The Conversation ~ Coming Together To Talk About The World

 

 

ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS PRESENTS

“THE CONVERSATION” 

COMING TOGETHER TO TALK ABOUT THE WORLD

The Conversation 2026 Dates: 21^st April – 28^th July

 

16 June – Jonathan Sumption

23 June – Oliver Bullough

30 June – Ali Smith

7 July – Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

14 July – Janina Ramirez

28 July – Andrea Wulf

 

The 2026 Conversation Spring Series explores the themes of social justice and how we write about the world with curiosity and rigour and a sense of wonder. We can have faith in humane intelligence that looks for knowledge and wisdom rather than news and information and values a storyteller’s insight and understanding and a form of activism that breaks beyond algorithms and orthodoxies.

 

Running from 27^th January to 28^th July 2026, the winter-spring season of The Conversation 2026  will explore climate change and the state of the nation withnovelist Ian McEwan, invisible women in history with Hallie Rubenhold, faith, religion and what it means to be human withKate Bowler, race and social justice in the USA and UK with Gary Younge, the battle for modern America with historian Sarah Churchwell, how to care for your health with world-renowned immunologist Daniel M. Davis and fighting for the environment with “Birdgirl” Mya-Rose Craig. 

 

The summer season will tackle topics including the LGBTQ+ culture of San Francisco as we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of  author Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, what Shakespeare’s women really were thinking with Harriet Walter, why conversations on our planet’s future must focus on those most affected with Selina Nwulu, the battle for modern America with historian Sarah Churchwell, what the limits and breaking points of democracy in the modern world are with Jonathan Sumption, how money laundry and the dirty economy works with Oliver Bullough, exploring contemporary life and language with Ali Smith, how the lives of birds intersect with our own with Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, who the real women were behind historical legends with Janina Ramirez and the life of explorer George Forster with Andrea Wulf.

 

The Conversation is programmed by Peter Florence and takes place at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Tuesday nights with tickets from £10. The Conversation invites members of the audience to carry on the conversation and engage directly with the speaker following each event. The talks are also available to be live streamed and watched from anywhere in the world.

Full information on The Conversation is available here: stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/

 

Ticket Info:

Location: St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ.

Dates: 27^th January – 28^th  July

Time: Tuesdays from 7pm – 8.30pm 

Price: £10 for in person tickets. £10 for online tickets 

Ticket Link: https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/

Box Office: 020 7766 1100 BoxOffice@smitf.org

16th June: Jonathan Sumption, historian and lawyer who served as a Supreme Court Justice for six years, interrogates the limits and breaking points of established democracy in the modern world in The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law. He examines Trump’s disregard for the checks and balances of the US Constitution, the criminal implications of Israel’s actions in Palestine, the exercise of sovereignty in the Brexit vote, the contrary meanings of Freedom of Speech, and the overreach of the ECHR and under-reach of the ICC. He asks how did we get to this and where do we go from here?

23rd June: Investigative journalist and multi-award-winning author, Oliver Bullogh, exposes the dark secrets at the heart of the world economy and London’s role. Oliver explains how few crimes of acquisition would be worthwhile without money laundering in Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won, and how South American drug cartels, Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders and human and animal traffickers across the globe would not be able to operate without it.

30th June: Ali Smith, Orwell Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction winner, is in conversation about her two latest novels Gliff and Glyph, that continue her extraordinary sequence of books exploring contemporary life and language.

7th July: Following their international success with The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane reunite to bring us The Book of Birds – Words and Painting, a dazzling celebration of the splendours of birdlife, and an impassioned call to halt the loss of birds from land, sea and sky. Robert and Jackie will celebrate the ‘Seven Wonders’ that together make up the everyday miracle of ‘Bird’: Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight, and Migration. Jackie will paint live and Robert will evoke the habits and habitats of Britain’s birds.

14th July: Broadcaster, cultural historian and author of Femina, Dr Janina Ramirez, peels back the layers of time to reveal how the identities of women have been co-opted by those intent on crafting national identities in Legenda. Questioning established narratives and searching for the real women behind the legends, join Janina in conversation as she interrogates what defines a nation and who gets to build it, shining a light on how history is so often hijacked to serve the ideological and political interests of the present.

28th July: Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (winner of fifteen international awards including the 2015 Costa Biography Award and the 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize) spreads out before us the life and times of George Forster, who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world in her newest release, The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity, alongside James Cook.