Join the prizewinning, bestselling historian for a thrilling new history of humanity, using the one thing we all have in common – family – to tell the story.

Starting with the first footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago, Simon will steer us through an interconnected world via palace intrigues, love affairs and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama.

It features a cast of extraordinary span and diversity: as well as rulers and conquerors there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives and children. From Alexander the Great, Attila, Genghis Khan to Ivan the Terrible and Hitler, from Socrates, Michelangelo, Shakespeare to Mozart, Balzac, Newton and Tim Berners-Lee.

There is Hongwu who started as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare the Leopard-King of Benin; King Henry of Haiti; Kamehameha conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome, Lady Murasaki first female novelist, Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen; Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Barack Obama.

Here are the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. All the way up to Putin and Zelensky, all human life is here.

Don’t miss this chance to hear the human story, from caves to drones, in a single narrative from a master storyteller.

This event is presented in partnership with Fane Productions.