Philip Pullman focuses on Manet's
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
The writer is best known for His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman has written fiction and non-fiction, plays and comics for both children and adults and believes that 'stories are the most important thing in the world.'

Dame Gillian Beer is a well established literary critic with a particular interest in Victorian studies. Beer discusses 
A Conversation by Vanessa Bell, who was a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group in the early twentieth century.

Baroness Neuberger DBE is the author of several books on Judaism, women, healthcare ethics and care of the dying, and takes this opportunity to draw our attention to the father of Impressionism, Camille Pissarro's Lordship Lane Station.

Colm Tóibín is a multi-award wining Irish novelist and critic who regularly contributes to newspapers and magazines, including the London Review of Books. Colm Tóibín chooses to talk on his reaction to the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne's Route Tournante.

Jackie Kay is a Scottish poet and novelist whose award-winning collections explore issues of cultural and sexual identity. Kay develops these themes in relation to Edgar Degas' unfinished Woman at a Window and Lady with a Parasol.

Hisham Matar is best known for his debut novel In the Country of Men which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize and won the Ondaatji Prize in 2006. In this talk, Hisham Matar focuses on the sixteenth century portrait Adam and Eve, by Lucas Cranach the Elder.