PEACE campaigner Maya Evans, who made national headlines when she was arrested for reading the names of dead British soldiers at the Cenotaph in London, is giving a talk in Stroud.

Hosted by the Mid-Gloucestershire Group of Amnesty International, the free talk will be staged at the British School in Gloucester Street at 7.30pm on Friday, March 16.

Maya, who is from Hastings in East Sussex, became the first person to be convicted under new laws banning unauthorised demonstrations within 1km of Parliament following her protest in 2005.

She read out the names of 97 British service personnel who had lost their lives in the Iraq conflict by that time, while a fellow campaigner listed the names of dead Iraqi civilians.

She was found guilty of breaching the then newly introduced Serious Organised Crime and Police Act and given a conditional discharge.

In 2007 the civil rights group Liberty awarded her its annual Peter Duffy Award for orchestrating the protest and she later a wrote a book, Naming the Dead: A Serious Crime, detailing her arrest and trial.

Currently she is involved in a bid to take the Ministry of Defence to court over alleged civilian killings by British forces in Afghanistan.