CANCELLED Book Talk: Vietnam, Russia and Freedom
Book Talk is a new monthly Frontline event that will feature a selection of authors talking about their work. Promising fascinating discussion, this month’s Book Talk will feature Bill Hayton, Vietnam; Rising Dragon; John Kampfner, Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty; Alan Philps and John Lahutsky, The Boy from Baby House 10.
Moderated by Claire Armitstead, Guardian literary editor.
Bill Hayton is a reporter and producer with BBC News who covered Vietnam as the BBC’s correspondent during 2006–7. In Vietnam: Rising Dragon Hayton addresses a broad variety of issues in today’s Vietnam, including important shifts in international relations, the growth of civil society, economic developments and challenges, and the nation’s nascent democracy movement as well as its notorious internal security.
John Kampfner was a foreign correspondent for nearly a decade before becoming one of Britain’s most prominent political writers, commentators and pundits. He is now Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, one of the world’s leading free expression organisations. In Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty Kampfner mixes narrative from different countries around the world, breaking new ground in revealing the extent to which the old assumptions and securities have died. It will crucially ask why so many intelligent and ambitious citizens around the world seem prepared to sacrifice freedom of the press and freedom of speech in their quest for wealth.
Alan Philps has worked as a foreign correspondent for more than 20 years; first with Reuters, then he moved in 1990 to The Sunday Correspondent, and then to The Daily Telegraph, where he worked as Moscow correspondent (1994-98) and Middle East Correspondent (1998-2003), ending up as foreign editor (2003-2006). The Boy from Baby House 10 is the story of how Vanya, aged only six, alone and incarcerated in a mental asylum, managed to survive the abusive and neglectful care of the Russian state and make his way to start a new life in America. It reveals for the first time the reality of the childcare institutions which are truly Russia’s last Gulag, a system established by Stalin which exists to this day. Tens of thousands of children have been adopted from Russia to the US, Britain and other European countries. This book shows the unvarnished truth about the institutions they come from.
