5x15: Live at The Tabernacle: December 2025

5x15 is back at The Tabernacle in December with a line-up of captivating speakers and inspiring stories, from the history of deafness and learning how to love, to Britain's changing political landscape and the healing nature of plants and animals.

Speakers

Raymond Antrobus is the author of three poetry titles: The Perseverance, All The Names Given and Signs, Music; and two children’s books: Can Bears Ski? and Terrible Horses. His work has won the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and his poems have been added to GCSE syllabi. In 2019 Raymond became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and appointed an MBE in 2021. The Quiet Ear, his first work of prose, is a groundbreaking exploration of deafness.

John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer and one of the paper's most loved columnists. He is the author of several books, including Taking the Lead: A Dog at Number 10, Depraved New World, Decline and Fail, and I, Maybot. In January 2024 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bath Spa University in recognition of his literary satire. His new book and latest serving of political satire, The Bonfire of the Insanities, looks at the recent years of governmental absurdity, with his trademark mordant wit and caustic humour.

Jay Griffiths is the author of many books, such as Wild: An Elemental Journey, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, and Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time. She won the Discover award for the best first-time author in the USA; the inaugural Orion award and the Hay Festival International Fellowship. Her work has received widespread accolades, including from Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, Don Paterson, John Berger, Philip Pullman, KT Tunstall and Nikolai Fraiture. Her latest book, How Animals Heal Us, offers a unique and heartfelt insight into the healing nature of our relationship with animals.

Stephen Grosz is a practicing psychoanalyst - he has worked with patients for more than forty years. Born in America, he was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, and now lives in London. His Number One Sunday Times bestseller, The Examined Life, has been translated into more than thirty languages. His highly anticipated new book, Love's Labour, contains compelling new stories from the psychoanalyst's consulting room; on desire, heartbreak and learning how to love.

Mary Keen is an internationally known designer who has worked on gardens in France, Corfu and America as well as for many high-profile clients in England. She has made several gardens for Lord Rothschild and she also designed the gardens around the new opera house at Glyndebourne. She has lectured in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver and South Africa as well as in England. For twenty years, she was a member of the National Trust Garden panel which advises on the care of important and historic gardens. Her new book, Diary of a Keen Gardener, shows us how one's perspective of time changes in the pleasure of nurturing plants.

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