Reith Lecture
Encyclopedia
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 lecture
Lecture
thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...

s given by leading figures of the day, commissioned by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 and the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...

.

The Reith Lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Sir John Reith
John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, KT, GCVO, GBE, CB, TD, PC was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom...

, the corporation's first director-general.

Lord Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest.

The very first Reith lecturer was the philosopher and Nobel laureate, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

. The first female lecturer was Dame Margery Perham in 1961, who spoke on the impact of colonialism in her series of talks entitled The Colonial Reckoning. The youngest Reith Lecturer was Colin Blakemore
Colin Blakemore
Professor Colin Blakemore, Ph.D., FRS, FMedSci, HonFSB, HonFRCP, is a British neurobiologist who is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and University of Warwick specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was formerly Chief Executive of the British Medical...

, who was 30 years old in 1976 when he broadcast six lectures on the brain and consciousness, titled Mechanics of the Mind.

The Reith Lectures Archive

In June 2011 BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 announced the publication of the BBC's Reith Lectures archive . This included the publication of two podcasts featuring over 240 lectures from 1948 to the present day, as well as streamed online audio, and the complete written transcripts to the entire Reith Lectures archive:


The BBC said it had discovered some of the audio archive of the Reith Lectures was missing from its library and appealed to the public to contact the production team if they owned copies of any of the missing lectures.

1940s

  • 1948 Bertrand Russell
    Bertrand Russell
    Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

    , Authority and the Individual
  • 1949 Robert Birley
    Robert Birley
    Sir Robert Birley was an English educationalist who was head master of Charterhouse School, then Eton College, and an anti-apartheid campaigner.-Biography:...

    , Britain in Europe
  • Transcripts

1950s

  • 1950 John Zachary Young
    John Zachary Young
    John Zachary Young FRS , generally known as "JZ" or "JZY", was an English zoologist and neurophysiologist, described as "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century .....

    , Doubt and Certainty in Science
  • 1951 Lord Radcliffe, Power and the State
  • 1952 Arnold J. Toynbee
    Arnold J. Toynbee
    Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...

    , The World and the West
  • 1953 Robert Oppenheimer
    Robert Oppenheimer
    Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...

    , Science and the Common Understanding
  • 1954 Oliver Franks, Britain and the Tide of World Affairs
  • 1955 Nikolaus Pevsner
    Nikolaus Pevsner
    Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...

    , The Englishness of English Art
  • 1956 Edward Appleton, Science and the Nation
  • 1957 George F. Kennan
    George F. Kennan
    George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...

    , Russia, the Atom and the West
  • 1958 Bernard Lovell
    Bernard Lovell
    Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell OBE, FRS is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.-Early Life:...

    , The Individual and the Universe
  • 1959 Peter Medawar
    Peter Medawar
    Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CBE FRS was a British biologist, whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants...

    , The Future of Man
  • Transcripts

1960s

  • 1960 Edgar Wind
    Edgar Wind
    Edgar Wind was a German-born British interdisciplinary art historian, specializing in iconology in the Renaissance era. He was a member of the school of art historians associated with Aby Warburg and the Warburg Institute as well as the first Professor of art history at Oxford University...

    , Art and Anarchy
  • 1961 Margery Perham, The Colonial Reckoning
  • 1962 George Carstairs, This Island Now
  • 1963 Albert Sloman, A University in the Making
  • 1964 Leon Bagrit
    Leon Bagrit
    Sir Leon Bagrit was a leading British industrialist and pioneer of automation.Born to Russian-Jewish parents in Kiev, Ukraine , Sir Leon studied law at Birkbeck College in the University of London, formed his own company in 1935, and for many years headed the revamped firm of Elliott-Automation...

    , The Age of Automation
  • 1965 Robert Gardiner
    Robert Gardiner
    Robert Gardiner may refer to:*Robert Gardiner * Sir Robert Septimus Gardiner , English businessman*Robert Gardiner actor in Maidstone who plays a Secret Service Chief*Robert Gardiner of Gardiner's Island...

    , World of Peoples
  • 1966 John K. Galbraith
    John Kenneth Galbraith
    John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...

    , The New Industrial State
  • 1967 Edmund Leach
    Edmund Leach
    Sir Edmund Ronald Leach was a British social anthropologist of whom it has been said:"It is no exaggeration to say that in sheer versatility, originality, and range of writing he was and still is difficult to match among the anthropologists of the English speaking world".-Personal and academic...

    , A Runaway World
  • 1968 Lester Pearson, In the Family of Man
  • 1969 Frank Fraser Darling
    Frank Fraser Darling
    Sir Frank Fraser Darling was an English ecologist, ornithologist, farmer, conservationist and author, who is strongly associated with the highlands and islands of Scotland.-Early life:...

    , Wilderness and Plenty
  • Transcripts

1970s

  • 1970 Donald Schon
    Donald Schön
    Donald Alan Schön was an influential thinker in developing the theory and practice of reflective professional learning in the twentieth century.- Education and career :...

    , Change and Industrial Society
  • 1971 Richard Hoggart
    Richard Hoggart
    Herbert Richard Hoggart is a British academic and public figure, whose career has covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with a special concern for British popular culture.-Career:...

    , Only Connect
  • 1972 Andrew Schonfield, Europe: Journey to an Unknown Destination
  • 1973 Alastair Buchan
    Alastair Francis Buchan
    The Hon. Alastair Francis Buchan CBE was a leading writer on defence studies in the 1970s.-Career:Born the son of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir and educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, Buchan joined the Canadian Army and saw active service in World War II...

    , Change Without War
  • 1974 Ralf Dahrendorf
    Ralf Dahrendorf
    Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Baron Dahrendorf, KBE, FBA was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician....

    , The New Liberty
  • 1975 Daniel Boorstin, America and the World Experience
  • 1976 Colin Blakemore
    Colin Blakemore
    Professor Colin Blakemore, Ph.D., FRS, FMedSci, HonFSB, HonFRCP, is a British neurobiologist who is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and University of Warwick specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was formerly Chief Executive of the British Medical...

    , Mechanics of the Mind
  • 1977 A. H. Halsey, Change in British Society
  • 1978 Edward Norman
    Edward Norman
    Edward Robert Norman was Canon Chancellor of York Minster and is an ecclesiastical historian.Norman was educated at the Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Walthamstow, London. He won an Open Scholarship to Selwyn College, Cambridge, of which he was a Fellow , before moving to Jesus College as a...

    , Christianity and the World
  • 1979 Ali Mazrui
    Ali Mazrui
    Ali Al'amin Mazrui is an academic and political writer on African and Islamic studies and North-South relations. He is an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York.-Education:Mazrui...

    , The African Condition
  • Transcripts

1980s

  • 1980 Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, Unmasking Medicine
  • 1981 Laurence Martin
    Laurence Martin
    Sir Laurence Woodward Martin Kt DL is a former Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University.-Career:Educated at St Austell Grammar School, Christ's College, Cambridge and Yale University, Martin joined the Royal Air Force as a Flying Officer in 1948. He became Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at...

    , The Two Edged Sword
  • 1982 Denis Donoghue
    Denis Donoghue
    Denis Donoghue is an Irish literary critic. He is currently the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University....

    , The Arts Without Mystery
  • 1983 Douglas Wass
    Douglas Wass
    Sir Douglas Wass was Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury from 1974 to 1983 and served as joint head of the civil service in 1981.- External Links :*...

    , Government and the Governed
  • 1984 John Searle
    John Searle
    John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

    , Minds, Brains and Science
  • 1985 David Henderson
    David Henderson
    David Henderson may refer to:*David B. Henderson , prominent U.S. politician of the 1890s and 1900s*David Henderson , senior British Army and, later, RAF officer...

    , Innocence and Design
  • 1986 Lord McCluskey, Law, Justice and Democracy
  • 1987 Alexander Goehr
    Alexander Goehr
    Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and Schoenberg pupil Walter Goehr. In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955–56 he joined Oliver Messiaen's...

    , The Survival of the Symphony
  • 1988 Geoffrey Hosking
    Geoffrey Hosking
    Geoffrey Alan Hosking is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and formerly Leverhulme Research Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London....

    , The Rediscovery of Politics
  • 1989 Jacques Darras, Beyond the Tunnel of History
  • Transcripts

1990s

  • 1990 Jonathan Sacks
    Jonathan Sacks
    Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks, Kt is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. His Hebrew name is Yaakov Zvi...

    , The Persistence of Faith
  • 1991 Steve Jones
    Steve Jones (biologist)
    John Stephen Jones is a Welsh geneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on...

    , The Language of Genes
  • There were no Reith Lectures in 1992
  • 1993 Edward Said
    Edward Said
    Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...

    , Representation of the Intellectual
  • 1994 Marina Warner, Managing Monsters
  • 1995 Richard Rogers
    Richard Rogers
    Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....

    , Sustainable City
  • 1996 Jean Aitchison
    Jean Aitchison
    Jean Aitchison is a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford....

    , The Language Web
  • 1997 Patricia Williams, The Genealogy of Race
  • 1998 John Keegan
    John Keegan
    Sir John Keegan OBE FRSL is a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He has published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle.-Life and career:John...

    , War in Our World
  • 1999 Anthony Giddens
    Anthony Giddens
    Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...

    , The Runaway World
  • Transcripts

2000s

  • 2000 Chris Patten
    Chris Patten
    Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, CH, PC , is the last Governor of British Hong Kong, a former British Conservative politician, and the current chairman of the BBC Trust....

    , Sir John Browne
    John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley
    Edmund John Philip Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley, FRS FREng is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was group Chief Executive of BP until his resignation on 1 May 2007...

    , Thomas Lovejoy
    Thomas Lovejoy
    Dr. Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III is chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation, and president of the Heinz Center for Science,...

    , Gro Harlem Brundtland
    Gro Harlem Brundtland
    Gro Harlem Brundtland is a Norwegian Social democratic politician, diplomat, and physician, and an international leader in sustainable development and public health. She served three terms as Prime Minister of Norway , and has served as the Director General of the World Health Organization...

    , Vandana Shiva
    Vandana Shiva
    Vandana Shiva , is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D...

    , Charles, Prince of Wales
    Charles, Prince of Wales
    Prince Charles, Prince of Wales is the heir apparent and eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Since 1958 his major title has been His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. In Scotland he is additionally known as The Duke of Rothesay...

    , Respect for the Earth
  • 2001 Tom Kirkwood, The End of Age
  • 2002 Onora O'Neill, A Question of Trust
  • 2003 Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
    Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
    Vilayanur Subramanian "Rama" Ramachandran, born 1951, is a neuroscientist known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics...

    , The Emerging Mind
  • 2004 Wole Soyinka
    Wole Soyinka
    Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

    , Climate of Fear
  • 2005 Lord Broers, The Triumph of Technology
  • 2006 Daniel Barenboim
    Daniel Barenboim
    Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....

    , In the Beginning was Sound
  • 2007 Jeffrey Sachs
    Jeffrey Sachs
    Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments in the...

    , Bursting at the Seams
  • 2008 Professor Jonathan Spence
    Jonathan Spence
    Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several...

    , Chinese Vistas
  • 2009 Michael Sandel
    Michael Sandel
    Michael J. Sandel is an American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for the Harvard course 'Justice' which is available to , and for his critique of Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice...

    , A New Citizenship
  • Transcripts

2010s

  • 2010 Martin Rees, Scientific Horizons
  • 2011 Aung San Suu Kyi
    Aung San Suu Kyi
    Aung San Suu Kyi, AC is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, her National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained...

     and Baroness Manningham-Buller, Securing Freedom
  • Transcripts

External links

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