Chairperson: Colin Murphy

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of the Bosnian War – the worst carnage to blight Europe since the reign of the Third Reich. Two decades on, has the act of bearing witness – to the events themselves, their perpetrators and victims – led towards truth and reconciliation? Or does the hatred still burn behind the fragile veil of peace?

Award-winning Observer journalist Ed Vulliamy was the first man to reveal the true horror of the war, when he penetrated two of Milosovic’s notorious death camps in 1992. Four years later he was the first journalist to testify at an international crimes court. His new book The War Is Dead, Long Live the War is a startling reassessment of this modern European tragedy.

Dubravka Ugrešić – Croatian-born novelist, essayist and scholar – is a major figure in European literature, and has been name-checked alongside such literary heavyweights as Nabokov and Milan Kundera. After the outbreak of the Balkans conflict, she took a firm anti-war and anti-nationalist stance, leaving the country under harsh and persistent media and state harassment in 1993.

This timely debate examines the issues and explores the legacy.