Continuing on Tuesdays at 7pm, the 2026 Conversation Spring Series at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square in London explores the themes of social justice and how we write about the world with curiosity, rigour and a sense of wonder.
The series looks at how we can have faith in humane intelligence that searches for knowledge and wisdom rather than news and information, and values a storyteller’s insight and understanding and a form of activism that breaks beyond algorithms and orthodoxies.
The spring season of The Conversation 2026 includes, on 21st April, an evening with one of the UK’s youngest environmental activists, ‘Birdgirl’ Mya-Rose Craig (pictured below). Maya-Rose actively raises awareness about biodiversity loss and highlights the inequality and destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet. Â She became Ambassador for Bristol European Capital at age 13 and received her Honorary Doctorate of Science from Bristol University aged 18.
She also speaks passionately about founding her charity, Black2Nature, and her work to make the environmental sector more inclusive and representative for everyone. Mya-Rose’s story shows how personal passion can drive real change and how young voices are shaping the future of green careers. Her 2023 Book BirdGirl was winner of a Somerset Maugham Award.
The remaining spring season line-up also features faith, religion and what it means to be human with Kate Bowler.
The summer season, running until 28th July 2026, will tackle topics including the LGBTQ+ culture of San Francisco as the 50th anniversary of author Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City is celebrated, what Shakespeare’s women really were thinking with Harriet Walter, why conversations on our planet’s future must focus on those most affected with Selina Nwulu, the battle for modern America with historian Sarah Churchwell, what the limits and breaking points of democracy in the modern world are with Jonathan Sumption, how money laundry and the dirty economy works with Oliver Bullough, exploring contemporary life and language with Ali Smith, how the lives of birds intersect with our own with Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, who the real women were behind historical legends with Janina Ramirez, and the life of explorer George Forster with Andrea Wulf.
The Conversation is programmed by Peter Florence and takes place at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Tuesday nights with tickets from £10. Members of the audience are invited to carry on the conversation and engage directly with the speaker following each event. The talks are also available to be live streamed and watched from anywhere in the world.
Full information on The Conversation is available here: stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/
Peter Florence, Director of The Conversation, has said: “Each of these writers sets you off on adventures of imagination and action. Themes and experiences resonate through the season – of wonder as well as of deep crisis. And I love the idea of extending the familiar interview format into a wider conversation. It’s wonderful to see what happens when the audience takes up the thoughts and storylines. Trust the room.”
Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields since 2012 has said: “St Martin-in-the-Fields has always been a beacon of social justice campaigning and action. We hope The Conversation will continue and extend that tradition of questioning and challenging assumptions and narratives, and will celebrate all our many, welcome visitors.”
Ticket Info
Location: St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ.
Dates: 27th January – 28th  July
Time: Tuesdays from 7pm – 8.30pm
Price: £10 for in person tickets. £10 for online tickets
Ticket Link: https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/the-conversation/
Box Office: 020 7766 1100 BoxOffice@smitf.org
About Peter Florence
Peter Florence is a festival director and climate action producer. He directs The Conversation at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and in 2020 he co-founded the European Festivals Forest, a carbon-capture project in partnership with the Icelandic Government. He is chairing both the 2025 Jury and the 25th anniversary Vintage Jury of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prizes, announced on 1st December. peterflorence.com
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THE CONVERSATION REMAINING 2026 LINE UP
21st April: Mya-Rose Craig known as ‘BirdGirl’ shares her incredible journey as an activist, environmentalist and keen birdwatcher. She also speaks passionately about founding her charity, Black2Nature, and her work to make the environmental sector more inclusive and representative for everyone.
28th April: New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host and Professor of Religious History at Duke University, American Kate Bowler will talk about her new book Joyful Anyway (out April 2026) and about her experience battling stage IV cancer and how her outlook on pretty much everything she thought she knew about life was turned upside down.
5th May: Olivier award-winning actress, Dame Harriet Walter, renowned for her wonderful portrayals in Succession and Killing Eve among others, is one of Britain’s most esteemed Shakespearean actors. With 30 new parts for Shakespeare’s women, written in ‘Shakespearean’ verse and prose, Harriet Walter goes between the lines of the plays to let us hear what she imagines these women were really thinking in She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said.
12th May: Poet, essayist and former Young Poet Laureate for London Seline Nwulu unpacks how climate change and environmental injustice disproportionately impact Black communities around the world, and why any conversation about the future of the planet must centre on those most affected. To want to ‘save the planet’, a person has to have a sense of belonging in it…Selina’s work includes the chapbook The Secrets I Let Slip, her debut poetry collection, A Little Resurrection, and her latest book of essays, Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment and Visions for Equitable Futures.
26th May: Iconic LGBTQ+ author Armistead Maupin will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his legendary book Tales of the City, the first book (and later a TV series) that addressed homophobia and transphobia with wit and compassion, helping to dismantle barriers and bring the LGBTQ+ experience into mainstream dialogue. The character of Anna Madrigal, the transgender landlady, was an early trans icon in popular fiction. The series provided millions of mainstream readers their first exposure to gay and straight characters coexisting as equals, dealing with universal themes of love, loneliness and friendship. Named as one of the BBC’s 100 Most Inspiring Novels, a PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick and Britain’s favourite gay/lesbian novel from The Big Gay Read. Following on from the talk, The Conversation will also host a unique supper with the author and a signed copy of Maupin’s memoir Logical Family.
2nd June: Author and Professor of American Literature Sarah Churchwell discusses her Smithsonian book of the year, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream, which overturns everything we thought we knew about the American dream, America First and the battle for the identity of modern America.
16th June: Jonathan Sumption, historian and lawyer who served as a Supreme Court Justice for six years, interrogates the limits and breaking points of established democracy in the modern world in The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law. He examines Trump’s disregard for the checks and balances of the US Constitution, the criminal implications of Israel’s actions in Palestine, the exercise of sovereignty in the Brexit vote, the contrary meanings of Freedom of Speech, and the overreach of the ECHR and under-reach of the ICC. He asks how did we get to this and where do we go from here?
23rd June: Investigative journalist and multi-award-winning author Oliver Bullogh exposes the dark secrets at the heart of the world economy and London’s role. Oliver explains how few crimes of acquisition would be worthwhile without money laundering in Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won, and how South American drug cartels, Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders, and human and animal traffickers across the globe would not be able to operate without it.
30th June: Ali Smith, Orwell Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction winner, is in conversation about her two latest novels Gliff and Glyph, that continue her extraordinary sequence of books exploring contemporary life and language.
7th July: Following their international success with The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane reunite to bring us The Book of Birds – Words and Painting, a dazzling celebration of the splendours of birdlife, and an impassioned call to halt the loss of birds from land, sea and sky. Robert and Jackie will celebrate the ‘Seven Wonders’ that together make up the everyday miracle of ‘Bird’: Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight and Migration. Jackie will paint live and Robert will evoke the habits and habitats of Britain’s birds.
14th July: Broadcaster, cultural historian and author of Femina, Dr Janina Ramirez peels back the layers of time to reveal how the identities of women have been co-opted by those intent on crafting national identities in Legenda. Questioning established narratives and searching for the real women behind the legends, join Janina in conversation as she interrogates what defines a nation and who gets to build it, shining a light on how history is so often hijacked to serve the ideological and political interests of the present.
28th July: Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (winner of fifteen international awards including the 2015 Costa Biography Award and the 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize) spreads out before us the life and times of George Forster, who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world in her newest release, The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity, alongside James Cook.
Birdgirl
£9.99
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