The 2026 Goldsmiths' Company Lecture - Money, Metal and Meaning: The things we hold dear

In this year's Goldsmiths' Company Lecture, anthropologist, economist and author Gillian Tett traces the deep entanglement of metal and money from ancient coinage to digital currency, asking how societies create, preserve — and, sometimes, lose — their sense of value. Connecting craftsmanship, commerce and civilisation, Tett views precious metals through both economic and cultural lenses, exploring how they shape luxury and craft-led industries and why, in an increasingly weightless financial world, they endure as stores of value.

Gillian Tett is Provost of King's College, Cambridge, a member of the editorial board for the Financial Times, and a columnist covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues.

Previously, Tett chaired the FT Editorial Board and US managing editor from 2013 to 2019. She has also served as assistant editor for the FT’s markets coverage, capital markets editor, deputy editor of the Lex column, Tokyo bureau chief, Tokyo correspondent, a London-based economics reporter and a reporter in Russia and Brussels.

Tett is the author of Anthrovision and The Silo Effect, both of which look at the global economy and financial system through the lens of cultural anthropology. She also authored Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe, a 2009 New York Times bestseller and Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards.

Tett has received honorary degrees from the University of Exeter, the University of Miami, St Andrew’s, London University (Goldsmiths), Carnegie Mellon, Baruch and an honorary doctorate from Lancaster University in the UK. The recipient of numerous awards, she has an OBE for her services to financial journalism.