Walking towards an understanding, acceptance or a resolution: Pilgrimage has been central to faith, culture and civilisation for millennia. Ranging across time and place, Victoria Preston's We Are Pilgrims investigates this crucial human pursuit while writer, actor and activist Justin Butcher relates the timely and transformative journey he made on foot from London to Jersualem in support of Palestinian rights and justice for all across the Middle East.
About Victoria Preston
Victoria Preston is a writer and strategic communication specialist. She has advised governments and private sector clients across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, China, Japan, and the Americas. She is an Associate Fellow at King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) which she helped launch in 2016. In the same year, she was invited to ‘enlist’, and consequently holds the rank of Lt. Colonel as a reservist in 77th Brigade. In 2021 she became a member of Scotia Group an international forum for dialogue convened in advance of COP26, Scotia Group comprises senior lawyers, politicians, scientists, communicators, and next-generation thinkers from across the globe. Victoria was a judge for the Group’s inaugural ‘Stanley Hoffman-Louise Richardson Prize’, which encourages young academics to develop policy proposals in support of net zero. Her first book ‘We are Pilgrims’ was published by Hurst in 2020. Podcasts on that topic can be found at Travel Writing world, and Books and Travel. She is currently working on ‘Tales of Women Warriors’, a brief history of women in combat.
About Justin Butcher
Justin Butcher is the multi-award winning writer of Scaramouche Jones, The Madness of George Dubya, The Devil’s Passion and many other plays, including six dramas for BBC Radio, and his acclaimed travelogue, Walking to Jerusalem, which tells the story of his 2017 walk from London to Jerusalem, calling for equal rights in the Holy Land. Working with UK human rights charity Amos Trust, he conceived, planned and jointly led the Just Walk to Jerusalem, a 5-month, 2000-mile pilgrimage on foot across Europe and the Middle East, marking the tenth year of the blockade of Gaza, the fiftieth year of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Alongside his long-term creative collaboration with Amos Trust, other creative projects in the field of Palestine advocacy include three plays written in collaboration with Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud: Go To Gaza, Drink The Sea (London & Edinburgh, 2009), Escape From Gaza (BBC Radio 4, 2011) and The Shroud Maker (Amnesty International UK, Greenwich Theatre & UK tour, 2018).
As performer, recent screen work includes Linus Primo in Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: Impossible Planet, adapted and directed by David Farr for Channel 4/Amazon US, and Ralph in Polly Steele’s 2017 film Let Me Go, with Juliet Stevenson.
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