Pete Allen

Why are obsessed with crime television in the UK. It’s an obsession that has been with us since the early days of television. This Talk walks the beat of the quiet lanes of St Mary Mead, the golden spires of Oxford and the killing fields of Midsomer. On the way it unearths the clues that reveal how our fascination with the long arm of the law owes much to the uncertainty, experimentation and innovation of the early days of television, and peeks behind the twitching curtains and darkened corners to reveal the mystery of who has kept us fascinated with peculiar Belgians, cerebral pipe-smokers and flawed crime-fighters for over 80 years.

What is it about Pantomime that attracts us to this strange concoction of fairy tales, dance, jokes, songs and cross-dressing? And what is it really like to play the back end of a Pantomime Cow? All this, and the answer to whether something really
is behind you will be answered in this festive Talk about what has become one of the great British Christmas traditions.

In 2000 the National Theatre named ‘Journey’s End’ one of the 100 most important plays of the 20th Century. This is the story of how a shy insurance salesman wrote one of the most moving and true accounts of life in the trenches of WW1 and went on to become one of the highest paid British screenwriters in Hollywood, helping create some of cinema’s most memorable films.