About this Event
London is a city of dreamers, a city of possibility and experiment. Reflecting struggles for social justice carried on for centuries, London has been a crucible for utopian thinking and doing. In this talk, author Niall Kishtainy takes us on a tour of one area of utopian London, showing how utopian imagining has been woven into the city’s history and why utopia remains as relevant as ever. He draws us into the imaginative worlds of London visionaries such as Thomas Spence, the fiery Newcastle-born radical who came to London to agitate for a land revolution from the taverns of Holborn, and the ‘sage of Bloomsbury’, James Pierrepont Greaves, whose mystical socialism inspired one of London’s longest-lasting utopian communities. Niall's book The Infinite City: Utopian Dreams on the Streets of London begins with Thomas More in the sixteenth century and traces a utopian lineage running from the Civil War to William Morris through to the contemporary transformation of the East End docklands and the COVID lockdowns. It shows how London's spirit has been one of visionary imagination amid relentless change and innovation.
Niall Kishtainy has worked in government, journalism and academia and lived in Egypt, Ethiopia, the Palestinian Territories and Albania, holding posts at the United Nations and the World Bank. While teaching at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick he began writing about the history of economic thinking and the economic struggles of the past and present. He is the author of The Infinite City and A Little History of Economics, which has been published in over twenty languages. He now lives in his hometown of London.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Marshall Building, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00