American novelist Lionel Shriver and former ambassador and Downing Street adviser Tom Fletcher look at the circumstances that led to the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA and ask what its impact will be on the world.

Shriver says she was floored by the news that Trump had been elected, but how did a candidate widely seen as a rank outsider end up attracting so much support. Did people feel they were left behind by globalisation and were they fed up with the political elite? What does a Trump presidency mean for the West and for relations with Russia. And will Trump respond to the normal rules of international diplomacy?

Shriver is an Orange Prize-winning novelist and commentator. Her latest novel, The Mandibles, is set in a USA suffering from catastrophic financial collapse and features a wall between the US and Mexico to keep fleeing Americans in. She speaks about The Mandibles at another event. Fletcher is a former UK ambassador to Lebanon and a former 10 Downing Street foreign policy adviser. He is currently leading a review of British diplomacy for the Foreign Office and is author of the recent Naked Diplomacy: Power and Statecraft in the Digital Age.

Discussions are chaired by writer and journalist Paul Blezard.