We are pleased to share this year's Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures. Now on its third year, this annual series of free public lectures honours Scruton's legacy by inviting eminent public intellectuals to speak on four topics of civilisational importance. Each lecture and conversation will take place in the Sheldonian Theatre at the University of Oxford during October 2023 from 5 pm - 6:30 pm (British Summer Time). These events are free, but require advance registration to attend. For those unable to attend in-person, lectures will be recorded and made available online at a later date.
23 October 2023
'When Cowed Creatives Capitulate: Conformity and Bad Art'
Lionel Shriver In Conversation with Ruth Dudley Edwards
Lionel Shriver is a world-renowned author and journalist. She has written fifteen novels including We Need to Talk About Kevin (Serpent's Tail, 2003) which won the 2005 Orange Prize and was adapted into the eponymous 2011 film. She is widely published in the British press and is a columnist for The Spectator. Her most recent novel is Should We Stay or Should We Go (HarperCollins, 2021) and her non-fiction collection, Abominations: Selected Essays From a Career of Courting Self-Destruction, was published by Borough Press in 2022.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is an award-winning historian, biographer and crime fiction writer. Her journalism is published regularly across the British and Irish press in the Telegraph, Sunday Independent and The News Letter. Her Amiss and Troutbeck novels have won multiple prizes, as have her numerous works of non-fiction including Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure (Irish Academic Press, 2006) and Victor Gollancz: A Biography (Faber, 2012). Her most recent history is The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic (Oneworld, 2016).