61 Jermyn Street

St James’s, London

In the classic Eighties movie, Trading Places, there is a scene where Eddie Murphy, as the hustler Billy Ray Valentine, elevated from the streets to the boardroom, is asked at the table of some fine-dining Wall Street establishment what he thinks will happen to the price of wheat. All diners, including on adjacent tables, fall silent to hear his thoughts ahead of a potential market shift…

For Gillian Tett, the same probably happened after 2008 if she was ever asked when the next financial crisis might break? Her writing in the Financial Times prior to this was widely credited as having identified conditions in markets that lead to the crash of that year.

Silence is unlikely to fall at the table for the latest Christ’s London Circus, an intimate salon supper in the capital for economics alumni that is a nod to Keynes’ Cambridge version a century ago. Gillian Tett will be guest of honour on November 20th, at Franco’s on Jermyn Street where this occasion traditionally takes place.

Gillian has chaired the FT editorial board, after a period as the newspaper’s US managing editor, and has earned numerous awards for her writing in the UK and beyond. A native of Clare College, she has an MA in archaeology and anthropology, as well as a PhD from Cambridge in social anthropology, and earned a Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award and the American Anthropological Association President Medal for her work in social science, an area of expertise she credits with giving her added insight into how markets function At the Christ’s Circus table, Gillian will share in conversation her observations about the financial sector, markets in general and how anthropology unlocks them, newspapers, economics, and perhaps differences in practice between here and our American cousins. All matters to be digested at the table in this occasion’s  collective chat.

We owe special thanks to Gillian for gracing this occasion. She was appointed the 45th Provost of King’s last year yet has parked any tribalism to share an evening with Christ’s economists. Perhaps it was the draw of Dr William Peterson, the College’s former director of economic studies (and once of King’s) who will be attending the Circus. Or time with his successor, Dr Julia Shvets, who has overseen Christ’s decade in the ascendancy for this particular discipline.

Whatever your own reasoning, please do reserve a place to join them all at what will be a vibrant table.

To book, please click here.

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Christ’s London Circus is a boutique supper salon at Franco’s on Jermyn Street, where all at the table can join a vibrant discussion of economic matters, past present and future. Previous suppers have featured as guests the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Paul Johnson; Judith Mackrell, the author of Bloomsbury Ballerina, a biography of Keynes’ wife Lydia Lopokova; the economist Lord Jim O’Neill credited with coining the acronym BRIC; and, most recently, Sir Howard Davies, once chairman of NatWest and with a lifetime of public service behind him.