Who better to act as a guide to life’s dramas both great and small than the Bard? No one has written with greater wisdom or understanding about everything from the battle of the sexes and family relationships to love, loss and death. In this entertaining talk, Shakespeare expert and Oxford Fellow Laurie Maguire shows how the dilemmas illustrated in the Bard's classic tragedies, comedies and histories can offer timeless principles for living.

Peter Atkins is the perfect guide for anyone who finds physics baffling, an Oxford don with a light touch and a mission to explain. Concentrating on some of the most fundamental laws of science, Atkins shows how thermodynamics drives everything that happens in the universe, from the steam in your kettle to the mess that grows on your desk.

The ever-enthusiastic presenter of Radio Four's Today programme takes us from plainsong to jazz and from glittering Renaissance courts to Italian opera houses in search of the drama and the mystery of music. He visits the places that nurtured music and uncovers the characters who created music, and using his own experience of musicians and his inquisitive eye, he finds a world of imagination, genius and surprise.

There can be no better or more charismatic guide to the glories of our parish churches than the historian Roy Strong, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He talks about the cataclysmic effect of the Reformation on our traditions of country worship and looks ahead to a future in which we must find new uses for the ancient buildings which once dominated our villages – or lose them for ever.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

Philip Marsden is one of our very finest travel writers, whose excursions into Ethiopia, recounted in The Chains of Heaven, won huge acclaim. His latest book, The Barefoot Emperor, recounts the story of a dramatic but long-forgotten British imperial war in Ethiopia, involving an emperor with a Biblical sense of destiny, and one of the most eccentric expeditionary forces ever assembled. He tells the story of this extraordinary war.

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One of our wittiest and freshest novelists, Mavis Cheek has been described as ‘Jane Austen in contemporary dress’, and a writer with a ‘sharp ear and a wicked eye for the discreet lack of charm of the bourgeoisie’. In her delightful new novel, a recently widowed woman finds herself delving into the life of Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Meanwhile, over in the Louvre, Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves senses the tug of a connection and begins to tell the story of the injustices she suffered and just how she survived her marriage.

Sponsored by The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society

Galaxies are the building blocks of the Universe: standing like islands in space, they are where the stars are born and where many extraordinary and little-understood phenomena can be observed. Join renowned science writer John Gribbin as he explores what we have learnt about the cosmos through studying both our own galaxy and our distant neighbours’.

2008 sees the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize (now the Man Booker Prize) for Fiction, the most important literary prize in the English speaking world. To celebrate the anniversary, Ion Trewin, Administrator of the Man Booker Prize, will chair a panel considering the impact of the Booker Prize and discussing the best books of the last 40 years. Amongst others, the panel will include critic, biographer and former Man Booker Prize judge, Ruth Scurr, and Peter Kemp, Fiction Editor of The Sunday Times.

Nicholas Murray presents a host of stories from the intrepid days of international travel, as he follows some of the hardy souls who at the height of empire set out to see the world – either to stamp their mark on some unknown part of it, to convert the heathen, spread religion or find fantastical riches or unknown works of art.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

As the wife of the embattled prime minister Anthony Eden, Lady Eden is perhaps best known for her 1956 lament that ‘in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room.’ As her marvellous recent memoir makes clear, however, she was far more than a drawing-room consort. The Zuleika Dobson of her day, she was befriended and admired by characters as diverse as Orson Welles, Evelyn Waugh, Lucian Freud and Noel Coward. She talks about her life and times with her editor, Cate Haste.

In The Undercover Economist Tim Harford showed how ordinary economics explained everyday curiosities, such as the price of a cup of coffee and the traffic jam on the way to the supermarket. Drawing on his new book, The Logic of Life, he now discusses how the new economics of rational choice theory can explain much, much more, from drug addiction and teenage muggers to suburban sprawl and inner city decay.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

How should you go about making a truly natural garden, one whose plants and structure will appeal to wildlife? Val Bourne offers guidance and tips on creating a living landscape where the snuffle of a hedgehog, the moving shimmer of insects, or a cloud of butterflies bring as much pleasure as the flowers, fruits and leaves that sustain them. She shares the secrets of her years of experience as gardener and writer.

For years, scholars have wondered about the precise nature of the relationship between William Wordsworth and his adoring sister, Dorothy. In this lively talk, Frances Wilson, author of a controversial new book on the subject, scours Dorothy’s own writing for fresh insight into the strength of the feelings which united them.

Nassim Taleb’s innovative and intriguing theory of the ‘black swan’ – a highly improbable event such as 9/11 or the birth of Google that is utterly unpredictable but has massive impact – was one of the most talked-about books of 2007. Why do we always ignore the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Are we hard-wired not to estimate risk? In this fascinating talk, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know, and shows us how to face the world.

The Just War tradition has evolved over the centuries as a way to impose moral discipline and humanity on the waging of war. But the changing nature of war has severely tested these principles; when conflict begins it is always the civilians who end up suffering. So can theory and practice ever match up? What is a just war, anyway, and how just can it ever be? Discussing this issue will be General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Chief of Defence Staff 1997-2001 and co-author of The Just War Tradition: Ethics in Modern Warfare; Anthony Dworkin, executive director of the Crimes of War Project and co-editor of Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know; and Hugo Slim, who has worked for Save the Children, the UN, Oxfam and the British Red Cross and is author of Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

Particle physics concerns the fundamental constituents of the universe. But what is it exactly, how did it evolve, and how do we study it? Join Frank Close as he gives a very short introduction to quarks, electrons, the neutrino, exotic matter, and antimatter.

One of our most arresting poets and literary critics explains exactly how poetry works, unpicking masterpieces by Ted Hughes, Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney among others, and unlocking the mysteries of rhyme, form and metre.

Hearing the words of Molly Bloom and Anna Livia Plurabelle spoken out loud brings a new perspective to James Joyce's two great female characters. Roger Marsh, professor of music at the University of York, discusses these two distinctive women with the Irish actress Marcella Riordan, who reads from both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

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World-renowned psychologist Oliver James caused a stir when he used the word Affluenza to describe the modern-day virus of greed sweeping through the English-speaking world. In this fascinating talk he provides more evidence to back up his claims, and argues that we have become more miserable and distressed since the 1970s, a direct consequence of Thatcherite/Blairite 'Selfish Capitalism', whose most significant act has been to rob the poor to give to the rich.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

The Booker prize-winning author of The Famished Road talks about his latest work: the delicate story of a prince and a maiden who are both tested by trials in a mythical land where art, initiation and dynamic stillness are supremely important. Nigerian-born Okri has a style and imagination all his own.

Remember when one in three houses had no hot water? When poisonous clouds of pollution hung over our cities? When we were expected to be cheerful – just because we’d won the war? Hear historian David Kynaston talk about his definitive account of the post-war years, written with the help of Glenda Jackson, Doris Lessing, John Arlott and many more who recall hoping for a better future – and an end to sweet rationing.

Sponsored by Blackwell

What can we learn from the Fool and the ‘Lord of Misrule’ in describing a
planet in the thralls of Climate Chaos? What sort of mirror do we hold up to
the world, and how do we ourselves appear in it? A 2-hour creative writing workshop led by Joseph Butler and organized by Oxfordshire ClimateXchange.
www.climateX.org

Katherine Swift, former Times gardening correspondent, started to create her garden at the Dower House, Morville, in Shropshire, 20 years ago. Hear her talk about her new book, The Morville Hours, a glorious fusion of history, memoir and gardening knowledge.

The new criminal offence of ‘religious hatred’ has left many writers and comedians wary of crossing the line between satire and incitement. But is it respect for diversity or fear of retaliation that stops us challenging religious beliefs and believers? Timothy Garton Ash, Sarfraz Manzoor, Philip Pullman, and Mona Siddiqui debate the future of creative freedom in a culture where religious laughter has been silenced.

In association with English PEN

Would you accept an invitation to a dinner party with Socrates in ancient Athens? ‘Yes please,’ reply Oliver Taplin and M.M. McCabe. ‘No thank you,’ say Mary Beard and Tom Holland. Philosophical golden age for a few old men? Repression, harassment and abuse for the rest? You decide. Oliver Taplin is Professor of Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford, whose books include Pots & Plays and Greek Tragedy in Action; M.M. McCabe is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King’s College, London; Mary Beard is author of The Roman Triumph, Professor of Classics at Cambridge and Classics Editor of the TLS; Tom Holland’s books include Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic. Chaired by Peter Stothard, Editor of The TLS.

Sponsored by the Times Literary Supplement