Owen Hatherley and Douglas Murphy

Join New Humanist contributors Owen Hatherley and Douglas Murphy in conversation as they seek to explode the distortions of history that obscure our present and future in their respective new books THE MINISTRY OF NOSTALGIA and LAST FUTURES.

Excavating the lost archeology of the present day, Douglas Murphy’s Last Futures is a fascinating, mind-bending cultural history of the last avant-garde. Through a cast of architects, dreamers, thinkers, hippies and designers, Murphy diagnoses the source of our current situation and steers us towards powerful alternative futures.

And in a sharp, witty polemic, Owen Hatherley skewers the contemporary nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed. Why, in an age of austerity, have we adopted the gospel of luxurious poverty, from ubiquitous 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters to the ‘artisinal’? The Ministry of Nostalgia reaches across a depleted cultural landscape to demand more for our society - after all, Hatherley argues, why should we have to "Keep Calm and Carry On"?

Chaired by Shumi Bose, architectural writer, historian, editor and teacher at Central St Martins responsible for coordinating Contextual Studies for BA Architecture: Spaces and Objects, which covers architectural history, theory and broader cultural issues.

In association with Verso Books.

Venue: The Auditorium at Foyles, Level 6, 107 Charing Cross Road

Tickets: £5 per ticket. Book here: http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Events/Detail.aspx?eventId=2727