Joanna Lumley talks to Philip Lymbery

Joanna returns to the Oxford Literary Festival to deliver this year’s Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture to support the animal welfare charity, Compassion in World Farming where she has been a Patron for over 40 years.

2027 will be the charity’s 60th Anniversary and Joanna will speak for 20 minutes before being interviewed by the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery, and then taking questions from the audience.

Joanna’s passion for animals, wildlife and our natural world is legendary, and this event will be the festival’s sixth 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 actress Miriam Margolyes OBE, wildlife presenter Chris Packham CBE, children’s writer Sir Michael Morpurgo and television GP, Dr Amir Khan.

Dame Joanna Lumley DBE is an English actress, former model, author and activist. In her many stage appearances she has worked with Harold Pinter, Alan Ayckbourn, Trevor Nunn and Jonathan Miller. She played the legendary character Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous until 2012 and stepped back into the role in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie in 2016.

Her other film credits include On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Shirley Valentine, The Wolf of Wall Street, Paddington 2 and Falling For Figaro among many others. Her extensive and varied TV credits include The New Avengers, Coronation Street, Sapphire and Steel, A Rather English Marriage, Class Act, and Amandaland, the Netflix series Fool Me Once and also numerous travel documentaries which have her criss-crossing the globe, with another adventure on its way. Most recently, Joanna completed the third season of Tim Burton’s acclaimed series Wednesday. The BBC Radio 4 series Conversations from a Long Marriage has just been commissioned for the seventh time, and her anthology My Book of Treasures was published in paperback last year.