An amazing night: thanks to our excellent speakers and to everyone for coming. 

For the first Salon of the year, we began 2012 with some Dark Romance.

So who better than screenwriter and lecturing legend John Foster? Who got to the heart of psychological drama in film, with a little help from directors Alain Renais, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Wong Kar-wai. John revealed just how our psychological selves can be unlocked through very clever filmmaking. A Film Studies master class in thirty mins.

Up next we had the President of PEN Lisa Appignanesi. Lisa is in the Guardian’s top twenty cultural commentators to watch, and in Salon’s top one. For our delectation, Lisa gave us a scientific treatment of ‘Love: An Anatomy of An Unruly Emotion’ and took the Salon crowd on an intimate and illuminating journey of how love shapes our lives and our world. What is it? Where’s mine? And can we live without it? Our questions about Love were finally answered.

And where would we be without poetry, the go-to place when feeling darkly brooding and romantic? Punk poet raconteur and maitresse of the Book Club Boutique, Salena Godden was on hand to explain its enduring allure. Kerrang Magazine described Salena as ‘everything the Daily Mail fears’, so house prices tumbled as Salena introduced us to her personal, poetical audio guide to love.

Finally, we danced to Salon's inaugural 3 minute rave.