The Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Temple of Artemis. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. The mausoleum of Halikarnassos. The Colossus at Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases for the reaches of human imagination. Now, only the Great Pyramid remains fully standing, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. 

Wondrously ushering in 2024 at the Library, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes joins poet/author/presenter Owen Sheers to discuss her latest book, a revelatory work of historical storytelling, which journeys through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time, mapping the Seven Wonders and the traces they have left in history and asking why it is we wonder, why we create and why we choose to remember the wonder of others. 

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess; Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (a Sunday Timesbestseller), The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (a New York Times bestseller) and Helen Of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore. Hughes has made factual films and documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, The History Channel and ABC and is a co-founder of the internationally focussed production house SandStone Global. She is a Research Fellow of King’s College London and has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History.

Owen Sheers is a poet, author, playwright and presenter. His books of poetry include Skirrid Hill, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and the verse drama Pink Mist, chosen as a Guardian top ten play of the year and winner of the Hay Festival Poetry Medal and Wales Book of the Year. His first novel Resistance, has been translated into 15 languages and was adapted into a film. His theatrical work includes the National Theatre Wales’s 72 hour The Passion and his film-poem The Green Hollow, won three BAFTA Cymru awards. He is Professor in Creativity at Swansea University and a co-founder and trustee of the Black Mountains College Project.