Ramie Targoff's biography of Vittoria Colonna is a timely study of the first published female Italian poet, a close friend of Michelangelo. With a novelist's flair she brings this remarkable and influential woman to life, while also dissecting an entireRead more

One of journalism's legendary editors, Tina Brown kept diaries throughout her eight years as editor in chief of Vanity Fair. The result is an insightful, intimate, fascinating and laugh-out-loud-funny social history of the excessive eighties. Tina Brown is founder of theRead more

In an illuminating exercise, Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World, interrogates the Collected Works to construct a checklist of tyranny based on Shakespeare's plays. Can he demonstrate that the power dynamics in Shakespeare's dramas have contemporary resonance? Stephen Greenblatt, HarvardRead more

Historian Charles Spencer brings to life one of the greatest escapes in British history: an action-packed story of Royalists versus Cromwell's Republicans, recounting how the future Charles II fled from the men who had beheaded his father, Charles I. ChairedRead more

In a history-making court case, historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books were sued for libel in an English court by David Irving for accusing him of Holocaust denial. Deborah Lipstadt won the trial and became the topic of the film, Denial,Read more

United States District Judge Richard Gergel, renowned for presiding over some of the Lowcountry’s most contentious lawsuits, discusses his upcoming book Unexampled Courage about the pioneering civil rights decisions of Judge J.Waties Waring which challenged the segregation orthodoxy of the South.  Chaired by William Hubbard,Read more

Marking the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, American author Bill Goldstein and English author Alexandra Harris examine the impact and aftermath of World War 1 on a range of British and US writers including Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. LawrenceRead more