A "buoyant, beautifully distilled book about imagination.” - The Sunday Times
Wednesday, 3 May, 18.30 London
The Beaumont's series of popular literary evenings returns after a short break on Wednesday 3 May with a reading of The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them) by longtime journalist and current Manager Director of Condé Nast Britain Albert Read.
In this joyful and ultimately life-affirming book, Albert Read puts the imagination back at the forefront of our lives. It is not merely a nebulous concept reserved for artists and creatives, it is a muscle - an essential faculty of the mind to be trained and developed over a lifetime. It is boundless in its potential, infinitely rewarding and central to human achievement.
"Anyone who has an imagination-that is, everyone-should read this book." - Edward Enninful
Prior to each reading and discussion, guests are invited to enjoy drinks with canapés in the Lotos Room's lobby. Each guest will also receive a copy of The Imagination Muscle as part of their ticket, with an opportunity for signing after the talk.
Event
Ticket Price: £40, including a hardback copy of the book
Time: 18.30pm - drinks reception with canapés | 19.15pm - reading, discussion and Q&A
Location: The Lotos Room at The Beaumont
The Author
Albert Read has launched and led businesses for Condé Nast in the UK, and across Europe and Asia, overseeing titles such as Vogue, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller and Vanity Fair. A former journalist, he has written for the Spectator, the TLS, The Times and the Telegraph. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford and has an MBA from INSEAD. He lives in London with his wife and three children.
The Book
Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas-from Thomas Edison's serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs' vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs' approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved-in shape, power and pace-through the millennia.
Albert Read reveals how we can harness the imagination in our day-to-day lives and why, in the new Age of Technology, it is more pressing than ever that we do so.