What does it mean to offer refuge – and who gets to belong?

In this major cultural conversation, acclaimed writer, mythographer and historian Marina Warner discusses her ambitious new book Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling, exploring the ancient idea of sanctuary and its urgent relevance in an age of migration, conflict and rising nationalism.

Drawing on myth, literature, history and her work with refugee storytelling projects in the UK and Sicily, Warner examines how stories can create connection, dignity and new ways of imagining home.

This event will be chaired by Zoe Gilbert, an award-winning novelist and storyteller whose writing is steeped in folklore, myth, nature and the strange magic of the everyday. Her debut novel, Folk, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC Radio, while her second, Mischief Acts, was named a Sunday Times Book of the Year. A winner of the Costa Short Story Award, Zoe also writes for classical composers, receiving an Ivor Novello Award for her adaptation of Folk into a song cycle, and presents the nature podcast As the Season Turns. With a fascination for the stories we inherit, the places we call home and the imaginative worlds we create for ourselves, she brings a wonderfully rich perspective to this conversation with Marina Warner about sanctuary, belonging and the power of storytelling.