Sarah Wynn-Williams, once Facebook’s director of global public policy, gives the annual Orwell Lecture on power and technology, introduced by Cate Blanchett.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, formerly director of global public policy at Facebook, gives the Orwell Lecture 2026 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank on Thursday 26 November 2026. Cate Blanchett introduces her.
The lecture has been given every year since 1989 in memory of George Orwell. Speakers may take any subject Orwell might have cared about, and past lecturers include Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Steven Pinker and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The Orwell Foundation, a charity, organises it with support from the Charlotte Aitken Trust. This is its third year at the Southbank Centre.
Wynn-Williams is a former New Zealand diplomat and international lawyer. She joined Facebook after pitching herself for a job there, and her 2025 memoir of those years, Careless People, became a bestseller.
Her lecture argues that governments have ceded power to a few technology companies, and that individuals have given up privacy, attention and voice. It also covers the use of AI in weaponry.
Blanchett, the actor and producer, co-founded the Human Consent Registry. It is a free register where people can control how AI uses their work, name, image and likeness.