Presented by Durham Book Festival
Books are dying. Across the world, the number of people reading is in free fall. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through the centuries is breaking for the first time since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages. James Marriott’s book, The New Dark Ages, interrogates the contemporary reading crisis and how reading for pleasure is being affected by digital technology.
James joins Durham University Chancellor, Fiona Hill, to discuss the reading crisis and how his North East roots have shaped him.
James Marriott is a columnist at The Times. He presented the BBC Radio 4 series How Reading Made Us, about the history of literacy, and writes the popular Substack newsletter Cultural Capital. He was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Fiona Hill is the Chancellor of Durham University and a political advisor specialising in Russian and European Affairs. From 2018 to 2019, she was deputy assistant to the President of the United States and served on the National Security Council. Her memoir, There is Nothing for You Here, was published in 2021.
Tickets
£10 (£9 concession), £5 Livestream
