On March 5 2011, the organisers of World Book Night gave away one million books across Britain and Ireland. They marked this mass celebration of the power and potential of reading with a one-off event in London’s Trafalgar Square, where authors including Alan Bennett, John Le Carré, Nick Cave and Margaret Atwood all gathered to read extracts from their work to a crowd of book lovers. Alan Bennett reads from A Life Like Other People’s, his memoir of his parents’ marriage, while John Le Carré engages a hushed crowd as he reads from his 1965 breakthrough novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. HiBROW was right at the heart of this most public of literary gatherings, filming the performances and talking exclusively to many of the writers involved, from DBC Pierre and Lemn Sissay to Tracy Chevalier and Philip Pullman. In conversation with HiBROW, many of these world-beating writers considered questions and ideas close to their hearts. Together, their thoughts offer a remarkable insight into the past, present and future of literature.