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Dua Lipa and Patti Smith Talk at London Festival

Dua Lipa closed out a weekend of talks at the London Literature Festival on Sunday night, sharing the stage with Patti Smith before a full house at the Royal Festival Hall and earning a standing ovation. Through her Service95 Book Club, the singer put together a strand of this year's Southbank Centre festival that drew sold-out crowds to three events in a row, all of them devoted to books, music and creative work.

The Sunday conversation between the two performers ranged widely and turned on Smith's memoir, Bread of Angels. They talked about art as a way of healing, the craft of writing, and where lyrics meet prose. Smith looked back on her early artistic awakenings, her fierce independence and the lasting mark left by her late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith. The two also spoke gently about how writing can help us work through complicated feelings, and Smith left the audience with a simple reminder: "books are precious."

Saturday had been just as busy, with Lipa leading two headline sessions. In the first, she sat down with bestselling author Zadie Smith for a rare, detailed talk about her debut novel, White Teeth. Together they explored culture and class, what it is like to become famous young, and the way the book's characters speak to politics today. That evening, Lipa hosted a more intimate session with Canadian poet, singer and filmmaker Mustafa, with the pair sharing their love of poetry and reading aloud from his collection Nour.

Both the Zadie Smith and Patti Smith conversations were recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall and will appear as special episodes of the Service95 Book Club podcast. The platform, founded by Lipa, gives readers around the world author interviews, monthly book picks and new ways of looking at literature.

Lipa's Service95 programme at the London Literature Festival runs until Sunday, 1 November 2026. Still to come are Kae Tempest with Fierce Sounds, a panel called Re-Writing Male Tenderness, a Translated Fiction Showcase and English PEN's Censorship Live!

Photo credit: Pete Woodhead

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