Join writer and academic Dr Peter Frankopan for a dinner themed on his new work The Silk Roads and overseen by two of the brightest young talents in the London restaurant scene, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer.  They will prepare an Eastern feast with dishes we might have eaten had we travelled along the silk roads.

7:30pm reception, 8:30pm dinner in Keble College Hall. Price of £150 includes reception, dinner, wines and a signed copy of Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads. Dress code: black tie.

The dinner takes place in the magnificent Victorian Gothic dining hall of Keble College.

The food will be prepared by the Keble chefs overseen by Srulovich and Packer, the husband-and-wife team behind one of London’s most talked about restaurants, Honey & Co. The two met while working in a restaurant in their home country of Israel. Their restaurant, which prepares food based on what they grew up with in Israel, has won praise from leading critics including AA Gill in The Sunday Times and Jay Rayner in The Observer. Their first book, Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East, was The Sunday Times Food Book of the Year 2014 and won the Guild of Food Writers Jeremy Round Award for Best First Book 2015.

Dinner will be followed by a talk by Frankopan on The Silk Roads. In it, he reassesses the passage of world history and argues that the sun is setting on the Western world and it is now to the East that people are turning for adventure and riches. The region is not well known in the West but is where civilisation began. It is where the major religions were born and where the Silk Roads witnessed the passage of ideas, goods, disease and death. Frankopan says the Silk Roads are on the rise again.

To mark the festival’s 20th anniversary, Juliet Sear, a leading cake designer and author of Cakeology, will design and prepare a Shakespeare cake and guests will be able to take a piece home.

Sponsored by HSBC.