Daytime sessions in the Red Room 21st March
A whole day of readings, talks, presentations, discussions and opportunities to get involved with creative writing at all levels.
Tickets options are
– £8 per session in advance
– £10 per session on the door (subject to availability)
We will try not to allow changes to the programme to occur, but things happen, and your understanding in that circumstance is appreciated 🙂
In the Red Room
10:00 – 11:00
Oliver Hawkins
Alice Meynell and her Time
Oliver Hawkins looks at the life and works of his great-grandmother, the Victorian poet and essayist Alice Meynell ( 1847-1922). The sense of ‘her time’ is taken to refer on the one hand to her place in literary history, going from a period of high celebrity-a contender for the Poet Laureateship to one of near neglect, and then today enjoying a time of rediscovery and re-appraisal.
On the other hand the title refers to the treatment of time itself in Alice Meynell’s work, a theme she came back to again and again in her poems and essays. Her interest in heredity in particular has resonance today, not least in her reference to her own mixed-race ancestry.
11:15 – 12:15
Helen Fields
Artificial Intelligence and Literature
Artificial Intelligence is a growing threat in the world of literature. It is already being used to replace translators, graphic designers, copy writers and marketing personnel. But can it really replace authors and other creatives? Are there ways we can resist it? And does it have any positive applications for the arts? Would you ever want to read a book written by a computer? Let’s talk about it.
Million copy international best-selling author, Helen is a former criminal and family law barrister. ‘Perfect Kill’ was longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2020, and others have been longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize, Scottish crime novel of the year. Helen also writes as HS Chandler. Translated into more than 20 languages, Helen’s books have won global recognition. She has two series – the D.I. Callanach police procedurals, and the Dr Connie Woolwine psychological profiling books – and has written standalone novels, The Last Girl To Die, These Lost & Broken Things, The Profiler and Degrees of Guilt.
12:30 – 1:30
Colin Chambers
The Extraordinary Life of Peggy Ramsay
Colin Chambers is Emeritus Professor of Drama at Kingston University, London. Formerly a journalist and theatre critic, he was Literary Manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company (1981-97). He co-authored Kenneth’s First Play and Tynan, adapted David Pinski’s Treasure and edited John Maddison Morton’s Three Farces. He has written extensively on theatre. As author, his books include Other Spaces, The Story of Unity Theatre, Peggy (the award-winning biography of play agent Margaret Ramsay), Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company, Here We Stand: Politics and Performance and Black and Asian Theatre in Britain: A History. As editor, his books include Making Plays, Theatre in a Cool Climate, The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Granville Barker on Theatre and Peggy to her Playwrights.
Peggy Ramsay believed the living playwright belonged at the centre of theatre and from the early 1950s spent her years as a play agent nurturing a dazzling and eclectic client list which fired Britain’s postwar playwriting renaissance. A legend within the theatre, Ramsay (1908-1991) had a matchless ability both to visualise a play from reading a script and offer bracing, often withering, criticism to the author in order to help them focus on their art. Early successes with Oscar-winner Robert Bolt (A Man for All Seasons, Lawrence of Arabia) allowed her agency to embrace talents as diverse as Joe Orton, Edward Bond, David Hare, Alan Ayckbourn, Caryl Churchill, and Willy Russell. Ramsay’s biographer Colin Chambers will explore her extraordinary life and influence and ask whether her insistence on the importance of the writing rather than on awards or financial gain has any value today.
2:00 – 3:00
Professor Robert Barrington
Corrupted Kingdom
How much do you have to pay as a bribe in the UK to pass your driving test? How does a company get a law passed that will help it make more money? How corrupt are local government, the media and the police? I’ve studied corruption around the world over three decades and my new book, Corrupted Kingdom, looks for the first time at corruption in the UK itself.
It’s not that Britain has always been perfect – Corrupted Kingdom looks at corruption in the past and in the Empire, before focusing on the situation today. But after a period of equilibrium since the end of the Second World War, things are now getting worse. A few years ago, the UK was in the top ten of the world’s main anti-corruption index, and now it barely scrapes into the top twenty. What is going on?
Corrupted Kingdom lifts the lid on how power is used and abused across the UK, and how that affects our daily lives. It’s based both on my academic research, and thousands of conversations up and down the country with everyone from ex-prime Ministers to ex-prisoners.
If you’ve ever wondered what role corruption plays in the UK’s political, economic and social problems, Corrupted Kingdom will give you some of the answers – as well as thought-provoking ideas on what we need to do better in a world where populism is on the rise, long-standing alliances are being questioned, and things we have taken for granted are now under threat.
Professor Robert Barrington specialises in analysing global corruption trends and corruption in developed economies. He is Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex, where he lectures on the Masters in Corruption & Governance. He was formerly the head of Transparency International (TI) in the UK, and Chair of TI’s International Council. At TI, he led the campaigns to secure the Bribery Act, a national Anti-Corruption Strategy for the UK and the introduction of Unexplained Wealth Orders, and was described in the media as ‘a thug in a suit.’ Previous roles include Director of Governance & Sustainable Investment at F&C Asset Management, a top 10 European institutional investor with c.€120 billion under management; and CEO (Europe) of the Earthwatch Institute in Oxford, where he started as a volunteer fundraiser after completing his PhD.
Robert has been a long-term adviser to the UK government on subjects including the Bribery Act, export credits, the post-Brexit procurement regime and Free Trade Agreements, and has served on multiple boards and advisory committees ranging from The Environment Council to the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Good Governance. He was Deputy Chair of the Taskforce on Business Ethics and the Legal Profession convened by the Institute for Business Ethics. He writes extensively in the media and appears as an expert commentator on major news and current affairs programmes including BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC World Service, Sky News, Al-Jazeera and LBC. Publications include a ‘Dictionary of Corruption’, ‘Understanding Corruption’, ‘How to Bribe’ and ‘Adequate Procedures – Guidance to the UK Bribery Act’. His latest book, Corrupted Kingdom, is a comprehensive overview of corruption in the UK, due for publication by Profile Books in summer 2026. He holds an undergraduate degree from Oxford University and a PhD from the European University Institute for a thesis on Anglo-Venetian relations in the 1530s.
3:15 – 4:15
Barnaby Phillips
The African Kingdom of Gold
Barnaby spent over 25 years as a journalist. He was based for the BBC in Mozambique, Angola, Nigeria and South Africa. ‘The African Kingdom of Gold’ is his third book about the legacy of the British empire in Africa. He grew up in Kenya and Switzerland, and now lives in London. He also works for an elephant conservation organisation.
Barnaby’s talk looks at how the British army looted gold treasure from the West African kingdom of Asante in the late Victorian period. He traces how some of the most precious objects ended up in our national museums, and how in 2024 the British Museum and the V&A decided to return some of the objects to Asante, albeit only on loan. A frank, but not polemical, examination of the legacy of empire in West Africa and Britain today, and the future of our national museums.
4:30 – 5:30
Mark Cocker
One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth
Swifts are among the most extraordinary of all birds. Their migrations span national borders and continents alike. They may nest in our homes, but their lives pass over our heads and no British citizen is more wreathed in mystery. Yet One Midsummer’s Day is about much more than one bird. Swifts serve as a prism through which Cocker examines and celebrates the deep interconnections that span the entire biosphere. He shows how life is a glorious continuum to which we are party and on which we are completely dependent. One Midsummer’s Day is a vital reminder of the connections interlacing all life on Earth and was described by Horatio Clare as a ‘beautiful, brilliant, mind-stretching and soul-flying book. Genius.’
Mark Cocker is an author, naturalist and environmental activist who writes on Nature in a variety of national media including The Guardian, Country Life and The Spectator. His 14 books include A Claxton Diary: Further Field Notes from a Small Planet (2019), which won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award, and Crow Country, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the New Angle Prize. In 2025 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
See also…
Friday daytime workshops 10am – 4:30pm in the Studio – click here for full details
Sunday daytime sessions 10am – 5:30pm in the Red Room – click here for full details
Saturday evening concert 7:30pm in the Red Room – click here for full details
In The Green Room
Orientation desk explaining what’s available and when.
Ticket office taking cash and card payments.
Book stall selling signed copies of each contributor’s books. Cash and cards accepted.
Breakout area serving tea and coffee. Bring your own buns!
Volunteers
If you’d like to be involved in any way with the day as a volunteer please email events@thevictoriainstitute.com.