Bishopsgate Institute Podcast

The Gentle Author of the popular blog Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London. As part of our Spitalfields Life Chit Chats, butchers, Joe Lawrence, Greg Lawrence and Peter Sargent present a lively look at Smithfields Market and life as a butcher from the 1960s up to the present day. If you enjoy listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.

Bishopsgate Institute Podcast - talks, debates and readings from Bishopsgate Institute's cultural events programme. For more information about Bishopsgate Institute, our cultural events, courses and library, visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk.

Bishopsgate Institute Podcast - talks, debates and readings from Bishopsgate Institute's cultural events programme. For more information about Bishopsgate Institute, our cultural events, courses and library, visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk.

Bishopsgate Institute Podcast - talks, debates and readings from Bishopsgate Institute's cultural events programme. For more information about Bishopsgate Institute, our cultural events, courses and library, visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk.

Bishopsgate Institute Podcast - talks, debates and readings from Bishopsgate Institute's cultural events programme. For more information about Bishopsgate Institute, our cultural events, courses and library, visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk.

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Recorded live at Bishopsgate Institute on Thursday 6 November 2014. If you enjoyed listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.

Highly acclaimed crime writer Ruth Rendell looks back over 50 years of Wexford. Recorded live at Bishopsgate Institute on Thursday 30 October 2014. If you enjoyed listening to this event do take a look at the other events we have coming up.

Lee Jackson explores the secret life of the Victorian metropolis, focusing in particular on the birth of public baths and the peculiar history of the public toilet. Recorded live on 16 October 2014

Tristram Hunt, author of The Frock-Coated Communist and leading UK politician presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through ten cities that epitomised it.

The final embers of the British Empire are dying, but its legacy remains in the lives and structures of the cities which it shaped. Here Tristram Hunt examines the stories and defining ideas of ten of the most important: of 1700s Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and 20th century Liverpool.

Rejecting binary views of the British Empire as 'very good' or 'very bad', Hunt describes the complex processes of exchange and adaptation that collectively shaped the colonial experience – and, in turn, transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles.

Tristram Hunt is one of Britain's best known historians. Since 2010 he has been the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, and in October 2013 was made Shadow Secretary of State for Education. He is a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written numerous series for radio and television. He is also a regular contributor to The Times, Guardian and Observer. His previous books include The English Civil War at First Hand, Building Jerusalem, and The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels.

Rosamund Urwin of the Evening Standard chairs a discussion about the raunch culture and its impact on modern feminism. Can you still be a feminist if you bare your body for a living? Or has feminism come so far that women now hold the power?

Rosamund is joined by Sarah Mathewson from feminist campaign group OBJECT, Barbara Haigh, a former Playboy Bunny Girl and Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers.