The Coffee House meets as often as it can, either at the splendid studios of James Hayes or in select restaurants around London or even, once, in Rome.
The first Coffee House took place in early 2012, and you can read the the founding document with a summary of my ambitions here. I’m not sure I’ve quite delivered on that, but it remains a hugely stimulating and fun project. I post some photos below (there are more here) and a list of the papers recorded for posterity.






- William Wallace, Men in Skirts: or, how the SNP have hijacked our history and what needs to be done to reclaim it. – Jonathan Lafferty
- The Paralysis and Paradox of Choice: An Exploration of How Too Many Choices Affect Our Personal and Professional Lives – Michael Rabinovitz
- The Death Penalty – Alex Young
- The hopeful monsters of film in the 1930’s – Katharine Fairhurst
- Climate Change and Capitalism – Josh Pull
- This house would emigrate – Richard Massey and Rob Rothkopf
- Decadence – Will Orr-Ewing
- Private schools are a blight on society – Alex Kelly
- The time has come for Britain to withdraw from the EU – David Vaiani
- The Leveson Inquiry & the future of the media – Jack Orr-Ewing
- Portobello Matters: the case against free market forces – Blanche Girouard
- A short history of tax – Jonathan Lafferty
- Spare the rod and spoil the child – Martin Amherst Lock
- The War on Drugs. What War? – Alex Young
- Reflections on the life of Anthony Powell – Georgia Powell
- Human Rights – David Vaiani
- What Does It Mean to Be English? – Douglas Choi
- Immigration – David Vaiani
- Understanding why Russians think that invading Crimea is acceptable – Harriet Crawley
- What’s God got to do with it? Religion and UK State Schools – Alex Kelly
- The Church of England – Marcus Walker (in Rome)
- Feminism – Sapana Agrawal
- Taxation and immorality – Alexander Nikitich
- A House Divided: Islam in Europe – Alex Young
- Climate Change: is it real and what are the implications? – James Josling
- Looking at Pictures: What is art and why does it matter? – David Vaiani
- The Data without the Drama: Guns in America – Michael Rabinovitz
- Against Social Mobility: The case for Collective Ambition – Ed Fidoe
- The Meaning of Life – Alex Kelly
- Amnesia & Remembrance – Nick Wingfield Digby
- Rape & conviction rates – Lizzy Acker
- Race & BLM – Doug Choi