In Conversation with Polly Toynbee

About

Saturday 24 June 2023

Venue: Squire Performing Arts Centre

Time: 2pm 

Tickets: 

Standard: £6

Accessible: £3 (Only available for those with a disability who require a carer)

In conversation with Polly Toynbee, a Guardian columnist and author. In association with Five Leaves Bookshop.

While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family – which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop – Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

We are pleased to welcome Polly back to Five Leaves. She writes regularly for the Guardian, eviscerating Conservative governments being her speciality. Her many books have covered similar ground, while she contributed an essay to our own centenary issue of the feminist magazine Time and Tide, which will be given out on the night free of charge.