HOW TO WRITE A FILM SCORE

Nigel Clarke

Culture / Salon | Fri 26th Sep | 6.30-8.30pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.

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Join us for an evening with composer Nigel Clarke to unveil the creative process behind making music for the movies.

Nigel will show clips and illustrations from his soundtracks to stimulate discussion on the role of music in film and TV. He will also give a historical perspective on some of the great film scores of the past and spark conversation on this fascinating subject.

Book your dinner:

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Nigel Clarke studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson, where he was awarded the Academy’s highest distinction, the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence. Clarke has previously held positions as Young Composer in Residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Composition and Contemporary Music Tutor at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Head of Composition at the London College of Music and Media, Visiting Tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music, Associate Composer to the Young Concert Artists Trust,  Black Dyke Band, the Band of HM Grenadier Guards, Brass Band Buizingen, Middle Tennessee State University Bands, Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall and International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Clarke has also co-written film soundtracks to: Jinnah, The Little Vampire, The Little Polar Bear, The Thief Lord, Baseline, & Will and in 2006 was a co-nominee at `The World Soundtrack Awards’ in the `Discovery of the Year’ category. In 2008 Clarke was awarded the title of Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Salford.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (20-50)	Available on request

Full Circle Book Club
hosted by Eleonora Balsano

Heart Lamp

by Banu Mushtaq

Culture | Thurs 9th Oct | 7:00-8:30 pm

Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.

Heart Lamp is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2025. In 12 stories, author Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India.Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, championing women’s rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression.  

Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India’s most prestigious literary awards.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 for Heart Lamp.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Small (~10)	Available on request

Live Jive Jungle

Jan Harbeck Quartet

Music / Fri 10th Oct / 8pm

*Dinner option available, please book in advance*

Jan Harbeck (tenor saxophone), Thor Madsen (guitar), Jeppe Skovbakke (electric bass), Peter Leth (drums)

Live Jive Jungle is known for its powerful drum grooves and captivating melodies.

With his acoustic group, the Jan Harbeck Quartet, Jan Harbeck recorded the jungle-drum jazz classic Sing, Sing, Sing on the album Copenhagen Nocturne. That track sparked the idea of creating a new band dedicated to exploring that particular sound and expression.

The result was Live Jive Jungle — and ever since, audiences have been thrilled by the band’s outgoing, highenergy playing style, full of raw nerve and compelling intensity.

Jan Harbeck has received several notable awards, including the Ben Webster Prize, the Bent Jædig Prize, and a Danish Music Award for Jazz Album of the Year. Live Jive Jungle’s album ELEVATE has been very well received:

“This is pulsating big-city jazz, where an uptempo beat raises both the heart rate and the mood. The undisputed star is of course Jan Harbeck, who wrote all the tracks on the album. He has never disappointed, and with Live Jive Jungle he adds a new chapter to his career.” — Niels Overgård, JazzNyt (Denmark)

“You won’t need seating at a Live Jive Jungle concert — it’s impossible to sit still to this music.” — Frithjof Strauß, Jazz Podium (Germany)

“You can feel in every single note how much fun the musicians are having — playing boogaloo, swing, jive and blues together. That joy is instantly transferred to the audience.” — Bak, CONCERTO (Austria)

“Given the right exposure, Live Jive Jungle can't fail. The compositions are all by Harbeck who also blows gutsy tenor. Harbeck is an es (Danish for ace – thanks Google) tenor player and the other guys are also es men. This is just so lovely.” — Lance, Bebop Spoken Here (UK)

“Harbeck expresses himself with clarity and fluency — driving phrases, tender embellishments, and plaintive tones. That full-bodied sound he’s known for really shines, supported by Madsen’s and Skovbakke’s tasteful solos and obligatos. The album brims with quality, infectious enthusiasm, and beautiful detail. ELEVATE demonstrates, in a relaxed way, that only when music is taken seriously can it truly become fun.” — Jakob Hassing, Jazz Special (Denmark)

“Joyful and gritty.” “A cohesive group performance that will move the listener.” — Rolf Thomas, Jazz thing (Germany)

“A very successful production, rich in variation. What the musicians share is their cool approach and their tight interplay – at a very high level.” — Wolfgang Giese, MUSIK AN SICH (Germany)

“Fascinating, contemporary, laid-back and energetic. Harbeck’s tunes — all of them his own — could easily fit right into the American Songbook. Elevate is an album that deserves to bring Harbeck and his bandmates to the world stage.” — Jan Granlie, Salt Peanuts (Norway)

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ADDITIONAL INFO 

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCES
Bar & snacks & light food	Medium (30-50)	Available

Full Circle Book Club
hosted by Eleonora Balsano

On the Calculation of Volume I

by Solvej Balle

Culture | Thurs 6th Nov | 7:00-8:30 pm

Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.

In the first part of Solvej Balle’s epic septology, Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday. She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand – the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband’s surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there’s a way to escape.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Small (~10)	Available on request

MAKING PEACE IN THE CULTURE WARS

A.C. GRAYLING

Salon / Ideas | Fri 20th Nov | 6.30-8.30pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.

Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!

The ‘war on wokeness’ may feel like a new phenomenon, but in fact, it’s been around for centuries. People have been ‘cancelled’, in one way or another, since the beginning of time – it’s human nature to form tribes, create an Us vs Them, and serve as judge, jury and so on. And yet, it feels like today we can’t talk about anything. How did we end up here?

Nuanced and historically grounded, philosopher Anthony Grayling searches for middle ground in an otherwise incendiary debate. Looking at the history of cancellation, from Ancient Greek ostracism through hemlock cups, witch trials and the House of Un-American Activities, his is a timely examination of the state of our public culture and the chilling effect it's having on intellectual discourse.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

A.C. Grayling is an outstanding British philosopher and public intellectual, as well as a prolific author (over 30 books) and frequent writer, columnist, broadcaster and commentator on all of the main national media in the United Kingdom. He contributes to the ongoing reflection on how we should live and about possibilities for good lives in good societies. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has been a judge on the Booker Prize twice, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

GOOD READS

Discriminations, Making peace in the culture wars (2025); Who owns the moon, In defence of humanity's common interests in Space (2024); Philosophy and Life, Exploring the great questions of how to live (2023); For the Good of the World, Why our planet's crises need global agreement now (2022); The Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Know about Science, History and the Mind (2021); The Good State, On the Principles of Democracy (2020); Democracy and Its Crises (2017); War: An Enquiry (Vices and Virtues) (2017); The Challenge of Things: Thinking through troubled times (2015); Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century (2010); Liberty In The Age Of Terror (2009); The Mystery Of Things (2004); Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age (2002); and more...

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (40-70)	Available on request

Full Circle Book Club
hosted by Eleonora Balsano

The Rest of Our Lives
by Ben Markovits

Culture | Thurs 11th Dec | 7:00-8:30 pm

Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Markovits is a British-American author and grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics and write novels. He has taught high school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for The New York Times, Esquire, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review and others. He has published several novels meanwhile winning prizes and accolades such as the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, a Pushcart Prize for short story. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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ADDITIONAL INFO 

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar open with snacks	Small (~10)	Available on request