On November 1 Melvyn Bragg will talk about his book Grace and Mary at the Festival of Ideas. The novel is based on Bragg’s own bitter-sweet experience of his mother’s dementia. Looking back across three generations, it raises fundamental questions about social attitudes and how they shape our lives. Three people discuss some of the big challenges that face us.
On the eve of the Man Booker prize, our insatiable appetite for fiction (and fascination with those who create it) comes sharply into focus. According to the Publishers Association, sales of paperback fiction rose by 3% in 2012 to £502 million, while sales of digital novels soared by almost 150%, reaching £172 million. What’s the magic of reading and writing?
Eight of the talks from the Cambridge Series from this year’s Hay Festival are now available for users to stream or download online.
Research shows that intimate personal attributes can be predicted with high levels of accuracy from ‘traces’ left by seemingly innocuous digital behaviour, in this case Facebook Likes. The study raises important questions about personalised marketing and online privacy.
A panel discussion for the Festival of Ideas examines whether social media giants are profiting from our willingness to share the most intimate details of our lives online, and whether we should be worried by this compromise to our privacy.
A debate at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas asks What next for the Arab Spring?
Modern politicians are too stuck in a 24/7 media bubble to make the kind of grand speeches associated with past leaders, a debate on political rhetoric at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas heard last week.
Imagine a world in which there is no difference between blue and black or green and blue. A world where there are hundreds of different types of snow.
New research shows true picture of what and who is behind the political uprisings.
Students ripped up their university exam papers in protest against established authority and in rejection of formal qualifications; a progressive sociologist assigned his students the storming of a public office as field-work; avant-garde writers, street theatre and poets moulded a bohemian sub-culture was dramatically reshaping university life.
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