Three leading writers reflect on the emotion of shame. Is it a moral compass, a force for good that gives us that wince in the stomach that sends us on the right path, or is it an outdated emotion? What about politicians, bankers and newspaper owners? They appear to feel no shame? Does shame still have the power to wreck lives as it did in the sixties when many families felt so much guilt over unmarried pregnancies they were prepared to give up a child?

Professor Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch is a broadcaster, writer and historian well known for his 2009 BBC TV series and book, A History of Christianity. His latest work, Silence in Christian History, looks at silence throughout Christianity, including prayer, mystical contemplation, shame, evasion and careless and purposeful forgetting. Ruth Rendell is one of our best-known crime writers. Her most recent work, under the pen name of Barbara Vine, The Child’s Child, is an examination of betrayal in families and of the once unmentionable subjects of illegitimacy and homosexuality.

Professor Deborah Cohen is Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Northwestern University. Her most recent work is Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day, which explores how the relationship between secrecy and openness has changed over the years.

Discussions are chaired by Dr Alastair Niven, principal of Cumberland Lodge and former director of literature at the British Council.