Join the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, and columnist Lucy Kellaway for lunch in the magnificent surroundings of the Bodleian Library’s 15th-century Divinity School, one of the most beautiful rooms in Oxford. Proceedings start with a Prosecco reception at 12.30pm, followed by a two-course lunch with wine at 1.15pm and a talk and conversation over coffee at 2.15pm.

After lunch, Barber and Kellaway will be introduced by the editor of FT Weekend, Caroline Daniel. They will remember some of the classic interviews conducted by the newspaper at a restaurant table. The people who have had Lunch with the FT since 1994 reads like an international Who’s Who.  They include Angela Merkel, Martin Amis, George Soros, Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs, Angelina Jolie and Jimmy Carter. In every case, the operative word is lunch, and the reader is brought to the table to listen in on unguarded conversation in a convivial atmosphere. Some of the speakers at this year’s festival will be joining today’s lunch with the FT.

Barber has been editor of the Financial Times for more than eight years and has steered the paper to three Newspaper of the Year awards. Previously he was a Financial Times foreign correspondent in Washington, Brussels and New York. Kellaway is the management columnist at the Financial Times and has worked as an energy correspondent, Brussels correspondent and interviewer of business people and celebrities.