Profile Books

Mention 1918 and we usually fast-forward to the Armistice, jumping over the climactic battles that brought the First World War to an end. Peter Hart, oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, and author of Gallipoli and other acclaimed books on 1914-18, brings to life the forgotten voices from the front as he narrates the Great War's dramatic endgame. Chaired by David Reynolds, festival patron and Professor of International History, University of Cambridge

Join bestselling TV historians Mary Beard and David Olusoga as they examine history through the lens of global culture. Three years in the making, and filmed in 31 countries and on six continents, the BBC's Civilisations series questions what lies at the heart of identity - and what makes us human. Civilisations presenters Beard and Olusoga will discuss the ideas underlying their respective contributions to the series to uncover what we now think 'civilisation' is, and our stake in the very idea of it. Chaired by Mark Jones, former Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum

Mary Shelley, daughter of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and revolutionary philosopher William Godwin, grew up in a house full of radicals. At sixteen she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, embarking on a passionate relationship lived on the move across Britain and Europe. Before her early widowhood, Mary had already experienced debt, infidelity, orphanhood, and the deaths of three of her children. It was against this dramatic backdrop - and while she was still a teenager - that she composed the cultural landmark that is Frankenstein. In the process she created two of today's most enduring archetypes. Published to mark Frankenstein's bicentenary, Fiona Sampson's critically acclaimed new biography, In Search of Mary Shelley, sifts the evidence to find the real person behind the clichés. Fiona Sampson is a prizewinning poet and writer published in more than thirty languages. Her honours include an MBE for services to literature.