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The Nigerian born writer, Wole Soyinka, is a playwright, poet and a political activist. His novel, The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka, recounts his experience of his unlawful imprisonment and the effects of solitary confinement over a period of 22 months during the Nigerian Civil war. Subsequently he has been an outspoken critic of many military dictators and in 1986 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In his first lecture, Wole Soyinka considers the changes since the Cold War, the nature of fear and its impact on individuals and society. He explores how fear is used for positive motives as well as negative and how it's changed over time. He outlines that there is a new era of fear that pre-dates the events of 11th September. Wole Soyinka explains why for him 1989 was the moment when the world first appeared to have stood still.