10 Feb 2011
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Literary Events
The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival
The Monks Investment Trust PLC was delighted to sponsor a series of events at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival.
The 2011 Oxford Literary Festival ran from Saturday 2 April to Sunday 10 April, and offered a wonderful range of talks, discussions, debates, readings, Literary Lunches and Dinners in the exceptional and beautiful surroundings of Christ Church, Corpus Christi and Merton Colleges - with many major events staged in the Sheldonian Theatre, the Bodleian Library and other prestigious venues.
As part of the sponsorship, Baillie Gifford sponsored the following events:
Saturday 2 April
Diane Coyle – The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters
Can we Grow Our Way to a Sustainable Economy? Enlightenment economist Diane Coyle shows how we can be happy and prosperous without cheating the future - and gives the first ten steps we need to take.
Ian Goldin - Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future
Throughout history, migrants have fuelled the engine of human progress. Their movement has sparked innovation, spread ideas, relieved poverty, and laid the foundations for a global economy. In a world more interconnected than ever before, the number of people with the means and motivation to migrate will only increase. Exceptional People looks at the profound advantages that such dynamics will have for countries and migrants the world over.
Challenging the received wisdom that a dramatic growth in migration is undesirable, the book proposes new approaches for governance that will embrace this international mobility.
Tuesday 5 April
Nigel Lawson – Memoirs of a Tory Radical
First published as The View from No.11 in 1992 and acclaimed as one of the best political memoirs of the period - Memoirs of a Tory Radical goes straight to the heart of economic policy-making at a time of crisis and creative change. It explains the workings of government with candour, clarity and depth, against the backdrop of the remarkable story of the rise and fall of his political collaboration with Margaret Thatcher, productive and successful for many years, but ending with his dramatic resignation in October 1989.
In his updated memoirs, Nigel Lawson reflects on events from the perspective of 2010 and looks at the crisis in the banking sector and global warming.
Thursday 7 April
David Smith – The Age of Instability: The Global Financial Crisis and What Comes Next
David Smith provides a riveting analysis of how the golden age of stability engendered in the 1990s gave way to the biggest collapse of financial confidence in the modern world. He also looks forward to consider whether we have entered a fundamentally new era and what the implications are.
David Smith is the Economics Editor of the Sunday Times and regularly comments on the radio and television on economics.
Friday 8 April
Nicholas Ostler – The Last Lingua Franca
In his provocative and radical new book, Nicholas Ostler challenges our complacent assumption that the English language will continue to dominate as a global lingua franca.
Saturday 9 April
Niall Ferguson – Civilization: The West and the Rest
Niall Ferguson, one of Britain's most renowned historians, reveals how the civilization of Western Europe trumped the superior empires of the Orient and argues that the West developed six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.
Sunday 10 April
Will Hutton – Them and Us: Politics, Greed and Inequality – Why We Need a Fair Society
The suddenness and depth of the recession has raised questions about the workability of capitalism not seen since the 1930s. One of the constraints on recovery is the growing belief that if the old model didn't work there is no new one on offer.
Executive vice-chair of The Work Foundation and a former editor of The Observer, Will Hutton sets out to provide a new model and argues that reconstructing a bust financial system is not just a technical question. It cannot be done without a wholescale revision of the wider system and the values on which it is based. His arguments address the mood of the moment and aim to set the current affairs agenda for 2010 and beyond.
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