How to Live a Meaningful Life

How to Live a Meaningful Life

Wars rage, the planet burns, politicians are up to high jinks, and apparently no-one can agree on anything. It’s no wonder we all feel overwhelmed. So, what can we do when life starts to feel too much? How do we remind ourselves what it’s all for anyway?

This strand of events – on philosophy, humour, relationships, and nourishment – is about remembering (and celebrating) the things that make life worth living. We’ve asked incredible writers to present their take on some of the cornerstones of what makes us human – and here’s something of what you can expect:

We’ve got writers talking about resilience, and about how equipping ourselves with knowledge about how our struggles affect us can empower us to navigate through the worst of them.

We’ve got writers talking about paying attention, about the crucial importance of  looking up and showing up and standing with each other, even when it’s hard going, and especially when we don’t fully know what to do.

We’ve got writers talking about how vital it is to pause and reflect.

We’ve got writers talking about how they’ve found meaning in the midst of apparently hopeless situations, talking about what meaning actually means – and faith, too. What does it feel like to have faith? What does it take to keep it?

And we’ve got writers talking about some of life’s greatest joys: food and creativity and nature and laughter. Things that are innately meaningful for the happiness they bring to us… but more than that, they can be powerful tools of solidarity, of holding onto hope, and of standing up to those who would try to knock us down.

This strand is all about the stuff of life, really, and we hope these events will uplift and replenish you.

 

Olivia Laing: In Search of Eden

Sunday 11 August 15:45 - 16:45

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When Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, she also embarked upon an imaginative discovery of the pleasures and possibilities of gardens through the ages. The Garden Against Time explores their significance in Western culture, from…
 

Jeremy Lee: Simply Delicious

Monday 12 August 10:30 - 11:30

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Cooking, by renowned chef Jeremy Lee, is more than just a recipe book. It’s a love song to simple ingredients, peppered with stories from the dinners of his Dundonian childhood to the busy kitchen of his iconic Soho restaurant, Quo Vadis. Hear him in a…
 

On Faith: Sarah Perry

Monday 12 August 12:00 - 13:00

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It’s an age-old question: can faith and reason co-exist? It’s one Sarah Perry – author of The Essex Serpent and, more recently, the 2024 Booker-longlisted Enlightenment – has long ruminated on, and has woven into her fiction, letting her characters…
 

Mishal Husain: Family, Unravelled

Monday 12 August 15:00 - 16:00

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Journalist, newsreader, and presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain delves into her family’s past in her memoir, Broken Threads. Connecting fragments from her family history through letters and diaries, Husain discovers how her…
 

Agnes Arnold-Forster & Caroline Crampton: Body and Mind

Tuesday 13 August 10:45 - 11:45

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In Nostalgia, historian Agnes ArnoldForster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of emotions and medicine to chronicle the changing social attitudes to this slippery and ‘dangerous’ emotion. In A Body Made of Glass, Caroline Crampton…
 

On Finding Meaning: Graham Caveney

Tuesday 13 August 16:00 - 17:00

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Does confronting death bring us closer to finding purpose and meaning in life? In his memoir The Body in the Library, Graham Caveney chronicles the year following his terminal cancer diagnosis with uplifting tenderness and frank humour. Joining us today…
 

Michel Faber: New Ways of Hearing

Wednesday 14 August 10:45 - 11:45

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In Michel Faber’s first longform non-fiction work, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, the acclaimed author of Under the Skin and lifelong music lover imagines a whole new kind of music biography. Here, the stories of those who make the music are secondary…
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After the death of her five-week-old son, author Clare Mackintosh searches for guidance in her memoir I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This. Psychologist Vincent Deary draws on clinical research and personal experiences in How We Break, exploring the…