Mohamed, Osama and Steve

It has been a mammoth week of lectures

It has been a mammoth week of lectures

with some super-stellar names. We continued our partnership with

booksellers Blackwell's on Tuesday as we welcomed poet Simon Armitage to the house all the way from the hills in Yorkshire. Simon treated attendees to a reading from his new book, Gig: the life and times of a rock star fantasist as he regaled us with tales of a life intertwined with music, gig-going and poetry.

On Wednesday we saw a totally different crowd of lecture-goers stream into the Great Room as Charlie Leadbeater and Matthew Taylor discussed the ever-changing and collaborative nature of world of the web. This coversation was continued by Jonathan Zittrain

on Thursday evening as he pondered the future of the internet. Lucky

lecture-goers received a free copy of his new book with the generous

support of AOL.

For our weekly RSA Thursday we were delighted to have Steve Coll over from America as he lifted the lid on the Bin Laden family and gave some interesting insights into a family whose power and money have been used to frighteningly varied ends.

We are pleased to also announce a few new additions to our May events programme;

On Tuesday 6 May, at 1pm Ray Tallis will be speaking about the most complicated part of our anatomy, the head.

RSA Screens continue at a gallop as we welcome director, Joshua Dugdale for a screening of his carefully crafted documentary, The Unwinking Gaze in which he followed the Dalai Lama for 3 years chronicling the many challenges that he faces.

And to continue our partnerhsip with Channel 4 we will be screening film-maker and journalist, Jon Ronson's Reverend Death.

We hope to see you all soon at some of the fantastic events

that we have coming up over the next few weeks. As always, our events

are all available as podcasts so if you missed any of this week's four

remarkable and varied speakers you can listen again.