Programme
Saturday
Note: The Festival has two programmes of talks that run in parallel: at the Vinson and Ondaatje Lecture Theatres. Festival-goers may choose talks from either programme.
Coffee is available in the Vinson Building from 09:00
Vinson Lecture Theatre Programme
10:30-11:30
Witches of the New World
MALCOLM GASKILL explores the tensions of a troubled society in the early days of the European settlement of America torn between a supernatural world and the age of Enlightenment.
12:00-13:00
The Siege of ‘Loyalty’ House
JESSIE CHILDS tells the story of the siege of Basing House, one of the most dramatic events of the Civil Wars.
Lunch 13:00-14:00
14:00-15:00
The Dissolution of the Monasteries
JAMES G. CLARK tells the dramatic story of Henry VIII’s brief but revolutionary war on religious houses, which transformed England forever.
15:30-16:30
Rome’s Richest Man
PETER STOTHARD looks at the remarkable life and tragic demise of the Roman tycoon, and the intertwining of money, ambition and political power.
17:00-18:00
Catherine’s Great Advance
LUCY WARD shows how, with the help of a Quaker doctor from Britain, Catherine the Great of Russia led one of the first successful vaccination campaigns.
19:00-20:00
Act of Oblivion
ROBERT HARRIS, the bestselling historical novelist, talks about his latest book, Act of Oblivion, a thrilling manhunt set during the Civil Wars.
Ondaatje Lecture Theatre, Radcliffe Centre, Programme
10:30-11:30
Energy, History and Conflict
HELEN THOMPSON reveals how much of the world’s curent crises originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies.
12:00-13:00
David Stirling and the SAS
GAVIN MORTIMER questions the many myths that grew up around the man who founded the Special Air Service during the Second World War.
Lunch 13:00-14:00
14:00-15:00
Oxford Between the Wars
DAISY DUNN revisits the Oxford idealised by Evelyn Waugh, with its cast of eccentric characters united by their love of the Classics.
15:30-16:30
An Empire at War
ROBERT LYMAN explains how the British Empire in Asia turned the agonising defeat of Singapore in 1942 into victory over Japan in 1945.
17:00-18:00
Napoleon the Gardener
RUTH SCURR offers a new perspective on the great French general, by examining his life-long love of horticulture.