Off the page.
FT Weekend Festival takes the weekend paper off the breakfast table and onto the lawn this September at Kenwood House. Across ten stages, Financial Times editors and journalists meet some of the biggest names in culture, literature, design, food, global affairs and business for a full Saturday of interviews and debate.
The cultural line-up alone could fill a weekend. Richard E. Grant, Michael Sheen and Fiona Shaw appear alongside classicist Mary Beard, fashion designers Paul Smith and Patrick Grant, artist and stage designer Es Devlin, curator Ekow Eshun and choreographer Wayne McGregor. Yotam Ottolenghi and Angela Hartnett bring food into the conversation, while Paul Theroux, Elif Shafak and Rose Tremain are among the writers heading to Hampstead. Further across the programme, Francis Fukuyama, Mariana Mazzucato, former US intelligence director Avril Haines and former MI6 chief John Sawers tackle some rather bigger questions.
There is plenty happening between stages too. Jancis Robinson hosts a tasting of English wines with Vineyards of Hampshire, while the Waterstones Festival Bookshop hosts book signings throughout the day. London Brass Allstars bring live music to the grounds, Jikoni is preparing picnic hampers for the occasion, and those arriving with four-legged company can even enter Best Pup in Show.
The appeal is in the freedom to construct your own issue of FT Weekend in real time: politics before lunch, an artist after it, perhaps some wine somewhere in between. Just expect choosing your timetable to become the first debate of the day.
