Mantel, Beard and Wolff join London Review Bookshop festival

Hilary Mantel, Mary Beard, Mahmood Mamdani and Michael Wolff are among the writers appearing at the London Review Bookshops's biannual festival series Subject/Object in October.

Titled “The Power Behind the Throne”, it takes place in the last week of October and is comprised of four headline conversations about power.

On 25th October, Adom Getachew will be in conversation with Mamdani about how postcolonial states reimagined the structures of political power, and “how we now live in a world defined by the failure of this new order to emerge”.

The following day, Mantel will talk to David Runciman and Helen Thompson for a live episode of the podcast “Talking Politics”, discussing the Tudor court, revolutionary France, royal bodies and more, to mark the publication in paperback of Mantel Pieces (4th Estate).

On 27th October, Beard will be in conversation with Wolff for the first time, with topics ranging from Roman autocrats to the “monsters, moguls and political egomaniacs of our time”.

Another event on 29th October will see Emma Cline and Adam Phillips discuss charisma, Svengalis and psychoanalysis, inspired by Cline’s latest book, the short story collection Daddy (Chatto).

The Mantel event will be at Conway Hall, the LRB’s first in-person event since the start of the pandemic, but it can also be watched by online delegates. The other events are online-only. Individual tickets are £7, an online-only festival ticket is £20, and a festival ticket including in-person attendance for the Mantel event is £30. Ticketing information, and more about the series of events, is available on the LRB website.