London Literature Festival 2010

London Literature Festival has drawn to a close for another year. A football match pitting writers against scientists kicked off a bigger-than-ever programme of events. Slavoj Žižek hailed the capitalist apocalypse and revealed a secret passion for The Sound of Music, Bret Easton Ellis was on fine form launching his new novel Imperial Bedrooms, and Jeanette Winterson sounded a literary call to arms as she gave the annual Southbank Centre Lecture.

In partnership with the Royal Society, See Further: The Festival of Science + Arts featured a strand of literary events. Marcus du Sautoy charted the relationship between maths and music, Brian Greene lectured on String Theory, Ben Goldacre unpicked ‘bad science’ and oceanographer Sylvia Earle explored the wonders of the deep and the grave threat of the Gulf oil spill.

As part of the Brazilian Words series, football legend and cultural commentator Sócrates discussed the beautiful game. The cultural legacy of the Tropicália movement was examined alongside performances by Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia, while poet and musician Arnaldo Antunes demonstrated that Brazil’s capacity to produce boundary-pushing artists remains undiminished.

London Literature Festival Podcasts

Over the next few months we will be making many London Literature Festival events available to download as podcasts. Talks from Slavoj Žižek, Jeanette Winterson and Bret Easton Ellis are already online.

Browse the London Literature Festival Podcasts

Still to come this autumn at Southbank Centre

There’s plenty to look forward to in Southbank Centre’s autumn literary calendar as Stephen Fry launches his second volume of memoirs, Seamus Heaney reads from his new collection of poetry, lyricist Stephen Sondheim takes a musical look back at his career and the six authors nominated for the 2010 Man Booker prize read and discuss their work.

See the Southbank Centre's upcoming programme of Literature events