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Adrian-tinniswood-2 — Adrian Tinniswood

The Royal Society and the Invention of Modern Science

Adrian Tinniswood

Wednesday, 1 April 2020

6:00pm

1 hour

Bodleian: Divinity School

£7 - £12.50

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Architectural and social historian Adrian Tinniswood explains why The Royal Society has been at the forefront of cultural life in Britain and across the globe for more than 350 years.

The Royal Society received its charter from Charles II in 1662. Its journal, Philosophical Transactions, first published in 1665, was the first scientific journal and is the world’s longest-running scientific journal. The 8,000 fellows elected to the society so far include all of the leading scientists of the last four centuries, including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee and Stephen Hawking.

Tinniswood has worked for and with the National Trust for more than 30 years. He is author of 14 books including The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars and was awarded the OBE in 2013 for services to heritage.

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The Spanish Embassy: supporters of the programme of Spanish literature and culture

The Cervantes Institute, London

Festival information:

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

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Supported by the Delegation of the European Union to the UK

Festival cultural partner

Festival ideas partner

The Spanish Embassy: supporters of the programme of Spanish literature and culture

The Cervantes Institute, London

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