Join the fascinating talk with travel writer Daniel Stables as he talks about global festivity through the journeys captured in his acclaimed book Fiesta
Date: Thursday 1 October 2026
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Royal Hospital Chelsea - State Apartments (enter via London Gate)
Fiesta is a travel book which explores human festivity through a series of travel narratives set at some of the world’s most remarkable festivals. This talk, like the book, takes the audience on a journey through festivity, with a series of travel narratives exploring what festivals teach us about human culture and behaviour in societies across the globe.
The talk explores the vibrant tapestry of human festivity, delving into the extraordinary lengths to which we go to express our cultures and commemorate life’s milestones. From the masked soirées of Venice Carnival to the whirling dervishes of Konya, from animist funerals in Sulawesi to the depraved pilgrimage that is the Romería de El Rocío, festivals are the birds-of-paradise of human cultural expression: luminescent, effervescent, eye-catching and strange.
Beyond being outwardly captivating, though, something deeper is going on at festivals. They lift us out of daily life and onto a level, liminal plain, erasing the normal hierarchies of life and turning its structures upside down and in their carnivalesque chaos, festivals reveal something raw and unaffected in us, taking us out of our own heads and away from our egoistic concerns and allowing us to connect to something greater than ourselves, be that our culture, community, or something divine. The talk showcases how festivals not only display human culture at its most vivid and varied, but also reveal the motivations and similarities which we all share in human cultures across the world.
Tickets: £15 (plus £2 booking fee per transaction)
Additional Information
Enter via London Gate
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About the speaker
Daniel Stables has been working as a travel writer for the last decade, first writing guidebooks for Rough Guides, and later writing articles for National Geographic, the BBC, and national newspapers. He has won acclaim and recognition for his work, having received several nominations for Travel Writer of the Year. More of his work can be found at his website, danielstables.co.uk. His debut non-fiction book, Fiesta: A Journey Through Festivity, was published by Icon Books in August 2025 (paperback published in July 2026).