5x15: Live at The Tabernacle: September 2025

Get ready for a thrilling new season of live storytelling in September, as 5x15 brings together an exceptional line-up of acclaimed authors and thought-provoking tales.

Our esteemed speakers include bestselling author and campaigner Laura Bates on AI and the new age of sexism, award-winning author Geoff Dyer on his post-war childhood, art historian and broadcaster James Fox on the vanishing skills of traditional crafts, chef and award-winning cookery writer Olia Hercules, on her family story in Ukraine, historian and filmmaker Sam Dalrymple on the making of modern Asia, and author and journalist Ian Leslie on the love story of Lennon and McCartney.

These are stories that will inspire, surprise, and spark conversation. The evening will be hosted by actor, interviewer and book critic Genevieve Gaunt.

Speakers

Laura Bates is a Sunday Times bestselling author and campaigner. She has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, Red Magazine and Grazia among others. She is also contributor at Women Under Siege, a New-York based organisation working to combat the use of sexual violence as a tool of war in conflict zones worldwide. She is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. Her latest book, The New Age of Sexism, is an urgent and eye-opening investigation into new AI-driven technologies, and how they are putting women in danger.

Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and award-winning filmmaker. He has worked across South and Central Asia, including stints with Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Hunza and Lahore. In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His debut film, Child of Empire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, and received the inaugural XR History Award from the Körber-Stiftung Foundation. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and The Spectator, and his highly acclaimed debut book, Shattered Lands, tells the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Geoff Dyer is an award-winning author of four novels and numerous non-fiction books, most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Dyer has spent the past decade in Los Angeles, where he was Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His new book and first memoir, Homework, looks back to his childhood, a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War, and celebrates the opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement.

James Fox is an academic and multi-award-winning, BAFTA-nominated broadcaster, known for his many acclaimed BBC documentaries. He is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Creative Director of the Hugo Burge Foundation, a charity dedicated to supporting the arts and crafts across Britain. He is also the author of the celebratedThe World According to Colour: A Cultural History. His new book, Craftland, chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life in Britain, across many generations.

Olia Hercules was born in the South of Ukraine. She studied Italian language and International Relations at the University of Warwick. After spending a year in Italy, Olia settled in London, pursuing a career in journalism. She would later quit her job as a film business reporter to pursue her dream to cook for a living. Dedicated to researching food culture and culinary traditions of countries less explored, Hercules is the author of the award-winning cookbooks Mamushka, Kaukasis and Summer Kitchens. Her latest book, the memoir Strong Roots, is a Ukrainian story of war, exile and hope, told through four generations of one extraordinary family.

Ian Leslie is the author of acclaimed books on human psychology: Born Liars, Curious, and How To Disagree. He has written for, among others, the New Statesman, The Economist, the New York Times and the Financial Times. Leslie is also the author of a popular newsletter on culture, creativity and ideas: The Ruffian. He has been a Beatles fan since he was seven, and his latest book, the instant Sunday Times bestseller John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, allows us to see (and hear) Lennon and McCartney anew.

Our host

Genevieve Gaunt is an actor and interviewer. She read English at Cambridge where she graduated with a Double First. She started her career playing Pansy Parkinson in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and has gone on to work as an actor across television, film and stage, most recently playing Marilyn Monroe in The Marilyn Conspiracy (Park Theatre). Alongside acting, Genevieve reviews books for The Spectator magazine, writes for audiodrama and interviews authors and creatives for literary festivals and in print for A Rabbit’s Foot. Her podcast ‘The Cupid Couch’ made the Radio Times ‘Best 34 podcasts of 2021’ and in 2022 she co-curated The Braemar Literary Festival with Hauser & Wirth and the Queen’s ‘Reading Room’.