The BT Global Challenge – the world's toughest yacht race

10 months, 2 Southern Ocean crossings, a near fatal accident and “love” on the high seas. Come and listen to the thrills and spills of adventure of a lifetime with Tina P. Sparkle.

The importance of being earnest

by Oscar Wilde, performed by the Phoenix Theatre company PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE OF DATE

Regarded as one of the wittiest comedies ever written in English, Wilde's masterpiece about Ernest Jack Worthing, the man found as a baby in a handbag at London's Victoria Station, remains one of the contemporary theatre's most popular plays.

It's never been easier to buy counterfeit goods

says Pat Hastings, with experience in retail – be it designer handbags, sportswear, jewellery. What's seen as a soft crime and treated as such is actually funding organised crime, terrorism and slave labour. This is the crime that interests very few and still kills thousands.

Women as readers, writers and judges

The controversy about the Orange Prize for Fiction. This is an annual prize for the best full-length novel written in English by a woman of any nationality. Britta Zangen tells us that ever since the first unsuccessful attempt to launch it in 1994 there has been a public controversy about the need for an all-women prize.

Contemporary topics

Discussion evening in round-table groups.