At the British Library this Spring, with the Breaking the News exhibition, it’s the news itself that’s making headlines. Live from the Library, a unique conversation between acclaimed writer, director and RSL Fellow Armando Iannucci and award-winning journalist Marina Hyde.

Starting with their passion for great storytelling, Armando and Marina will explore their shared love of satire in fact, fiction, film and TV, in a conversation about why literature matters to them.

Take a break from Twitter and spend the evening with the writers we turn to when we’re overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle.

Marina Hyde is a columnist for The Guardian, where she writes on subjects from politics to sport to celebrity. In October 2022, Faber is publishing a collection of her columns entitled What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times.

Armando Iannucci is an acclaimed writer and broadcaster, whose screenplay for the film In the Loop was nominated for an Oscar. His iconic series for the BBC – The Thick of It – was nominated for 13 BAFTAs, winning five. Among his own award-winning shows, he is also the co-creator and writer of the popular Steve Coogan character Alan Partridge. Armando’s HBO comedy Veep has won four Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series over the last four years. His film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Personal History of David Copperfield won Best Screenplay at the WGBA and Best Screenplay at BIFA, won a ‘Seal Distinction’ from the US Critics’ Choice Association and was nominated for a Golden Globe. In 2017 he published Hear Me Out, a new book on classical music, and released the feature film The Death of Stalin, which was nominated for two BAFTAs and won Best Comedy at the European Film Awards. Most recently, he has published an epic poem about Britain in the age of Coronavirus, Pandemonium: Some Verses on the Current Predicament. About which Samira Ahmed on BBC Front Row said, ‘Jonathan Swift would approve…’. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019.

 

This hybrid event will be presented live at the British Library and online via the British Library Player.