Following the sell-out success of last’s year’s event, Edinburgh’s renowned Library of Mistakes is again partnering with Hay Castle Trust to present the second Weekend of Mistakes at the wonderful venue of Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye, 21st-23rd March 2025.
Join WoM’s panels of expert speakers, for explorations of the ‘ups’ and (especially) the ‘downs’ of financial history, discussions on today’s major economic questions, and their effect on the world of investment. We’ll be telling the story of ‘Money – How it Changed the World’, thinking about ‘Gross National Happiness’ as the only measure of economic success, and wondering how to fix Britain.
This will be an immersive weekend of stories, learning, viewpoints and fascination, all in WoM’s uniquely informal and friendly atmosphere.
Returning to Hay-on-Wye’s Hay Castle from 21st – 23rd March after a sold-out first year, the second Weekend of Mistakes (WoM2) will give guests a unique deep dive into financial and economic history, and its lessons for our times. A weekend of insights, discovery, stories, and lively debate awaits.
This year’s thought-provoking line-up will be speaking across a range of topics, including the first 75 days of Trump’s presidency, how to fix Britain’s economy, the importance of Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product, and the financial struggles facing universities and higher education. David McWilliams, international bestselling author of Money: A Story of Humanity, will also speak to Bloomberg and MoneyWeek’s Merryn Somerset Webb about the origins of money — from clay tablets, seashells, and giant stones to the earliest coins.
Unique to Weekend of Mistakes (WoM2) is the opportunity attendees have to discuss the themes raised during events with the authors and speakers, as well as its commitment to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities, accredited for 10 hours by CISI, with breakfast discussions, book signings, networking sessions and more, all against the beautiful backdrop of Hay-on-Wye.
A brand new addition to the UK’s literary events scene and Hay’s repertoire of conferences and festivals throughout the year, the 2024 sold-out programme was praised by speakers and attendees for its range of insider knowledge, glimpses behind the scenes of significant global events, practical advice and humour. Attendees ranged from students, history enthusiasts and industry professionals, with some travelling from as far as Canada, the U.S. and South America to attend. Highlights included discussions on the deception and discreet charm of con artists, the financial plights of Sir Walter Scott, the complex ethics of banking, and epic financial failures and why they didn’t need to happen.
Edward Chancellor, author of The Price of Time, said the 2024 conference was ‘one of the best I’ve ever attended’ and praised the ‘consistent high quality’ of the sessions available to attendees, a sentiment echoed by speaker Anja Shortland, author of Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business, who praised the blurring of ‘boundaries between the audience and speakers,’ calling it a ‘wonderful event and brilliant for everyone to share ideas and expertise in this relaxed atmosphere.’
Speakers confirmed for WOM2 include Professor Dame Alison Wolf DBE (The XX Factor: How Working Women are Creating a New Society), Emma Slade (Set Free: A Life Changing Journey from Banking to Buddhism in Bhutan), Sir Philip Augar (The Bank That Lived a Little), Helen Thompson (Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century), Oliver Bullough (Butler to the World), Russell Napier (The Solid Ground) and Felix Martin (Money: The Unauthorised Biography).
Committed to supporting and building financial knowledge among young people, the opening day, Friday 21st March, will be aimed towards schools, in collaboration with the Financial Times’ Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign. FLIC focuses on financial literacy education, giving young people the foundations for future prosperity, and helping help economically disadvantaged people out of deprivation.
Russell Napier, Keeper, The Library of Mistakes, said: “There is much in financial history that provides an insight as to how the future will enfold, and while we are living through a period of structural change it is not unprecedented. The second Weekend of Mistakes tackles our likely future relationships with money and finance through a broad remit and a lively range of topics. Come and join us at WoM2 and let our speakers’ understanding of how the world has worked in the past be your guide as to how it will work in the months and years ahead.”
Tom True, Director, Hay Castle Trust, said: ”After a sold-out pilot event last year, Hay Castle will be alive again with discussions around past mistakes, follies and manias and the lessons they hold for the way we live now. Pre-eminent economists, thinkers and authors will join together in this magical place to present a unique, challenging and entertaining weekend that I know everyone will be proud to be a part of.”
Tickets are now available from: www.weekendofmistakes.org
Weekend of Mistakes — Regular: £150
• Friday night to Sunday afternoon — 10 sessions with top experts and Friday welcome drinks.
Weekend of Mistakes — Premium: £285
• Friday night to Sunday afternoon — 10 sessions with top experts and Friday welcome drinks; plus three extra investment briefing sessions, over breakfast and lunch; and Saturday private networking drinks.
Weekend of Mistakes — Patron Pass: £1,200
• Everything included in premium tickets, plus access to Green Room; invitation to Speakers’ Dinner; help with travel and accommodation arrangements; guaranteed front-row seating; name recognition; invitations to London events.
Confirmed Speakers:
• Sir Philip Augar – author and former investment banker. A PhD in History, he has been speaking, writing and broadcasting about the challenges of modern capitalism and banking for twenty two years. He has written seven books, contributes to the FT, Sunday Times and the BBC. Philip has held a number of advisory and non-executive roles in the public and private sectors and chaired the panel reviewing post-18 education for the UK government in 2018-19. He was knighted in 2021.
• Daniela Barone Soares OBE – CEO of Snowball Impact Investment. She is also a non-executive director at InterContinental Hotels Group Plc and a trustee of the Institute for the Future of Work. Daniela holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSc in Economics from Unicamp, Brazil. Daniela was awarded an OBE at the King’s Birthday Honours list in 2024 for services to business and impact investing.
• Tamim Bayoumi – Visiting Professor at King’s College London working on macroeconomics and international finance. After graduating from Cambridge and Stanford Universities, he had a long and varied career at the IMF, including overseeing work on the World Economic Outlook and the U.S. He is also author of an FT Economics Book of the Year, Unfinished Business.
• Oliver Bullough – award-winning author and journalist from Hay, who writes about financial crime, kleptocracy and moneylaundering. His most recent book Butler to the World was called ‘razor-sharp’ by the FT, while Moneyland was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and won the Welsh non-fiction book of the year prize. His journalism appears in the Guardian, New York Times, Sunday Times and on the BBC.
• Terence Burns, Baron Burns GCB, – British economist, made a life peer in 1998 for his services as former Chief Economic Advisor and Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury. He served as Chairman of Ofcom from 2018 to 2020, and is currently a senior adviser to Santander UK, non-executive Chairman of Glas Cymru, and a non-executive director of Pearson Group plc.
• Nick Butler – energy economist and Visiting Professor in the Policy Institute at King’s College London. He was Group Vice President for Strategy and Policy at BP from 2002 to 2007 and subsequent senior policy adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
• Edward Chancellor – author of Devil Take the Hindmost, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2005, he published Crunch-Time for Credit?, an analysis of the ongoing credit boom in the US and UK. Edward has edited two investment books, Capital Account and Capital Returns. His latest book The Price of Time is the recipient of the 2023 Hayek Prize.
• Tom Coutts joined Baillie Gifford in 1999 and became a Partner in 2014. He has been a member of the International Growth Portfolio Construction Group since March 2008 and took over as Chair in July 2019. He previously spent time in UK and European equity teams, including six years as head of the European team up to 2017.
• Sir Martin Donnelly – former Permanent Secretary with expertise in business, trade and global economic issues, and four decades of experience shaping policy across Government and the private sector, in the UK and globally. He has written widely on international trade and economic issues, gender diversity and leadership.
• Tom Elliott – investment strategist consultant, helping multi-asset management companies with their asset allocation decisions. Tom previously worked for the Mattioli Woods Group as a Senior Strategist, and at JP Morgan Asset Management in London for 18 years, leaving at Executive Director level.
• Paul Greatbatch – former Partner & Portfolio Manager at Genesis Investment Management from 1994-2013, one the oldest specialist managers operating in Emerging Markets on behalf of large institutional clients. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Economy of King’s College London where he has given talks and organised events.
• Samuel Hughes – editor at Works in Progress, where he works on urbanism, architecture and public policy. He has previously worked as an advisor to Michael Gove in the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, as Head of Housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, and as a research fellow at the University of Oxford.
• Rachel Jenkins OBE – psychiatrist, epidemiologist and mental health policy maker. She is Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and International Mental Health Policy at Kings College London and formerly Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre (1997- 2012). She has provided policy support, research and training in the UK, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
• Izabella Kaminska – founder and editor of The Blind Spot. In February 2023, she also became Politico Europe’s senior finance editor, overseeing the growth of Politico’s financial coverage on a part-time basis. Izabella is an alumnus of the Financial Times, where she spent 13 years in reporting roles, most recently as the editor of FT Alphaville, the Financial Times’ award- winning markets and finance blog. Izabella was also an FT columnist and opinion writer focused on tech, finance, and markets.
• Christel Koop – Professor of Political Economy at King’s College London. Her research focuses on regulation, central banking and other areas of economic policy-making. She is particularly interested in the independence, accountability and legitimacy of technocratic decision-making. Christel holds a BA and MPhil degree in political science from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, and obtained her PhD degree in political and social sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
• George Littlejohn qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC in London before becoming a journalist with The Economist, specialising in financial and economic matters. He is now Senior Adviser at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), having conducted advisory work in financial centres across Europe, the Middle East and Asia over the past two decades.
• Felix Martin – macroeconomist and fund manager. He was educated in the UK, Italy, and the US, where he was a Fulbright scholar; and has degrees in classics, international relations, and economics. Martin is an associate of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York, and of the Centre for Global Studies in London. He is the author of Money: The Unauthorised Biography.
• David McWilliams – economist, author, podcaster and journalist. He founded the world’s only economics and stand-up comedy festival Kilkenomics — described by the Financial Times as “simply, the best economics conference in the world”. He writes a weekly column for the Irish Times and hosts The David McWilliams Podcast, which aims to make economics uncomplicated. He is the Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin.
• Russell Napier – author of The Solid Ground, an investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC, a business he now co-owns with D.C. Thomson. Russell has worked in the investment business for over 30 years and is author of the book Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms.
• James Newby, before joining NMITE, worked for the University of Surrey in a range of roles involving the leadership of teamsresponsible for most non-academic aspects of the University’s activities including Estates, IT, Commercial Services, Community relations, Fundraising and Institutional Governance.
• Jesse Norman – British politician who has served as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons since November 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been a Member of Parliament for Hereford and South Herefordshire since 2010. He served as a Minister in the Treasury, Foreign Office, Cabinet Office, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
• Gus O’Donnell served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the British Civil Service from 2005 to 2011, during which he oversaw the formation of the first coalition government since World War II. Prior to this, he was Permanent Secretary to the Treasury (2002–2005) and represented the UK on the IMF and World Bank Boards.
• Ed Richards – co-founder of Flint Global Ltd. Ed spent more than eight years as the Chief Executive of Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator. During this time he worked closely with the European Commission and was Vice-Chair of BEREC, the Body of the European Regulators. Earlier in his career Ed worked as an adviser to the UK Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street.
• Alice Sherwood – author of award-winning Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture. Currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at The Policy Institute at King’s College London, she has been a director of an open-source intelligence company, worked as a management consultant for Accenture, in retail strategy consultancy and private equity, and for the BBC in education and multimedia. Authenticity won a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction.
• Anja Shortland – Professor in Political Economy at King’s College London. She studied Engineering Science at Oxford and for her PhD in International Relations at LSE. Anja specialises in institutional economics and the economics of crime.
• Emma Slade was educated at Cambridge University and London University and attained the CFA qualification as a Chartered Financial Analyst. She had a very successful career as a Senior Financial Analyst for HSBC, largely based in Hong Kong from 1994-1999 and, later, in private equity and hedge fund analysis. In 2022 she became the first and only Western woman ever to be fully ordained in the Himalayas. In 2015 she set up the UK charity Opening Your Heart to Bhutan to help special needs children in Bhutan. The charity has raised £800,000 and played a major role in building the first special needs school in Bhutan.
• Merryn Somerset Webb – former founding editor of Moneyweek magazine in 2000. She remained at the magazine as Editor in Chief until late 2022. Merryn was also a Contributing Editor to and weekly columnist for the Financial Times until September 2022. She is currently a Senior Columnist at Bloomberg writing about wealth, investing and personal finance and hosts the ‘Merryn Talks Money’ podcast.
• Chris Swinson – Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University Business School. Formerly Senior Partner, BDO Chartered Accountants and President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
• Helen Thompson – Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. Her most recent book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century was shortlisted for the 2022 FT Business Book of the Year. She has written for, among other outlets, the FT, New York Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and Foreign Affairs.
• Alison Wolf DBE – Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London. She sits as a cross-bench peer (Baroness Wolf of Dulwich) in the UK House of Lords. She specialises in the relationship between education and the labour market. Publications include The XX Factor and Does Education Matter?.