This year’s Wigtown Book Festival Magnusson Lecture sees former Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler discuss the collapse of trust in government and the use of simplistic stories by populist leaders to stir up support.
The annual lectures, sponsored by the Open University, are a centrepiece of the Wigtown Book Festival. They commemorate the life and reflect the interests of the academic and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson.
Esler, born in Glasgow and raised in Edinburgh, fears that “The Trust Gap” that has developed in Western democracies and across the world are putting our collective futures in peril.
The time has come, he argues, to fight back against those who defend “alternative facts” as anything other than lies and misrepresentations and to defend rational values.
Esler says: “We live in an Age of Uncertainty. Enlightenment values have been undermined and we have entered an Un-Enlightenment in which the general public has lost trust in governments, leaders, the media and even in the idea of facts, knowledge and expertise.
“The rise of populist leaders and movements from Trumpism and the alt-right to Brexit to Syriza, even to President Duterte in the Philippines, is in part due to the ability of populists to connect through simple story-telling with the mass population.
“This lecture is a call to arms for those of us who value facts, science, knowledge and expertise.
“We must make the case for those values, connect with the mass population, challenge and defeat those who pretend that ‘Alternative Facts’ are anything more than falsehoods. If we do not close the Trust Gap then the Un-Enlightenment will triumph.”
Esler earned his reputation as one of the UK’s leading journalist for his informed and detailed questioning of interviewees. He has interviewed heads of state and government including Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
His report on the military build-up in the Aleutian Islands as part of the Reagan administration‘s New Maritime Strategy earned him a Royal Television Society Award.
In 2007 Esler won a Sony Gold Award for his radio documentary report Letters From Guantanamo on Sami al-Hajj, one of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Following the broadcast al-Hajj was released from American custody.
Adrian Turpin, the festival’s artistic director, comments: “Gavin Esler has interviewed many of the most powerful leaders of our time. His dedication to facts, realities and truths have made him a trusted witness to major events that have shaped our world.
“We are proud that he is using the 2017 Magnusson Lecture to call for a defence of reason agains the powerful forces that are on the rise round the world which seek to use fear and prejudice to undermine progress, science and rationality.”
- The Magnusson Lecture, by Gavin Esler. How Stories Build Trust: Festival Marquee, £9, Saturday 23 September, 4.30pm. Sponsored by The Open University.
The End of American Influence – panel discussion
Gavin Esler will also be chairing a book festival event entitled The End of American Influence? This takes place on Sunday 24 September at 3pm in the Festival Marquee with tickets at £8.
Angry, divided and constitutionally challenged, increasingly distant from its western allies, the US has not looked so ill-at-ease since the second world war. Is the sun setting on the American age? And how might it rise again?
The panel will be Chris Carman, Stevenson Professor of Citizenship at the University of Glasgow; Charlie Wolf, political commentator, and formerly the Communications Director of Republicans Abroad UK; Christopher Turpin, vice-president news and operations, National Public Radio.
- Booking information – To book tickets call 01988 403222, visit in person at Number 11 North Main Street in Wigtown or buy online at wigtownbookfestival.com
- Website – wigtownbookfestival.com
