The Gentle Author of the popular blog Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London. As part of our Spitalfields Life Chit Chats, butchers, Joe Lawrence, Greg Lawrence and Peter Sargent present a lively look at Smithfields Market and life as a butcher from the 1960s up to the present day. If you enjoy listening to this event do take a look at the ot...
Dec 04, 2015
The Gentle Author of the popular blog Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London. As part of our Spitalfields Life Chit Chats, fishmonger Charlie Caisey talks about his life as a fishmonger and Billingsgate Market. If you enjoy listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.
Dec 04, 2015
Rhyming slang can claim to be London's one truly home-grown language. It may have started around 1830 among the canal-digging navvies, the villains of St Giles or, as is most likely, the costermongers of the East End, spreading over time to Australia and the United States. But it remains the most quintessentially 'London' of all slang's vocabularies. It isn't a vast lexis, something over 3,000 words in all, but it's still going strong. Like black cabs and red telephone kiosks it's not what it wa...
Nov 10, 2015
Following the publication of London: A Travel Guide Through Time, join historian and broadcaster Dr Matthew Green on an historical journey through 800 years of London's history, from the depths of the Middle Ages, through the time of Shakespeare, the Great Plague and Empire, to the pummelling of the city during the Blitz, and its resurrection in the gloomy 50s.If you enjoy listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.
Oct 23, 2015
Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Recorded live at Bishopsgate Institute on Thursday 6 November 2014. If you enjoyed listening to this event do take ...
Nov 14, 2014
Highly acclaimed crime writer Ruth Rendell looks back over 50 years of Wexford. Recorded live at Bishopsgate Institute on Thursday 30 October 2014. If you enjoyed listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.
Nov 10, 2014
Lee Jackson explores the secret life of the Victorian metropolis, focusing in particular on the birth of public baths and the peculiar history of the public toilet. Recorded live on 16 October 2014
Oct 24, 2014
Tristram Hunt, author of The Frock-Coated Communist and leading UK politician presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through ten cities that epitomised it. The final embers of the British Empire are dying, but its legacy remains in the lives and structures of the cities which it shaped. Here Tristram Hunt examines the stories and defining ideas of ten of the most important: of 1700s Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and 20th cen...
Jun 26, 2014
Rosamund Urwin of the Evening Standard chairs a discussion about the raunch culture and its impact on modern feminism. Can you still be a feminist if you bare your body for a living? Or has feminism come so far that women now hold the power? Rosamund is joined by Sarah Mathewson from feminist campaign group OBJECT, Barbara Haigh, a former Playboy Bunny Girl and Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers.
May 14, 2014
Thirty years ago, miners went on strike across Britain to resist the Tory government's plans for sweeping pit closures. The strike remains the longest mass industrial dispute in British history - a war between Margaret Thatcher and the labour movement, and the miners’ union she branded "the enemy within" in particular. The strike’s outcome signalled a profound change in Britain’s social and economic landscape and its aftershocks can still be felt throughout the country today. The Enemy Within, S...
May 09, 2014
The most notorious novel of the ‘slum fiction’ genre, Morrison’s A Child of the Jago, caused outrage, with its nihilistic depiction of a population of criminals and social outcasts. Morrison claimed that it was an eyewitness account of the real Old Nichol district of Shoreditch. Two years after publication, the rows the book engendered were ongoing in the periodical press. In this illustrated talk, author Sarah Wise (Inconvenient People, The Blackest Streets) explores the real slum that inspired...
Apr 07, 2014
Born on Columbia Road, award-winning author Linda Wilkinson traces the history of the fragrant home of East London’s famous flower market. From the earliest times when the land was pastureland for cows whose milk supplied the City of London, through the influx of the Huguenot weavers and up to the present day, this talk is part historical and part social memoir based on familial recollections. Linda Wilkinson spent the first 25 years of her working life as a Research Scientist with many publicat...
Apr 01, 2014
Lesbian fashion. A misnomer? Surely, lesbians don't do fashion. But contrary to perception, clothing and style have been a crucial part of establishing an identity for women who love women. But if what we wear says who we are, can we be sure we're all talking in the same dialect or could we be misread? And is it possible to be outside the language of fashion? Speakers were Campbell X (Film Director/writer) and Dr Caroline Walters (writer/researcher).
Dec 13, 2013
A tale of cross-dressing, cross-examinations and a scandal that shocked and titillated Victorian England in equal measure. The alluring Miss Fanny Park and Miss Stella Boulton were no ordinary young women, they were young men who liked to dress as women. As their show trial unfolded, Fanny and Stella’s extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores were revealed to an incredulous public. With a cast of peers, politicians and prostitutes, drag queens, doctors and detectives, Fan...
Nov 26, 2013
To celebrate the publication of this final volume of his diaries, Tony Benn, in conversation with author, columnist and commentator Owen Jones, reflects on both the public and personal events of the last five years. Covering the fall of New Labour, tireless campaigning against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and passionate commitment to encouraging public debate and demonstrations, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine also provides a highly personal insight into the challenges of old age, failing health ...
Nov 14, 2013
All boys together? Nudge nudge. The belief that all male institutions are breeding grounds for homosexuality, has been a constant one. But what does go on behind the doors of the executive boardroom or the communal changing room? Is homosexuality the elephant in the room? The serpent in the grass? Or is it all just homosexual wish fulfilment fantasy? Justin Bengry explores all male institutions and their links with homosociality and homosexuality. Speaker Justin Bengry is an Honorary Research Fe...
Nov 05, 2013
We open the doors on that bastion of the British entertainment scene, the working men’s clubs. Hear about their development in the mid-19th century to their current period of decline. Why were they set up? What went on in them? And how did women come to find their own place in them? Drawing on personal accounts and experiences of those attending the clubs, this talk highlights the major roles they played and what made them such a central part of working class leisure. Dr Ruth Cherrington attende...
Oct 16, 2013
The world has always seen protest and dissent but in these difficult and changing times, how can the voices that challenge authority really be heard? How can a message reach the widest number of people? Which forms of resistance have the greatest impact? How can support be generated and who is really listening? From protests, rallies and direct action to worldwide digital petitions and 'armchair activism', our panel of experienced campaigners discuss methods of protest in today's modern world. S...
Jul 25, 2013
By 1966, the Apartheid regime in South Africa had all but annihilated the African National Congress (ANC), imprisoning its leaders or driving them into exile. To help keep their message of struggle alive and maintain a strategy of resistance from within, young men and women in London smuggled ANC literature into South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. Sworn to secrecy, their work remained silent for forty years but in this unique event the London recruits tell their story and discuss the role of in...
Jun 19, 2013
Katherine Connelly examines Sylvia Pankhurst's life of activism from her teens as a member of the Independent Labour Party, to her time as a leading suffragette before the First World War, through to her socialist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist campaigns in later years. She will also explore some of the contradictions in Pankhurst's career such as her role within the suffragette movement and why she ended her days under the patronage of the Emperor of Ethiopia. Katherine Connelly is the auth...
May 29, 2013
In conversation with John Harris, Barry Miles explores London’s counterculture - the creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - that sprang up in the city in the decades following the Second World War.
Mar 05, 2013
Why is the Victoria Line so hot? Is it really possible to go all the way round the circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and arguably illogical metropolitan transport system in the world. Yet it is iconic, relied upon by over a billion passengers a year and loved and despised in equal measure by Londoners. Find out everything you need to know in this witty and informative account of the social history of the Tube with journalist and novelist Andrew Martin.
Mar 05, 2013
Sex between men in public areas such as toilets and parks has been commonplace for at least a century, and continues today. Peter Kelley of LAGNA discusses this with writer and journalist Mark Simpson.
Feb 21, 2013
The first female prime minister who also won three consecutive elections. But Margaret Thatcher is arguably better known for the policies to which her name became attached and which significantly altered the social and economic face of Britain. Yet despite deeply divided opinion, has ‘Thatcherism’ actually been embraced and sustained by subsequent British political parties? Privatisation, free market approach, cuts to taxes as well as welfare spending, and tougher constraints on trade unions all...
Nov 27, 2012
A speaker at the 1985 Conservative Party Conference was cheered when he said, “If you want a queer for your neighbour, vote Labour!” Today, many leading Conservatives support gay marriage. A watershed in the long struggle for civil rights for LGBT citizens was resistance to Clause 28, which prohibited local authorities from presenting ‘homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. How did such hostility and prejudice give way to tolerance and now, perhaps, the possibility, at last, of equal...
Nov 14, 2012
Riots on the Streets:What can we Learn? Urban riots broke out across England in 2011, the worst since those of the 1980s. Then, as now, political authorities initially saw them as pure criminality. But is it coincidental that both eras are characterised by deepening inequality and economic crisis? What can the 1980s tell us about keeping the peace in troubled times? Are there lessons to be learnt in community relations and how communities are listened to or policed? Speakers included Sharon Gran...
Oct 17, 2012
Rewind 30 years to the 1980s. Hairstyles may best be forgotten but the pop music of the time had more to recommend it. Punk was fading into softer, more electronic genres as music technology evolved. The ‘New Romantics’ emerged as a dominant force in music championing fantasy and the imagination with bands such as Spandau Ballet and Culture Club enjoying chart success. The early part of the decade saw a revival of Ska whilst the charts were later dominated by pop producers Stock Aitken Waterman....
Oct 02, 2012
Best-selling philosopher Julian Baggini explains the stories behind philosophy. Bringing together and interlinking its different areas, he creates an accessible and fascinating taste of philosophy and all that matters in it. Taking you to the very heart of the subject, Julian shows how abstract ideas feed into the most existential questions of all. Writer and journalist Julian Baggini was named on the Observer’s list of top public intellectuals. He is the editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine and...
Sep 27, 2012
Should Britain retain a symbolic Head of State who, it is argued, is politically impartial and provides stability, a focus for national unity and a centrepiece for national celebrations? Or does the hereditary system need to be replaced by a democratically elected Head of State who others believe can also provide these services as well as being publicly accountable? Speakers included Graham Smith (Republic), Joan Smith (journalist and author), Peter Conradi (Sunday Times journalist, co-author of...
Sep 13, 2012
There was a time when the British public viewed their sovereigns from afar. The media is now filled with details of the Royal family’s private lives. Public demand, media profits and the need tokeep the monarchy in the public sphere have combined to bring the monarchy and royal family into close and constant focus. In this age of mass media and celebrity culture, this discussion explores the relationship between the palace and the press. Speakers include Professor Neil Blain (University of Stirl...
May 04, 2012
