative voices of contemporary Latin American philosophy and literature.
James Naughtie is a British radio presenter and radio news presenter for the BBC. He began his career as a journalist at the Aberdeen ‘Press and Journal’ before moving to the London offices of ‘The Scotsman’. He became its Chief Political Correspondent before working for ‘The Washington Post’ and ‘The Guardian’. Mr Naughtie later moved into Radio Presenting and has anchored every BBC Radio UK election results programme since 1997, and worked on every US presidential election since 1988. He has been the main presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and his radio presenting has earned him two Sony Radio Awards: Radio Personality of the Year in 1991 and Voice of the Listener and Viewer Award in 2001. That same year, Mr Naughtie received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sterling and was appointed as its chancellor in 2008. He retired from regular presenting duties in 2016 and is currently the BBC’s Special Correspondent responsible for charting UK constitutional reform, as well as the BBC news’ Book Editor.
Razia Iqbal is a BBC journalist: she is one of the main presenters on Newshour, the flagship current affairs programme on the World Service, and she also presents the World Tonight on Radio 4, as well as Witness History on the News Channel. She was the BBC Arts correspondent for ten years.
Jonathan Powell is CEO of Inter Mediate, the charity he founded in 2011 to work on conflict resolution around the world.
Jonathan worked on the negotiations with ETA in the Basque Country, on the negotiations in Colombia with the FARC and on the peace negotiations in Mozambique.
Intermediate is working on 10 conflicts at the moment.
Jonathan was Chief of Staff to Tony Blair from 1995 to 2007 and from 1997 to 2007 was also Chief British Negotiator on Northern Ireland.
He is author of ‘Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland‘, ‘The New Machiavelli, How to Wield Power in the Modern World‘ and ‘Talking to Terrorists, How to End Armed Conflict‘.
Steve Richards is a British TV presenter and political columnist who has written for the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, and Spectator. An insightful observer of the British political scene, he has produced many television talks on influential political leaders and major political turning points. Mr Richards regularly presents Radio 4’s,‘Week in Westminster’and hosts a vibrant one man stand up show, ‘Rock n Roll Politics’. He has also written numerous books, including his latest,‘The Rise of the Outsiders: How the Anti-Establishment is on the March’, which charts the rise of new political mavericks from Corbyn to Trump, exploring factors from globalization and fake news to immigration and stagnant wages.
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