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Second Act: what Late Bloomers can tell you about success

  • Bell House Dulwich 27 College Rd England, SE21 7BG United Kingdom (map)

Join us to hear writer and critic Henry Oliver discuss the ideas behind his latest book, ‘Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life’

Have you ever dreamed that you might be far more successful than you are today? Our society tells us over and over that if we're going to achieve anything, we'd better do it while we're young. But whether you're at the start of your career, sensing you're on the wrong path, or feeling unsettled later in life, you're likely wondering just how to reinvent yourself? Have you left it too late? 

Henry Oliver has answers. Late bloomers - individuals who experience significant success later in life - offer lessons for people who feel frustrated. His book encourages people to think about themselves as potential late bloomers and to discover and encourage and advocate for late blooming in others. After all, it's never too late to discover our hidden talents and our accomplish our goals - the road to success is never as straightforward as we are lead to believe. Julia Child didn't discover that she loved to cook until she was thirty-seven. Vera Wang started her design business at forty. And Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment in his sixties.

Come along for wonderful storytelling with fascinating new research, to shift expectations around our life trajectories. You'll discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, pairing the newest insights from psychology and neuroscience with late bloomers' remarkable life stories, from Penelope Fitzgerald to Samuel Johnson, from Frank Lloyd-Wright to Malcolm X.