The event’s series of talks and panels with top historians, academics, journalists and writers explores the war and émigré identities from different perspectives, as well as the role played by heritage organisations or the challenges faced by authors who publish on Anglo-Polish topics. The speakers include journalist Neal Ascherson, who has written extensively on Polish affairs, historian Roger Moorhouse, whose latest book The Forgers. The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust's Most Audacious Rescue Operation was published in the UK earlier this year, Clare Mulley, the author of The Spy Who Loved about Polish-born British special agent Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville, and Dermot Turing, the author of X, Y and Z – the real story of how Enigma was broken.
The event is organized by the Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange, which celebrates the contribution of the Polish diaspora to British culture and society, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, whose ‘Their Finest Hour’ project is a platform for members of the public to contribute their experiences of the war to an online archive.
The participants in the festival include art historian Julia Griffin, the curator of the Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange, Bartosz Wiśniewski, the director of the Polish Cultural Institute in London and Peter Fudakowski, film producer and director. (mk/pm)