What Can History Teach Us About The Future? | Talk with Antony Beevor

In this exceptional tour d’horizon with world-renowned, bestselling British military historian Antony Beevor, we are in for big reminders. As we convene to explore possible futures, we cannot but take a short detour to the past to sneak peek into what’s next.

As Beevor reminds us, major events throughout history have brought out the best and the worst of humanity. Great, brave decisions were made – but many mistakes were made as well. Leaders have emerged in the most difficult of times – but tyrants have as well. Amidst today’s political and social turmoil, one might wonder if we are reliving in the 1930s and if there’s a way out. Maga, ‘take back control’, the gender war, the ‘Bro’ effect, counter-revolutions, conflicts and tensions on the global stage… How did we fail to see this coming? And how do we make sense of it all?

One thing is certain, we can only safely journey to the future with a solid understanding of how and why we got to where we are today - as individuals and as society.


WEEKEND Pass or Day Pass available
*This talk is part of Full Circle Ideas Festival 2024*
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A OUT The Speaker

sir Antony Beevor Frsl, Frhists, served as a regular officer with the 11th Hussars. He left the British Army after five years to write and his work has appeared in thirty-four foreign languages and sold more than eight million and a half copies. Beevor’s work has won several prizes, including the Runciman Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. He has also contributed to several books and has lectured at many staff colleges and military headquarters in different countries. He was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1997 and in 2008 was awarded the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia. In 2016 he was made Commandeur de l’Ordre de la Couronne in Belgium for his book on the Ardennes. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, he was the 2002-2003 Lees-Knowles lecturer at Cambridge. He is an honorary Fellow of King’s College London and has received degrees of Doctor of Letters from four other universities. He was knighted in 2017.