Shami Chakrabarti, British Library

Shami Chakrabarti joined the human rights advocacy group Liberty in 2001, and two years later was appointed its director. For more than a decade, she’s been campaigning tirelessly, accruing a dizzying list of accolades along the way, including a CBE and honorary degrees from a total of five different universities.

In 2014, Chakrabarti wrote On Liberty. A thoughtful examination of the impact of Western anti-terrorism legislation on civil liberties, the book proved a vitally necessary exploration of one of our age’s thorniest issues.

On November 30, Chakrabarti is to deliver the fourth Reading Agency Lecture, an annual event organised by the eponymous literary charity in which speakers explain why reading matters to them. Previous years have seen authors Jeanette Winterson, Russell Brand and Neil Gaiman take to the stage to discuss the crucial role that literature has to play in creating a healthy society.

For her lecture, Chakrabarti is set to discuss reading and empathy in the context of human rights issues. Expect a politically engaged and powerfully argued paean to the written word.