Romanes Lecture

1890s • 1892 William Ewart Gladstone — An Academic Sketch (A report of the speech is available in the digital archive of The Nation.) • 1893 Thomas Henry Huxley — Evolution and Ethics (See also a contemporary review of Huxley's lecture) • 1894 August Weismann — The Effect of External Influences upon Development • 1895 Holman Hunt — The Obligations of the Universities towards Art • 1896 Mandell Creighton — The English National Character • 1897 John Morley — Machiavelli • 1898 Archibald Geikie — Types of Scenery and their Influence on Literature • 1899 Richard Claverhouse Jebb — Humanism in Education 1900s • 1900 James Murray — The Evolution of English Lexicography (Also available at The Oxford English Dictionary site.) • 1901 Lord Acton — The German school of history • 1902 James Bryce — The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind • 1903 Oliver Lodge — Modern views on matter • 1904 Courtenay Ilbert — Montesquieu • 1905 Ray Lankester — Nature and Man • 1906 William Paton Ker — Sturla the Historian • 1907 Lord Curzon — Frontiers • 1908 Henry Scott Holland — ''The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy''' • 1909 Arthur Balfour — Criticism and Beauty 1910s • 1910 Theodore Roosevelt — Biological Analogies in History • 1911 J.B. Bury — Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil • 1912 Henry Montagu Butler — Lord Chatham as an Orator • 1913 William Mitchell Ramsay — The Imperial Peace: an ideal in European history • 1914 J. J. Thomson – The Atomic Theory • 1915 E. B. Poulton – Science and the Great War • 1916 • 1917 • 1918 Herbert Henry Asquith — Some Aspects of The Victorian Age • 1919 1920s • 1920 William Ralph Inge — The Idea of Progress • 1921 Joseph Bédier — Roland à Roncevaux • 1922 Arthur Stanley Eddington — The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought • 1923 John Burnet — Ignorance • 1924 John Masefield — Shakespeare & spiritual life • 1925 William Henry Bragg — The Crystalline State • 1926 G.M. Trevelyan — The Two-Party System in English Political History • 1927 Frederic George Kenyon — Museums and National Life • 1928 D. M. S. Watson — Palaeontology and the Evolution of Man • 1929 Sir John William Fortescue — The Vicissitudes of Organized Power 1930s • 1930 Winston Churchill — Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem • 1931 John Galsworthy — The Creation of Character in Literature • 1932 Berkley Moynihan — The Advance of Medicine • 1933 Henry Hadow — The Place of Music among the Arts • 1934 William Rothenstein — Form and content in English Painting • 1935 Gilbert Murray — Then and Now • 1936 Donald Francis Tovey — Normality and Freedom in Music • 1937 Harley Granville-Barker — On Poetry in Drama • 1938 Lord Robert Cecil — Peace and Pacifism • 1939 Laurence Binyon — Art and freedom 1940s • 1940 Édouard Herriot, lecture not delivered • 1941 William Hailey — The position of colonies in a British commonwealth of nations • 1942 Norman H. Baynes — Intellectual liberty and totalitarian claims • 1943 Julian Huxley — Evolutionary Ethics (50 years after his grandfather gave the lecture) • 1944 G. M. Young — Mr Gladstone • 1945 André Siegfried — Characteristics and Limits of our Western Civilization • 1946 John Anderson — The machinery of government • 1947 Lord Samuel — Creative Man • 1948 Lord Brabazon of Tara — Forty years of flight • 1949 Claud Schuster — Mountaineering 1950s • 1950 John Cockcroft — The development and future of nuclear energy • 1951 Maurice Hankey — The science and art of government • 1952 Lewis Bernstein Namier — Monarchy and the party system • 1953 Viscount Simon — Crown and Commonwealth • 1954 Kenneth Clark — Moments of Vision • 1955 Albert Richardson — The significance of the fine arts • 1956 Thomas Beecham — John Fletcher • 1957 Ronald Knox — On English translation • 1958 Edward Bridges — The State and the Arts • 1959 Lord Denning — From Precedent to Precedent 1960s • 1960 Edgar Douglas Adrian — Factors in mental evolution • 1961 Vincent Massey — Canadians and Their Commonwealth • 1962 Cyril Radcliffe — Mountstuart Elphinstone • 1963 Violet Bonham Carter — The impact of personality in politics (45 years after her father gave the lecture) • 1964 Harold Hartley — Man and Nature • 1965 Noel Annan — The Disintegration of an Old Culture • 1966 Maurice Bowra — A case for humane learning • 1967 Rab Butler — The Difficult Art of Autobiography • 1968 Peter Medawar — Science and Literature • 1969 Lord Holford — A World of Room 1970s • 1970 Isaiah Berlin — Fathers and Children: Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament (Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 14 February 1971) • 1971 Raymond Aron — On the Use and Abuse of Futurology • 1972 Karl Popper — On the Problem of Body and Mind • 1973 Ernst Gombrich — Art History and the Social Sciences • 1974 Solly Zuckermann — Advice and Responsibility • 1975 Iris Murdoch — The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the artists • 1976 Edward Heath — The Future of a Nation • 1977 Peter Hall — Form and Freedom in the Theatre • 1978 George Porter — Science and the Human Purpose • 1979 Hugh Casson — The arts and the academies 1980s • 1980 Jo Grimond — Is political philosophy based on a mistake? • 1981 A.J.P. Taylor — War in Our Time • 1982 Andrew Huxley — Biology, the Physical Sciences and the Mind • 1983 Owen Chadwick — Religion and Society • 1984 • 1985 Miriam Louisa Rothschild — Animals and Man • 1986 Nicholas Henderson — Different Approaches to Foreign Policy • 1987 Norman St. John-Stevas — The Omnipresence of Walter Bagehot • 1988 Hugh Trevor-Roper — The Lost Moments of History (A revised version at the NYRB.) • 1989 1990s • 1990 Saul Bellow — The Distracted Public • 1991 Gianni Agnelli — Europe: Many Legacies, One Future • 1992 Robert Blake — Gladstone, Disraeli and Queen Victoria (The Centenary Lecture) • 1993 Henry Harris — ''Hippolyte's club foot: the medical roots of realism in modern European literature'' • 1994 Lord Slynn of Hadley — Europe and Human Rights • 1995 Walter Bodmer — The Book of Man • 1996 Roy Jenkins — The Chancellorship of Oxford: A Contemporary View with a Little History • 1997 Mary Robinson — Realizing Human Rights:"Take hold of it boldly and duly..." • 1998 Amartya Sen — Reason before identity. • 1999 Tony Blair — The Learning Habit 2000s • 2000 William G. Bowen — At a Slight Angle to the Universe: The University in a Digitized, Commercialized Age • 2001 Neil MacGregor — The Perpetual Present. The Ideal of Art for All • 2002 Tom Bingham — Personal Freedom and the Dilemma of Democracies • 2003 Paul Nurse — The great ideas of biology • 2004 Rowan Williams — Religious lives • 2005 Shirley M. Tilghman — Strange bedfellows: science, politics, and religion • 2006 Lecture was to have been delivered by Gordon Brown, but was postponed • 2007 Dame Gillian Beer — Darwin and the Consciousness of Others • 2008 Muhammad Yunus — Poverty Free World: When? How? • 2009 Gordon Brown — Science and our Economic Future 2010s • 2011 (June) Andrew Motion — Bonfire of the Humanities • 2011 (November) Martin Rees — The Limits of Science • 2014 Steven Chu — Our Energy and Climate Change Challenges and Solutions • 2015 Mervyn King — A Disequilibrium in the World Economy • 2016 Patricia Scotland — The Commonwealth of Nations • 2018 (June) Hillary Clinton – Making the Case for Democracy • 2018 (November) Vint Cerf – The Pacification of Cyberspace • 2019 Eliza Manningham-Buller - The Profession of Intelligence 2020s • 2020 Brenda Hale - Law in a Time of Crisis • 2021 Dame Catherine Elizabeth Bingham, DBE - From wartime to peacetime: Lessons from the Vaccine Taskforce • 2022 Micheál Martin - The Centre Will Hold: Liberal Democracy and the Populist Threat • 2024 Geoffrey Hinton - Will digital intelligence replace biological intelligence • 2025 Mishal Husain - Empire, Identity and the Search for Reason ==See also==