Romanes Lecture

List of Romanes lecturers and lecture subjects

1890s

• 1892 William Ewart Gladstone — '
• 1893 Thomas Henry Huxley — '
• 1894 August Weismann — '
• 1895 Holman Hunt — '
• 1896 Mandell Creighton — '
• 1897 John Morley — '
• 1898 Archibald Geikie — '
• 1899 Richard Claverhouse Jebb — '

  1900s

• 1900 James Murray — '
• 1901 Lord Acton — The German school of history
• 1902 James Bryce — '
• 1903 Oliver Lodge — '
• 1904 Courtenay Ilbert — '
• 1905 Ray Lankester — '
• 1906 William Paton Ker — '
• 1907 Lord Curzon — '
• 1908 Henry Scott Holland — '
• 1909 Arthur Balfour —

  1910s

• 1910 Theodore Roosevelt — '
• 1911 J.B. Bury — '
• 1912 Henry Montagu Butler — '
• 1913 William Mitchell Ramsay — : an ideal in European history
• 1914 J. J. Thomson – '
• 1915 E. B. Poulton – '
• 1916
• 1917
• 1918 Herbert Henry Asquith — '
• 1919

  1920s

• 1920 William Ralph Inge — '
• 1921 Joseph Bédier — Roland à Roncevaux
• 1922 Arthur Stanley Eddington — '
• 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 Frederick 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 Edouard 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 1989

  1990s

• 1990 Saul Bellow — The Distracted Public
• 1991 Gianni Agnelli — Europe: Many Legacies, One Future
• 1992 Robert Blake — Gladstone, Disraeli and Queen Victoria
• 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 —
• 1998 Amartya Sen — Reason before identity.
• 1999 Tony Blair —

  2000s

• 2000 William G. Bowen —
• 2001 Neil MacGregor — The Perpetual Present. The Ideal of Art for All
• 2002 Tom Bingham —
• 2003 Paul Nurse — The great ideas of biology
• 2004 Rowan Williams —
• 2005 Shirley M. Tilghman —
• 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 —
• 2009 Gordon Brown —

  2010s

• 2011 Andrew Motion —
• 2011 Martin Rees —
• 2014 Steven Chu —
• 2015 Mervyn King —
• 2016 Patricia Scotland —
• 2018 Hillary Clinton –
• 2018 Vint Cerf –