The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad Book Talk

With Simon Parkin, author and journalist.

In this talk, Simon recounts the story of the people who defended the world's first seedbank during the siege of Leningrad, which began in 1941 and lasted for 872 days.

As Leningrad starved, the botanists chose to protect a collection of quarter of a million seeds, gathered across decades to combat famine, rather than to plant and consume them to save their own lives and many others.

Their sacrifice preserved genetic material that went on to transform Russian agriculture and remains unparalleled in global science.

Simon will explore this tale of courage and conviction, and reflect on its urgent contemporary resonance in an era of climate crisis, political distortion of science and the rise of authoritarianism.