Skip to main content

Jonathan Sumption – The New Roundheads: Politics and the Misuse of History

To Be Confirmed Oxford, United Kingdom

Jonathan Sumption is a renowned historian and former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Four instalments of his critically acclaimed history of the Hundred Years’ War have been published between 1990 and 2015, all by Faber & Faber. The fifth and final volume, Triumph and Illusion, was published in late 2023.

After his lecture, Lord Sumption was interviewed on stage by the eminent journalist and broadcaster John Simpson.

Free

John Gray – What is Living and What is Dead in Liberalism?

To Be Confirmed Oxford, United Kingdom

John Gray is a world-renowned philosopher, political theorist and intellectual historian. He has an asteroid named after him and until 2008 he was School Professor of European Thought at the LSE. He now writes principally for the New Statesman and has authored over twenty books including the bestselling Seven Types of Atheism, Straw Dogs, Black Mass, The Soul of the Marionette, The Silence of Animals and Feline Philosophy. His latest book, published by Penguin in September 2023, is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism.

After his lecture, John Gray was joined on stage for a discussion by the world-leading ethicist Prof Nigel Biggar CBE.

Free

Lord Tony Sewell – The End of ‘Race’: Agency & Self-Affirmation

To Be Confirmed Oxford, United Kingdom

In the Pharos Spring 2024 Lecture, Tony Sewell explores the drivers of black success in Britain today, rejecting victimhood and low expectations while embracing a visionary view of black life, in which achievement has little to do with ‘race’ and everything to do with agency and self-affirmation. Disrupting the very idea of ‘Blackness’ itself, Lord Sewell presses for the collective humanity that is now so unpopular in the age of ‘identity politics’ and provides an antidote to the idea that the lives of black people should be a decolonising project. Freedom from mental slavery is knowing how to be free, not struggling to be. After his lecture, Lord Sewell was  joined for a discussion on stage by Deroy Murdock.

Born in Brixton, Lord Tony Sewell CBE is an internationally-respected author, educator, and statesman. His path-breaking charity ‘Generating Genius’ has helped hundreds of young black Britons to forge careers in STEM. In July 2020, he was appointed Chair of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities: the Sewell Report made him the target of a cancellation effort by his critics, but his recommendations now form the basis for the government's policy on tackling racial inequalities. Sewell was elevated to the House of Lords in 2022. He was honoured by the government of Jamaica in 2023. His new book, Black Success: The Surprising Truth will be published by Forum in March.

Deroy Murdock is a prominent political commentator, currently contributing editor at the National Review and formerly Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Free