Lewes Speakers Festival: Discount tickets for UoB students

Lewes Speakers Festival is offering University of Brighton students and staff half price tickets to their talks on 10, 11 and 12 June 2022. The Festival brings together a wide range of authors with notable political, media, and journalist backgrounds, to talk about their latest literature and answer questions about their work. All events will be held at the All Saints Centre in Lewes.

Students also have the opportunity to gain free passes for full or half days of the festival, in return for some simple volunteering duties, to provide support between the talks.

Please email Marc Rattray on marcrattrayuk@yahoo.co.uk to purchase half price tickets – providing details of the talks that you would like to attend – or to get further information about the volunteering opportunity. You can also buy half price tickets at the door on the day, with proof of your University of Brighton student or staff status. Please be aware that tickets are limited so booking in advance is recommended.

Check out the full schedule below or see the Lewes Speakers Festival website for more detail about each talk.

Talks on Friday 10 June

17:30 Colin Thubron, this master of travel writing describes taking a dramatic 3,000-mile long journey along the Amur river which rises in the Mongolian mountains and flows through Siberia to the Pacific.

19:10 Alan Johnson, the former cabinet minister, explains his latest thriller novel: The Late Train to Gipsy Hill – which describes an epic adventure involving the Russian mafia, the FSB and the Metropolitan Police.

Talks on Saturday 11 June

9:50 Tim Marshall, international best-selling author and former Sky News Foreign Affairs Editor, explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry.

11:20 Iain Dale, presenter of the Evening Show on LBC Radio, gives a part-memoir, part-polemic about the state of public discourse in Britain and the world today.

12:50 Fatima Manji, anchor of the UK’s Channel 4 News, recontextualises the relationship between Britain and the people and societies of the Orient.

14:20 Esther Freud author of Hideous Kinky, great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, and daughter of Lucian Freud, discusses her novel about the lives of three generations of women, covering love, motherhood, secrets, and betrayal – and how only the truth can set us free.

15:50 Sandy Gall, former ITN Newscaster, and Carlota Gall, Pulitzer Prize winner, gives a biography of the Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud who undermined the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

17:20 Gavin Hesler, main presenter of BBC Newsnight for 12 years, explains how British political and social challenges will end with the break-up of the UK and the rebirth of English nationalism.

18:50 James O’Brien, whose daily current affairs programme on LBC has over 1.2 million weekly listeners, turns the mirror on himself to reveal what he has changed his mind about and why.

Talks on Sunday 12 June

9:50 Denis MacShane, former Minister of State for Europe, asks why Labour is so good at losing elections and so unhappy and edgy when it does win.

11:20 Ian Williams, Foreign Correspondent, based in Russia and then Asia for Channel 4 News and NBC, explains how China is building the world’s first digital totalitarian state – a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control.

12:50 Wing Commander Mike Sutton, gives the thrilling and true account of the Typhoon fighter squadron in the war against ISIS, as the commander who led them into combat.

14:20 Andrew Monaghan: founding Director of the Russia Research Network. As a leader for research on Russia for NATO and Oxford University, he explains the Russian Grand Strategy in its quest for political and military power.

15:50 Yasmin Alibhai Brown, the prominent political and social commentator gives an account of the courageous women who change and changed history and remolded our culture.

17:20 Andrew Lownie, Literary Agency founder and best-selling biographer, explains the life of Edward VIII – the traitor King who had Nazi intrigues in WW2.

18:50 Professor A.C. Grayling, the Founder and Principal of New College, asks if humans can agree on a set of values that will allow us to confront the environmental, technological and political threats facing the planet.