Programme

Saturday

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.

18:00-19:00
Drinks Reception

Drinks Reception for Ticket-Holders in the Vinson Building Foyer.

Ondaatje Lecture Theatre, Radcliffe Centre, Programme

10:30-11:30
Energy, History and Conflict

HELEN THOMPSON reveals how much of the world’s current 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.