‘Creed. Colour. Country. Culture. All these things can become forms of confinement, conceptual mistakes underwriting moral ones. But that’s not to deny that they can also give contours to our freedom. Social identities connect the small scale where we live our lives alongside our kith and kin with larger movements, causes, and concerns. They can make a wider world intelligible, alive, and urgent.’ So says philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah in the last of his 2016 Reith Lectures. In this Literature Matters event, coinciding with the publication of his new work, The Lies That Bind, Appiah continues to examine identity, weaving personal anecdote and literary example, exploring the tangled contradictions within the stories that define us. In conversation with BBC journalist and presenter Razia Iqbal, Appiah discusses how the stories we read and tell shape who we are.

We are grateful to the TLS for supporting this event.