Hugh Trevor-Roper was the liveliest historian of his generation: a spy, a scholar and a world-class controversialist, who ended up a laughing-stock when he was fooled into authenticating the Hitler diaries. Adam Sisman, who is writing Trevor-Roper’s biography, talks about the secrets he has unearthed so far.

Do you need a second invitation? In this inspirational conversation, Dragon's Den star Peter Jones reveals how anyone can become successful, lists his Ten Golden Rules for turning your ideas into successful businesses and offers his personal insight into the qualities and skills he believes every successful entrepreneur needs.

Behind the public facade of any great museum there lies a secret domain: one of unseen galleries, locked doors, priceless specimens and hidden lives. London's Natural History Museum has more than its fair share of both secrets and oddities, as Richard Fortey, senior palaeontologist at the museum, is well-placed to reveal. He delves into its past, uncovering feuds, a whole host of eccentrics, and an extraordinary number of skeletons in closets.

Award-winning cookery writer and Italy enthusiast Matthew Fort talks about his love affair with Sicily and its food, a relationship that began when he was a callow youth and survived thirty years of separation until he rediscovered the island’s exquisite food, intense flavours and beautiful scenery on a recent journey there with his scooter Monica.

Biographer Jane Dunn discusses her dual biography Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution, with her daughter, Lily Dunn, author of the fiction debut, Shadowing the Sun, about tragically misplaced loyalties. More than three centuries separate the subjects of these books, one history, the other fiction, but the themes – forbidden love, the power of family, sectarian prejudice and the struggle for identity – echo each other.

Would you rather be buried, burned, sunk or pickled? Or turned into a diamond, embalmed like Lenin, or frozen like Walt Disney? The Dying Game is a rollercoaster history of everything that can and does befall a corpse – from the bizarre and macabre death rituals of ancient and modern cultures, to the fascinating biological, ethical, and legal story that begins only when we end.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, one of the nation’s most prominent religious figures, talks about his new book, his views on the future of British society and the dangers facing liberal democracy. He questions the value of multiculturalism, and argues for a new approach to national identity, one based on responsibilities rather than rights.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

At a time when the very notion of the book is challenged by computers, ipods and screens of every shape and size, Blood on Paper (IvoryPress and V&A Publishing) shows the extraordinary ways in which the book still has the power to inspire – how it has been treated by leading artists of today and the recent past. Focusing on works where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design, it includes artists as diverse as Henri Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Paula Rego. This ground breaking book comprises a series of unbound booklets presented in a beautifully designed box. Elena Foster is Founder/Chairman of IvoryPress and is co-curating the exhibition Blood on Paper at the V&A (15 April – 29 June) with Rowan Watson who is a Senior Curator in the National Art Library.

Sponsored by Artweeks

He may be one of our most acclaimed novelists, but William Boyd, author of Restless, A Good Man in Africa and Brazzaville Beach, first made his reputation as a short-story writer. He talks about his gripping new collection of 24 tales, set in the places he writes about best: Africa, Nice and Hollywood.

Issues in medical ethics are rarely out of the media. Tony Hope briefly introduces the ethical issues that lie at the heart of medicine. He deals with thorny moral questions, such as euthanasia and the morality of killing, and also explores political questions such as: how should health care resources be distributed fairly?

The Gormenghast Trilogy, a fantasy epic set in a castle inhabited by grotesques, is one of the strongest and strangest works of imagination in 20th-century English literature. Its author, Mervyn Peake, died before he could enjoy the cult status earned by his creations, but his son, Sebastian, has now edited a collection of his father's unpublished stories and little-known pictures. He talks about the man behind the work.

Few know India better than "Tully-Sahib", the BBC correspondent in Delhi for almost quarter of a century. Born in Calcutta and educated in Britain, he is a citizen of two countries and two cultures. Today, he speaks of the formative experiences of his upbringing, his early vocation as a priest, his reporting career and the tensions he's observed between India's strong sense of tradition and its headlong embrace of change.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

Death used to be an event, now it’s often a chronic condition and the probability of developing dementia is now 1 in 4. We are politically, medically and ethically unprepared for a future where there will be tens of millions of extremely old people. What are we doing about it? The choices confronting the terminally ill may change for the lucky few with developments in stem cell therapy but we also need to look at the choices for the end of life, including palliative care and euthanasia. To be discussed by Baroness Mary Warnock, philosopher and author of Easeful Death: Is There a Case for Assisted Dying? Dr Guy Brown, head of a stem research group at Cambridge University and author of The Living End and Dr Robert Twycross, who after a distinguished career in palliative medicine, including being Head of the World Health Organisation’s Collaborative Centre for Palliative Care is now Emeritus Clinical Reader in Palliative Medicine at Oxford University. Chaired by Joan Bakewell.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars.

’Latin is a language, as dead as dead can be/ It killed off all the Romans and now it’s killing me.’ Despite schoolboy resistance, the Latin language has been a constant in the cultural history of the West for over two millennia, and has shaped the way we think of ourselves and of our place in the world. In this fascinating talk, Nicholas Ostler looks at the reasons for Latin’s longevity.

Sponsored by Blackwell

We have built a world that no longer fits our bodies. Our genes limit our capacity to adapt to the modern urban lifestyle. There is a mismatch, the result of which we're witnessing in the explosion of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Bringing together the latest scientific research in evolutionary biology, development, medicine, anthropology and ecology, Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson, both leading medical scientists, argue that many of our modern problems can be understood in terms of this fundamental and growing mismatch. It is an insight that we ignore at our peril.

Where has multi-culturalism taken us? Towards a disastrously divided society with no national identity or towards an admirably tolerant one? Are we failing to confront vital issues such as poverty, terrorism, education and the role of women in Islam because of ill-conceived liberalism? Discussing these issues will be Andrew Anthony, whose memoir The Fall Out charts his disillusion with the cliches of the Left; Kenan Malik, author of Strange Fruit: The Science and Race of Politics; and Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism and Why We Need it. Arun Kundnani is a leading commentator on racism, immigration and multiculturalism in Britain, author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain and deputy editor of The journal Race & Class, published by the Institute of Race Relations. Chaired by Munira Mirza.

Ellis Avery's debut novel, The Teahouse Fire, which is written in the vein of Memoirs of a Geisha, has already caused a critical stir in the United States. It is an emotionally charged portrait of 19th-century Japan, as seen through the eyes of young Amelia, a western orphan who grows up under the protective care of a Kyoto tea house. Lesley Downer has both written widely on and presented programmes on the BBC and Channel 4 about Japan and its culture but The Last Concubine is her first novel – an epic love story closely based on historical events, telling of a shogun and a princess and chronicling 19th century Japan's extraordinary change from a medieval to a modern country via civil war. They will discuss the pleasures and difficulties of writing about 19th century Japan and reflect on the influences that living in this rich culture has had on them. At the end of the event Ellis will perform a Japanese tea ceremony.

Children love to play – and so do adults, if they’ll only admit it. Words are toys and language is a huge adventure playground of climbing frames, sand-pits, slides and rides. We present a lively and unusual look at the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, led by writers Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury. From ABC to XYZ, this expressive performance of characters, cartoons and cameos follows all-action workshops at Cowley library in February and March and completes a unique project. Remember: an alphabet a day keeps the scholar at play.
For 10 – 13 year olds

In association with Oxfordshire County Libraries

The Quakers are a fascinating religious group both in their origins and in the variety of reinterpretations of the faith since. Pink Dandelion briefly charts the history of Quakerism and its present-day diversity, and outlines its approach to worship, belief, theology and language, and ecumenism.

Should the ever-increasing economic muscle of China and India provoke fear, admiration or hope? Can these countries sustain their incredible rates of growth? How will they handle the effects of industrialisation on the environment? These questions – and the challenges posed to America’s global leadership – will all be discussed by Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, and author of The Rivals: How the power struggle between China, India and Japan will Shape our Next Decade and David Smith, economics editor of the Sunday Times, and author of The Dragon and the Elephant: China, India and the New World Order.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

Chaired by Paddy Coulter, Fellow of Green College and Partner, Oxford Global Media.

Taking us from Beerbohm Tree to Kenneth Branagh, actor David Timson, the author of The History of the Theatre and Stories from Shakespeare, makes use of many rare archive performances from the 1890s up to the present day to chart the fascinating changes in Shakespearian acting style on record.

Sponsored by Naxos AudioBooks

Depression is now a catch-all term embracing everything from sadness to life-threatening mental illness. Doctors even talk of an ‘epidemic’ of depression. But what is it? And can we learn how to handle it? Sally Brampton, former editor of Elle, has written powerfully of her experience of surviving depression. She talks to Lisa Appignanesi, whose latest book is about women and mental illness. The debate is chaired by Marjorie Wallace, founder of SANE.

The publisher Mills and Boon has shaped our fantasies for a century. Should heroines still swoon and heroes swagger? Or do tastes in fiction, not just the romantic variety, change over the years? To be discussed with novelists Nicola Cornick, Matt Dunn, Katie Fforde and Joanne Harris in this Mills & Boon Centenary Debate. Daisy Goodwin, producer and presenter of the BBC Four documentary, Reader I Married Him, will now chair the panel.

In association with Mills and Boon

Beaten as a child, constantly in trouble at school, Mark Johnson began stealing at seven, was drinking by the age of eight, took his first hit of heroin aged eleven and ended up in Portland prison as a young man. In this searingly honest memoir, Mark chronicles his descent into the depths of addiction and criminality, and his astonishing recovery. Today, he runs his own thriving tree-surgery business, employing and helping other recovering addicts. His story is at once shocking and inspiring – a compelling account of one man's struggle to save himself, and help save others in the process.

Few know more about the changes sweeping across India than Mark Tully. After more than 20 years the BBC’s bureau-chief in New Delhi, he is perfectly placed to explain the infinite contradictions of the sub-continent. A child of empire himself, he was born in Calcutta in 1930 and first arrived in Britain as an unimpressed ten year old. He dallied with the priesthood, before finding his true vocation as a reporter. He has dined with Indira Gandhi, dodged bullets on the India-Pakistan border, uncovered skulduggery after the Bhopal disaster and – possibly most dangerous of all – dared to challenge John Birt over the future of the BBC. Meet him at an exclusive dinner. Numbers limited.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

Picardie, a writer with a well-documented interest in the afterlife, has long been fascinated by Daphne du Maurier and the Bronte family. In this, her latest novel, she brings her obsessions together: dovetailing the tragic story of Branwell Bronte with the haunting of Daphne by her greatest creation, Rebecca. She talks of the timeless appeal of stories which never let their reader go.

William Cavendish was a hugely rich, highly sexed aristocrat who adored magnificent horses and magnificent palaces and who ruined himself in the service of Charles I. The historian Lucy Worsley has trawled through his papers and is the perfect guide to his life, times and the intimate details of his household – including fascinating details about the laundering of 17th century smalls. ‘Rather than being frequently washed, underclothes are sometimes drenched in perfume.’

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

Marcus du Sautoy is a passionate and hugely engaging proselytiser for mathematics, as anyone who saw his 2006 Royal Institution Christmas lectures will know. Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, he is constantly striving to share the excitement of maths with a broader audience. He sets out here to achieve two tasks – to show the lay person what it means to see the world in mathematical terms, and to chart his own personal quest to understand the intangible and beautiful concept of symmetry.