This episode is lifted from a live recording that took place at The Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 in Westminster on Saturday 18th October.

Jack draws together a panel of three speakers carefully selected to provide a modern perspective on the lasting significance of Franz Kafka's The Trial, which turns 100 this year.

The panel featured Maxie Allen, radio producer for Times Radio, Nick Wallis, journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal, and John Yorke, narrative expert, author of Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines.

From Nick's relentless coverage of one of the biggest state-facilitated corporate assaults on working people ever recorded in British history, to Maxie's own brush with the absurdity of modern British policing earlier this year, to John's revivifying appraisal of the text, this discussion will make you wish you'd read the The Trial sooner.

A big thank to the Academy of Ideas, and to our excellent audience on the day.

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