Bristol's ninth Festival of Ideas takes place in May, once again in association with the Observer. Festival director Andrew Kelly talks about the city's rebirth, plus there are details of some of the highlights to look forward to
On his visit to Bristol last month Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chair of Arts Council England, met with many arts and heritage groups, business people and others involved in cultural activity in the city. He left impressed and "incredibly encouraged": Bristol was a place, he felt, that had got things right: long-term partnerships between the council and business for culture; cultural organisations winning funding from both the Arts Council and the Engineering Research Council; strong leadership in the city.
In the year since the Observer became our festival partner Bristol has changed to a new system of governance, an elected mayor, and in November 2012 elected an independent, George Ferguson, to lead the city. There's a new confidence about the place, the city is arguing its case in London, and – in the midst of swingeing financial cutbacks nationally – arts, culture and green projects have been protected. The mayor clearly supports a city that promotes and debates knowledge and ideas.
There's other good news. Bristol retains its place as a centre for science and digital media. Government support for aerospace means that Bristol's pre-eminence in advanced engineering will continue; robotics work remains a key priority for both our universities; the Bloodhound supersonic car – which will attempt a 1,000mph world land speed record – may make its attempt as early as the autumn; the REACT Hub is pioneering new approaches to publishing and documentaries; the new playable city award puts forward new ways of thinking about the city; and Bristol has just been shortlisted for the European Green Capital award.
The Festival of Ideas is central to promoting debate about ideas and promoting the ideas of the city. Our 2013 festival looks at science and technology; examines austerity now, and debates the Spirit of '45 and how to recreate today what Beveridge proposed just over 70 years ago. Significant anniversaries are also celebrated: we look at the work of EP Thompson for the 50th anniversary of his The Making of the English Working Class; explore the impact of feminism in the 50 years since the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique; and celebrate 50 years of outstanding writing about film by Philip French, this newspaper's film critic.
The crisis in capitalism continues to be a source of much debate in a special series presented with the Observer, including Lord Sainsbury looking at progressive capitalism, Anat Admati on what's still wrong with the banks and how we can make them work better, and Michael Sandel on the moral limits of markets. Nate Silver – President Obama's "rock and foundation"– asks why most predictions fail, but some succeed. We ask why western children are unhappy; examine the potential of rewilding with George Monbiot, and try to find a path between the arguments in favour of religion and humanism.
Our annual Bristol Ideas Forum looks at the future of local government. Lord Heseltine, TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady and others consider how government can be less centralised, what local authorities should do and support, and how they can best meet the needs and aspirations of citizens.
We're delighted to be having such brilliant people coming to the city from Sandi Toksvig and Antonia Fraser to Andrew Solomon and Tracey Thorn; from Daniel Dennett and Darcey Bussell to Alice Oswald and Rebecca Solnit. These, the annual Best Book of Ideas Prize, the Best Book of Ideas of 1963, the Bristol Genius Award and more make Bristol a centre for debate about the critical issues of our time.
Andrew Kelly is director of the Bristol Festival of Ideas, which runs from 3 May to 31 May. For more details or to buy tickets, go to www.ideasfestival.co.uk
*The Observer presents…*
*Anat Admati: What's still wrong with the banks – and how do we make them work?*
Risks in banking impose significant costs on the economy, and banks continue to fail the economy and society. Anat Admati argues that we can have a safer and healthier banking system at essentially no cost to society. (10 May)
*Michael Sandel: The moral limits of markets*
In recent decades, in the move from having a market economy to being a market society, market values have impinged on almost every aspect of life – medicine, education, government, law, even family life. Sandel asks: isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? And how do we protect the things that really matter? (7 May)
*Lord Sainsbury: Progressive capitalism – the second annual Observer lecture*
Lord Sainsbury shows how a progressive political economy can be used by politicians and policymakers to produce a programme of economic change through reforming the UK's equity markets, corporate governance, education and training institutions, with the state having an enabling role rather than the command-and-control stance of traditional socialism or the minimalist role of neoliberalism. (16 May)
*Nate Silver: The Signal and the Noise*
Nate Silver, statistician, political forecaster and author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don't, explains how expert forecasters think, and investigates what lies behind their success across a range of areas, including the stock market, politics, sport, earthquakes, the weather and disease control – helping to distinguish true insights from useless data. (3 May)
*Science
*
*Richard Holmes: Falling Upwards*
The story of the many writers and dreamers who felt the imaginative impact of flight and of the enigmatic group of men and women who risked their lives to take to the air. (15 May)
*Robin Ince: The Importance of Being Interested*
Robin Ince provides a night of comedy about Darwin and Richard Feynman. (15 May)
*Kevin Fong: Extreme Physiology*
Kevin Fong looks at extremes and the human body. (12 May)
*Adam Rutherford: How Life Happened*
* *Drawing on recent and dramatic advances in experimental biology, Adam Rutherford takes us on a gripping 4 billion-year journey of discovery to explain exactly how life happened. (15 May)
*Darian Leader: Strictly Bipolar*
If the postwar period was called the '"age of anxiety" and the 1980s and 90s the "antidepressant era", we now live in bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike. Darian Leader challenges the rise of "bipolar" as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and says we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression. (18 May)
*Lee Smolin: Time Reborn*
Lee Smolin proposes a "revolutionary" hypothesis about the true nature of time; that the laws of physics are not fixed, but that they evolve, in real time. In a spectacular shift of viewpoint, he opens up the possibility of resolving some of the big issues in physics today. (24 May)
*Daniel C Dennett: Intuition Pumps*
Daniel C Dennett leads us on an illuminating philosophical journey, revealing his favourite thinking tools, or "intuition pumps", that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. (28 May)
*Society and politics*
*Geoff Mulgan: The Locust and the Bee*
Geoff Mulgan argues we have a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism. (10 May)
*David Stuckler: Why Austerity Kills*
David Stuckler shows that austerity is seriously bad for health. Throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Our commitment to the building of fairer societies will determine the health of our body economic. (14 May)
*Julia Unwin: What Would Beveridge Say Now?*
Julia Unwin of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discusses the social, economic and political changes experienced in the UK since the Beveridge report was published and argues that nothing less than a new settlement, fit for the 21st century, is needed to address contemporary challenges. (24 May)
*Ken Loach: The Spirit of '45 Debate*
Film-maker Ken Loach and New Statesman editor Jason Cowley join others for a panel discussion on The Spirit of '45, Loach's documentary about the enormous social change wrought by the postwar generation. (24 May)
*Francis Spufford: God and the Bible*
Francis Spufford provides a witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christian belief. (13 May)
*Antonia Fraser: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832*
Antonia Fraser brilliantly evokes one year of political and social history marked by the passing of the Great Reform Act of 1832. A battle between radicals, reformers and conservatives – and one that affected Bristol directly with the 1831 riots – Fraser tells the story of how the way we are governed was changed for ever. (17 May)
*Steve Jones: The Serpent's Promise*
Steve Jones shows how the questions that preoccupy us today are the same as those of biblical times – and that science offers many of the answers. (17 May)
*Diarmaid MacCulloch: Christian Silence*
Diarmaid MacCulloch brings a message of optimism for those who still seek God beyond the clamorous noise of overconfident certainties. (19 May)
*Gavin Hewitt: The Lost Continent: Europe in Crisis*
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt tells the story of how the idea of a shared currency led Europe into its gravest crisis since the second world war. (13 May)
*Ian Cobain, Sylvia Casale, Malcolm Evans: On Torture*
How the British have repeatedly resorted to torture, turning a blind eye where necessary, bending the law where they can, and issuing categorical denials all the while. (18 May)
*Jesse Norman: Edmund Burke*
Jesse Norman MP vividly depicts Edmund Burke's dazzling intellect, imagination and empathy, and his lasting ideologies. Burke was MP for Bristol from 1774 to 1780. (19 May)
*EP Thompson Celebration: History and the Working Class*
2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson's importance as an historian, intellectual and activist for social justice and peace is celebrated with rarely seen films and a panel. (18 May)
*George Monbiot: Rewild the world*
George Monbiot makes the case for rewilding. (13 May)
*Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile*
How can we thrive in an uncertain world? Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one of the foremost thinkers of our time, stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. (31 May)
*Arts, Film and Design *
*Philip French: 50 Years as a Film Critic*
Philip French celebrates 50 years of writing about film for the Observer. He spent his formative cinema-going years in Bristol between 1948 and 1959 and looks back on these years – and considers the influence on his life of a double bill of Ace in the Hole and Horse Feathers screened at the Ritz Brislington. He then introduces a rare public screening of Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's 1980 follow-up to The Deer Hunter, which became a symbol of Hollywood excess. Philip was one of the few critics to hail it a masterpiece from the start. (11 May)
*Tracey Thorn: Bedsit Disco Queen*
The former Everything But the Girl singer talks about her 30-year pop career: the thrills, the wonders and the mistakes. (15 May)
*Michael Palin: In Conversation*
The former Monty Python star discusses his two volumes of widely praised diaries with Christopher Stevens, biographer of Kenneth Williams. (16 May)
*Philip Glass: In Conversation*
The acclaimed composer talks about his music, art and creativity with conductor Charles Hazlewood. Glass performs live at St George's Bristol in the evening. (14 May)
*Darcey Bussell: A Life in Ballet*
One of the greatest British ballerinas of all time talks about her career, from her early years until her final performance of MacMillan's Song of the Earth in 2007. (21 May)
*Alice Rawsthorn: Everyday Design*
Alice Rawsthorn explores design's influence on our lives, from the macabre symbol invented by 18th-century pirates to terrorise their victims into surrender, to one woman's quest for the best possible prosthetic legs. (11 May)
*Kevin Jackson: 1922: Year One of Modernism*
1922 was a year of remarkable firsts, births, and foundations. It began with Ulysses and ended with The Waste Land. Dada was put to rest, Proust died; Hollywood transformed the nature of fame; Kandinsky and Klee joined the Bauhaus; and Louis Armstrong took the train from New Orleans to Chicago. Kevin Jackson tells the story. (18 May)
*Feminism*
*Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens: Feminism and the Sexual Revolution*
Fifty years on from the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens discuss whether the sexual revolution has delivered what women want. (19 May)
*Ben Thompson: The Mary Whitehouse Effect*
The broadcasting campaigner and her impact on censorship. Actors read her letters and BBC staff responses. (18 May)
*Shereen El Feki: Sex and the Citadel*
Egypt-based writer and broadcaster Shereen El Feki looks at upheaval in the sexual lives of people across the region, providing an informative account of a highly sensitive aspect of Arab society. (18 May)
*Lisa Appignanesi, Bidisha, Linda Grant, Rachel Holmes: Shades of Feminism*
Have women really exchanged purity and maternity to become desiring machines inspired only by variations of sex, shopping and masochism? Four writers reflect on what being a woman means to them today. (19 May)
*And… what binds us together*
*Sheila Heti: How Should a Person Be?*
Part novel, part self-help manual and part bawdy confessional… Sheila Heti discusses her new book with novelist Nikesh Shukla. (1 May)
*Jay Griffiths: Kith: the Riddle of the Childscape *
Jay Griffiths asks why we have enclosed our children in a consumerist cornucopia and denied them the freedoms of space, time and deep play, as she illustrates children's affinity with the natural world. (11 May)
*Andrew Solomon: Far from the Tree*
In Far from the Tree, Solomon introduces us to families coping with exceptional children and finding profound meaning in doing so. He discusses how the shared experience of difference unites us. (18 May)
*Rebecca Solnit: The Faraway Nearby*
One of America's most admired intellectuals discusses her book, an impassioned defence of shared spaces and how they form us. (30 May)
*James Salter: All That Is*
James Salter talks about his life and work, including All That Is, a sweeping love story. (23 May)
*Ideas walks*
Sacred Bristol with Martin Palmer (11 May); Unbuilt Bristol with Eugene Byrne (18 May). Reported by guardian.co.uk 53 minutes ago.
On his visit to Bristol last month Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chair of Arts Council England, met with many arts and heritage groups, business people and others involved in cultural activity in the city. He left impressed and "incredibly encouraged": Bristol was a place, he felt, that had got things right: long-term partnerships between the council and business for culture; cultural organisations winning funding from both the Arts Council and the Engineering Research Council; strong leadership in the city.
In the year since the Observer became our festival partner Bristol has changed to a new system of governance, an elected mayor, and in November 2012 elected an independent, George Ferguson, to lead the city. There's a new confidence about the place, the city is arguing its case in London, and – in the midst of swingeing financial cutbacks nationally – arts, culture and green projects have been protected. The mayor clearly supports a city that promotes and debates knowledge and ideas.
There's other good news. Bristol retains its place as a centre for science and digital media. Government support for aerospace means that Bristol's pre-eminence in advanced engineering will continue; robotics work remains a key priority for both our universities; the Bloodhound supersonic car – which will attempt a 1,000mph world land speed record – may make its attempt as early as the autumn; the REACT Hub is pioneering new approaches to publishing and documentaries; the new playable city award puts forward new ways of thinking about the city; and Bristol has just been shortlisted for the European Green Capital award.
The Festival of Ideas is central to promoting debate about ideas and promoting the ideas of the city. Our 2013 festival looks at science and technology; examines austerity now, and debates the Spirit of '45 and how to recreate today what Beveridge proposed just over 70 years ago. Significant anniversaries are also celebrated: we look at the work of EP Thompson for the 50th anniversary of his The Making of the English Working Class; explore the impact of feminism in the 50 years since the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique; and celebrate 50 years of outstanding writing about film by Philip French, this newspaper's film critic.
The crisis in capitalism continues to be a source of much debate in a special series presented with the Observer, including Lord Sainsbury looking at progressive capitalism, Anat Admati on what's still wrong with the banks and how we can make them work better, and Michael Sandel on the moral limits of markets. Nate Silver – President Obama's "rock and foundation"– asks why most predictions fail, but some succeed. We ask why western children are unhappy; examine the potential of rewilding with George Monbiot, and try to find a path between the arguments in favour of religion and humanism.
Our annual Bristol Ideas Forum looks at the future of local government. Lord Heseltine, TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady and others consider how government can be less centralised, what local authorities should do and support, and how they can best meet the needs and aspirations of citizens.
We're delighted to be having such brilliant people coming to the city from Sandi Toksvig and Antonia Fraser to Andrew Solomon and Tracey Thorn; from Daniel Dennett and Darcey Bussell to Alice Oswald and Rebecca Solnit. These, the annual Best Book of Ideas Prize, the Best Book of Ideas of 1963, the Bristol Genius Award and more make Bristol a centre for debate about the critical issues of our time.
Andrew Kelly is director of the Bristol Festival of Ideas, which runs from 3 May to 31 May. For more details or to buy tickets, go to www.ideasfestival.co.uk
*The Observer presents…*
*Anat Admati: What's still wrong with the banks – and how do we make them work?*
Risks in banking impose significant costs on the economy, and banks continue to fail the economy and society. Anat Admati argues that we can have a safer and healthier banking system at essentially no cost to society. (10 May)
*Michael Sandel: The moral limits of markets*
In recent decades, in the move from having a market economy to being a market society, market values have impinged on almost every aspect of life – medicine, education, government, law, even family life. Sandel asks: isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? And how do we protect the things that really matter? (7 May)
*Lord Sainsbury: Progressive capitalism – the second annual Observer lecture*
Lord Sainsbury shows how a progressive political economy can be used by politicians and policymakers to produce a programme of economic change through reforming the UK's equity markets, corporate governance, education and training institutions, with the state having an enabling role rather than the command-and-control stance of traditional socialism or the minimalist role of neoliberalism. (16 May)
*Nate Silver: The Signal and the Noise*
Nate Silver, statistician, political forecaster and author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don't, explains how expert forecasters think, and investigates what lies behind their success across a range of areas, including the stock market, politics, sport, earthquakes, the weather and disease control – helping to distinguish true insights from useless data. (3 May)
*Science
*
*Richard Holmes: Falling Upwards*
The story of the many writers and dreamers who felt the imaginative impact of flight and of the enigmatic group of men and women who risked their lives to take to the air. (15 May)
*Robin Ince: The Importance of Being Interested*
Robin Ince provides a night of comedy about Darwin and Richard Feynman. (15 May)
*Kevin Fong: Extreme Physiology*
Kevin Fong looks at extremes and the human body. (12 May)
*Adam Rutherford: How Life Happened*
* *Drawing on recent and dramatic advances in experimental biology, Adam Rutherford takes us on a gripping 4 billion-year journey of discovery to explain exactly how life happened. (15 May)
*Darian Leader: Strictly Bipolar*
If the postwar period was called the '"age of anxiety" and the 1980s and 90s the "antidepressant era", we now live in bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike. Darian Leader challenges the rise of "bipolar" as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and says we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression. (18 May)
*Lee Smolin: Time Reborn*
Lee Smolin proposes a "revolutionary" hypothesis about the true nature of time; that the laws of physics are not fixed, but that they evolve, in real time. In a spectacular shift of viewpoint, he opens up the possibility of resolving some of the big issues in physics today. (24 May)
*Daniel C Dennett: Intuition Pumps*
Daniel C Dennett leads us on an illuminating philosophical journey, revealing his favourite thinking tools, or "intuition pumps", that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. (28 May)
*Society and politics*
*Geoff Mulgan: The Locust and the Bee*
Geoff Mulgan argues we have a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism. (10 May)
*David Stuckler: Why Austerity Kills*
David Stuckler shows that austerity is seriously bad for health. Throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Our commitment to the building of fairer societies will determine the health of our body economic. (14 May)
*Julia Unwin: What Would Beveridge Say Now?*
Julia Unwin of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discusses the social, economic and political changes experienced in the UK since the Beveridge report was published and argues that nothing less than a new settlement, fit for the 21st century, is needed to address contemporary challenges. (24 May)
*Ken Loach: The Spirit of '45 Debate*
Film-maker Ken Loach and New Statesman editor Jason Cowley join others for a panel discussion on The Spirit of '45, Loach's documentary about the enormous social change wrought by the postwar generation. (24 May)
*Francis Spufford: God and the Bible*
Francis Spufford provides a witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christian belief. (13 May)
*Antonia Fraser: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832*
Antonia Fraser brilliantly evokes one year of political and social history marked by the passing of the Great Reform Act of 1832. A battle between radicals, reformers and conservatives – and one that affected Bristol directly with the 1831 riots – Fraser tells the story of how the way we are governed was changed for ever. (17 May)
*Steve Jones: The Serpent's Promise*
Steve Jones shows how the questions that preoccupy us today are the same as those of biblical times – and that science offers many of the answers. (17 May)
*Diarmaid MacCulloch: Christian Silence*
Diarmaid MacCulloch brings a message of optimism for those who still seek God beyond the clamorous noise of overconfident certainties. (19 May)
*Gavin Hewitt: The Lost Continent: Europe in Crisis*
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt tells the story of how the idea of a shared currency led Europe into its gravest crisis since the second world war. (13 May)
*Ian Cobain, Sylvia Casale, Malcolm Evans: On Torture*
How the British have repeatedly resorted to torture, turning a blind eye where necessary, bending the law where they can, and issuing categorical denials all the while. (18 May)
*Jesse Norman: Edmund Burke*
Jesse Norman MP vividly depicts Edmund Burke's dazzling intellect, imagination and empathy, and his lasting ideologies. Burke was MP for Bristol from 1774 to 1780. (19 May)
*EP Thompson Celebration: History and the Working Class*
2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson's importance as an historian, intellectual and activist for social justice and peace is celebrated with rarely seen films and a panel. (18 May)
*George Monbiot: Rewild the world*
George Monbiot makes the case for rewilding. (13 May)
*Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile*
How can we thrive in an uncertain world? Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one of the foremost thinkers of our time, stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. (31 May)
*Arts, Film and Design *
*Philip French: 50 Years as a Film Critic*
Philip French celebrates 50 years of writing about film for the Observer. He spent his formative cinema-going years in Bristol between 1948 and 1959 and looks back on these years – and considers the influence on his life of a double bill of Ace in the Hole and Horse Feathers screened at the Ritz Brislington. He then introduces a rare public screening of Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's 1980 follow-up to The Deer Hunter, which became a symbol of Hollywood excess. Philip was one of the few critics to hail it a masterpiece from the start. (11 May)
*Tracey Thorn: Bedsit Disco Queen*
The former Everything But the Girl singer talks about her 30-year pop career: the thrills, the wonders and the mistakes. (15 May)
*Michael Palin: In Conversation*
The former Monty Python star discusses his two volumes of widely praised diaries with Christopher Stevens, biographer of Kenneth Williams. (16 May)
*Philip Glass: In Conversation*
The acclaimed composer talks about his music, art and creativity with conductor Charles Hazlewood. Glass performs live at St George's Bristol in the evening. (14 May)
*Darcey Bussell: A Life in Ballet*
One of the greatest British ballerinas of all time talks about her career, from her early years until her final performance of MacMillan's Song of the Earth in 2007. (21 May)
*Alice Rawsthorn: Everyday Design*
Alice Rawsthorn explores design's influence on our lives, from the macabre symbol invented by 18th-century pirates to terrorise their victims into surrender, to one woman's quest for the best possible prosthetic legs. (11 May)
*Kevin Jackson: 1922: Year One of Modernism*
1922 was a year of remarkable firsts, births, and foundations. It began with Ulysses and ended with The Waste Land. Dada was put to rest, Proust died; Hollywood transformed the nature of fame; Kandinsky and Klee joined the Bauhaus; and Louis Armstrong took the train from New Orleans to Chicago. Kevin Jackson tells the story. (18 May)
*Feminism*
*Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens: Feminism and the Sexual Revolution*
Fifty years on from the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens discuss whether the sexual revolution has delivered what women want. (19 May)
*Ben Thompson: The Mary Whitehouse Effect*
The broadcasting campaigner and her impact on censorship. Actors read her letters and BBC staff responses. (18 May)
*Shereen El Feki: Sex and the Citadel*
Egypt-based writer and broadcaster Shereen El Feki looks at upheaval in the sexual lives of people across the region, providing an informative account of a highly sensitive aspect of Arab society. (18 May)
*Lisa Appignanesi, Bidisha, Linda Grant, Rachel Holmes: Shades of Feminism*
Have women really exchanged purity and maternity to become desiring machines inspired only by variations of sex, shopping and masochism? Four writers reflect on what being a woman means to them today. (19 May)
*And… what binds us together*
*Sheila Heti: How Should a Person Be?*
Part novel, part self-help manual and part bawdy confessional… Sheila Heti discusses her new book with novelist Nikesh Shukla. (1 May)
*Jay Griffiths: Kith: the Riddle of the Childscape *
Jay Griffiths asks why we have enclosed our children in a consumerist cornucopia and denied them the freedoms of space, time and deep play, as she illustrates children's affinity with the natural world. (11 May)
*Andrew Solomon: Far from the Tree*
In Far from the Tree, Solomon introduces us to families coping with exceptional children and finding profound meaning in doing so. He discusses how the shared experience of difference unites us. (18 May)
*Rebecca Solnit: The Faraway Nearby*
One of America's most admired intellectuals discusses her book, an impassioned defence of shared spaces and how they form us. (30 May)
*James Salter: All That Is*
James Salter talks about his life and work, including All That Is, a sweeping love story. (23 May)
*Ideas walks*
Sacred Bristol with Martin Palmer (11 May); Unbuilt Bristol with Eugene Byrne (18 May). Reported by guardian.co.uk 53 minutes ago.