Lectures & Events

Lectures and discussions from the LRB, including our yearly Winter Lecture series.

Remembering the Future

Hazel V. Carby, 18 April 2024

17 April 2024 · 53mins

In her LRB Winter Lecture, Hazel V. Carby explores the ways indigenous artists are reconstructing histories that have been lost or erased, and imagining new futures in a time of imminent catastrophe.

The Shoah after Gaza

Pankaj Mishra, 17 April 2024

1 March 2024 · 1hr 06mins

In his LRB Winter Lecture delivered on 28 February 2024, Pankaj Mishra considers the ways in which our moral and political consciousness is profoundly altered when Israel, a country founded as a haven for the victims of genocidal racism, is itself charged with genocide.

22 December 2023 · 1hr 30mins

Emily Wilson discusses her landmark translation of the Iliad with Edith Hall, with readings from Juliet Stevenson and Tobias Menzies.

How to Plot an Abortion

Clair Wills, 17 April 2024

24 February 2023 · 1hr 16mins

Following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and other challenges to reproductive rights, Clair Wills considers the stories we tell about abortion – in fiction, film, court rulings and clinics.

The Reaction Economy

William Davies, 17 April 2024

10 February 2023 · 1hr 13mins

William Davies's 2023 LRB Winter Lecture looks at why reactions – facial expressions, gestures or emojis – have become the main currency of the digital public sphere.

Akihito and the Sorrows of Japan

Richard Lloyd Parry, 17 April 2024

11 March 2020 · 55mins

In his 2020 LRB Winter Lecture, Richard Lloyd Parry considers the paradoxical figure of Akihito, who abdicated in April 2019: a hereditary monarch, the son of the wartime emperor, Hirohito, strictly barred from political utterance, who even so stood out against the historical revisionism of the nationalist right.

Is it OK to have children?

Meehan Crist, 17 April 2024

26 February 2020 · 1hr 22mins

Given what we know about the future of the planet, Meehan Crist asks: is having children a matter of consumer choice, of political conviction, or something an authority will eventually decide for us?

Fiction and the Age of Lies

Colin Burrow, 17 April 2024

12 February 2020 · 1hr 09mins

Colin Burrow ranges from Homer to Ian McEwan in his search for the truth about the relationship between lies and fiction, in this LRB Winter Lecture.

The LRB at 40

Mary-Kay Wilmers, Alan Bennett, Andrew O’Hagan, John Lanchester, Yun Sheng and Nicholas Spice, 17 April 2024

11 October 2019 · 1hr 30mins

We look back at 40 years of the LRB in our anniversary event at Conway Hall.

Defying Gravity

Adam Tooze, 17 April 2024

27 March 2019 · 1hr 36mins

Adam Tooze examines an alternative, counterintuitive vision of America, as a power defying gravity.

1848

Christopher Clark, 17 April 2024

27 February 2019 · 1hr 10mins

Christopher Clark explains why the revolutions of 1848 weren’t failures, and why we should think about them now.

The Communal Mind

Patricia Lockwood, 17 April 2024

21 February 2019 · 1hr 04mins

Patricia Lockwood travels through the internet and wonders why we're talking like this.

What does she think she looks like?

Rosemary Hill, 17 April 2024

28 March 2018 · 46mins

Rosemary Hill looks at women and clothes, and what happens between them, in life and literature, in her 2018 LRB Winter Lecture.

The Genesis of Blame

Anne Enright, 17 April 2024

6 March 2018 · 35mins

Anne Enright delivers her lecture on how corruptions of the Adam and Eve story have poisoned relations between men and women.

Women in Power

Mary Beard, 17 April 2024

8 March 2017 · 1hr 13mins

From Medusa to Merkel, Mary Beard considers the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded.