Battle of Ideas: 100+ debates, 450+ speakers and one painful memory

I shall be at the Battle of Ideas on Saturday. If any readers are going do say hello.

Thankfully, the session I am speaking in (‘How can we deal with problem lifestyles?) is in the afternoon and doesn’t clash with the Rugby World Cup final which kicks off at 9.00am, UK time, 30 minutes before the BoI welcome address. (Who would be an event organiser?)

I’ll write about the issue of problem lifestyles after the event, when I’ve heard what the other speakers have to say. I’m conscious however that the first thing that needs to be addressed is the term ‘problem lifestyle’ because it strikes me as being a bit subjective.

Meanwhile it’s worth noting that the Battle of Ideas is now in its fifteenth year, which is some achievement.

I spoke at the first one, in 2004, but I can’t remember what about. (It was probably something to do with the impending smoking ban.)

What I do remember is that the inaugural Battle of Ideas wasn’t a two-day festival at a single venue. It was a series of meetings at different locations over a calendar month and at the end the organisers hosted a dinner for all the speakers. (Naturally I remember the dinner more than the meeting I took part in.)

The following year (or was it the year after?) Forest and the Academy of Ideas co-hosted a closing drinks party aboard The Elizabethan, the vessel we subsequently used for our annual Smoke on the Water boat party.

In 2008 our spin-off campaign, The Free Society, hosted another end-of-festival party at Ognisko, the smoker-friendly Polish club in South Kensington.

That year I also spoke in a session on the Saturday afternoon entitled ‘Are we what we eat?’. It was one of the more memorable weekends of my life because that evening I ended up in St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington having been taken ill while watching the James Bond film ‘Quantum of Solace’ at the Odeon Marble Arch.

I was diagnosed with a kidney stone and it was probably the most severe pain I have ever experienced, but because I was hosting the drinks party the following evening I had little choice but to discharge myself from hospital around midnight, drive home, and return to London the next day. (You can read the full story here.)

By then the Battle of Ideas had become a ‘two-day festival of high level, thought-provoking debate’ at a single location. For several years this was the somewhat cramped Royal Academy of Art in Kensington. It wasn’t until 2012 that the event moved to the more spacious Barbican where it’s been ever since.

This year there will be 100+ debates, 450+ speakers and 3,000+ attendees. If you haven’t been before I do recommend it. For full details, including ticket prices, click here.