Coffee House

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.

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