Miriam Margolyes talks to Philip Lymbery

Miriam Margolyes, a veteran of stage and screen, writer and an award-winning actress who achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic, comes back to her Oxford birthplace to deliver this year’s Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture.

Margolyes will speak for 20 minutes about her support for animal welfare before being interviewed by the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery, and then taking questions from the audience. She is known for her support for animal welfare and has previously called for an end to dairy farming and for the government to incentivise a switch from dairy to arable farming. She was also recently among celebrities who wrote to then prime minister Rishi Sunak asking for a ban on foie gras.

Margolyes was born in Oxford and educated at Oxford High, where the school’s drama studio bears her name. She is well known for roles such as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She won a BAFTA best supporting actress for The Age of Innocence. Her television credits include Life and Loves of a She Devil, Blackadder and The History Man. Margolyes has also presented many television documentaries including Dickens in America, Miriam’s Big American Adventure, Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure and Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure. She was part of the cast of the BBC’s The Real Marigold Hotel and its follow-up series The Real Marigold Hotel on Tour. Her one-woman show Dickens’ Women toured the world in 1993 and 2012. Margolyes is also author of two memoirs, This Much is True and Oh Miriam.

The event is the festival’s fifth annual hosting of Compassion in World Farming’s Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture, named in honour of the charity’s founder, a British farmer, who became horrified at the development of factory farming. Previous lectures at the festival have been given by wildlife presenter Chris Packham, the actress Joanna Lumley, children’s writer Michael Morpurgo and television GP Dr Amir Khan.

In association with Compassion in World Farming.