Hampstead Arts Festival - ADD EVENT

Shami Chakrabarti

Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003.

Shami first joined Liberty as In-House Counsel on 10 September 2001. She became heavily involved in its engagement with the 'War on Terror' and with the defence and promotion of human rights values in Parliament, the Courts and wider society.

A Barrister by background, she was called to the Bar in 1994 and worked as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 until 2001 for Governments of both persuasions.

Since becoming Liberty’s Director she has written, spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of the post-WW2 human rights framework as an essential component of democratic society.

She was born in London and studied Law at the London School of Economics. Shami, who divorced in 2014, lives in London with her son. She is Chancellor of Essex University and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple.

In 2011, Shami was invited to be one of six independent assessors advising Lord Justice Leveson in his Public Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the UK Press. She was also chosen as one of eight Olympic Flag carriers at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. In February 2014, she was appointed as Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Manchester.

Shami's first book, On Liberty, was published by Allen Lane on October 2014.

Piers Plowright

Piers Plowright was born in London in 1937 and made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1998 without writing a single book (although he did write a thriller called ‘The Smuggler’ in 1975, intended for learners of English, which has been translated into Basque and still sells. A collectors’ item). However, he had spent the previous 30 years making radio plays, documentaries and features for the BBC, including literary portraits of Olivia Manning, Yukio Mishima, Jorge Luis Borges, Grazia Deledda, Alberto Moravia, Arthur Waley, and Naguib Mahfouz, as well as working with young British writers.

While at the BBC, Piers won three Prix Italias for his documentaries, and numerous Sony Radio Awards. In 2005 he was made an Hon DLitt at Bournemouth University, and an Audio Luminary at the Chicago Third Coast Radio Festival in 2007.  He currently runs the literary side of the Hampstead Arts Festival and organises conversations with distinguished figures in the Arts and Sciences at Burgh House Hampstead. He’s also trying to improve his drawing, painting and jazz-piano playing (he notes: 'don’t hold your breath').

Piers’s five part series “Thames Crossings” was recently heard on BBC Radio 4.