The History & the Future of the High Street

From medieval marketplace to Victorian butcher, baker and candlestick maker, the High Street was once the nerve centre of communities across Britain. But supermarkets, retail parks and online shopping have supplanted scores of high streets that once not only served communities’ material needs but their social ones too. Join Mary Portas, the BBC’s Queen of Shops and Annie Gray, social historian and star of BBC R4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, to discuss the past and future of the British High Street and explore what history can teach us about developing a consumer culture that might just keep our towns alive and thriving.

Chaired by Festival President, Dame Fiona Reynolds and introduced by the Long Table’s Tom Herbert.