David Wilkinson engages with scientific questions, biblical examples, and his own experiences to asks what happens when we pray: does God always answer, and why does it sometimes feel like he doesn’t?
David Wilkinson, FRSA, Principal of St John’s College, Durham, has a Phd in both astrophysics and theology. After Cambridge, he served as Methodist chaplain at Liverpool University. His current work involves the relationship of the Christian theology to contemporary culture. His books include God,Time and Stephen Hawking (2001) Christian Eschatology and the Physical Universe (2010) The Power of the Force: The Spirituality of the Star Wars Films (2000). He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Thought For The Day
https://www.dur.ac.uk/theology.religion/staff/profile/?id=2006

AC Grayling describes the birth of the modern mind in the seventeenth century when reason rose to prominence over tradition, the rights of the individual took centre stage in philosophy and politics, and science began to replace alchemy and astrology. In 1605 a crowd watching Shakespeare’s Macbeth believed that regicide would lead to ghosts bursting out of the ground.In 1649 a crowd watched the beheading of Charles I. What lessons does this era still hold for our troubled times?
A C Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA, and Master of the New College of the Humanities, has been a contributor to The Times, Financial Times, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Economist, Literary Review, New Statesman and Prospect, and is a contributor to radio and television programmes, including Newsnight, Today, In Our Time, Start the Week and CNN news. He has written and edited more than thirty books on philosophy and other subjects including The Good Book, Ideas That Matter, Liberty in the Age of Terror, To Set Prometheus Free, Friendship and The Challenge of Things. He believes philosophy should take an active and useful role in society.
http://www.acgrayling.com
@acgrayling
With thanks to St James’ Church, Richard Stephens and Sally Dymott

The 2006 American-British biographical anti-slavery drama directed by Michael Apted, original screenplay Steven Night, and starring Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Michael Gambon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rufus Sewell, Ciaran Hinds, and introducing Youssou N’Dour. “[William Wilberforce] makes a first rate movie-saint.”
The New York Times
With thanks to Campden Film Society

Roger Scruton and Jonathan Derbyshire discuss Roger’s revised version of his 1985 volume of essays entitled Thinkers of the New Left, “a closely argued attack on what Scruton saw as the prevailing fundamentalism of his world, the grip of Marxist and post-Marxist thinking within Britain’s universities.” The Guardian
Roger Scruton, graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, former Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, and University Professor at Boston University, is visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, Washington DC. He contributes to The Times, The Telegraph and Spectator, and his many books include Animal Rights and Wrongs, A Political Philosophy, the novel Notes from Underground and How to be a Conservative Labour MP, Jon Cruddas’s 2014 Book of the Year in The New Statesman
http://www.roger-scruton.com
@Roger_Scruton
Jonathan Derbyshire, former Culture Editor of The New Statesman, and then managing editor of Prospect, now works for the Financial Times. He contributes to the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, New York Sun,TLS, Time Out, The Philosophers’ Magazine and New Humanist. In 2007, he edited Time Out: 1000 Books to change your life.

The Welfare State, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, London Docklands Development Corporation … Francis Beckett, biographer of Attlee and co-author of 1956 The Year That Changed Britain – “a wonderfully evocative … account of a year that saw the ends and beginnings that explain why and how we got to today.” Michael Rosen – and Andy Beckett author of Promised You a Miracle: UK80–82 – “Lively … Provoking … Brazenly anti-nostalgic.” Hilary Mantel – discuss the changes that swept across Britain in the last century. Chair Lydia Gray
Francis Beckett read history and philosophy at Keele University. He contributes to The New Statesman, Guardian and Independent and won 2009 Ted Wragg Lifetime Achievement Award for educational journalism. His seventeen books include What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? and biographies on Bevan, MacMillan, Brown and Blair.
http://www.francisbeckett.co.uk @francisbeckett
Andy Beckett read modern history at Oxford University and journalism at the University of California in Berkeley. A feature writer at the Guardian, he also writes for the London Review of Books and the New York Times magazine. He is author of When the Lights Went Out (2010) and Pinochet in Piccadilly (2001)
Lydia Gray, educated at Chipping Campden School, graduate in War Studies from King’s College London, has an MSc in Security Studies from UCL. After working in publishing at The Writers’ Workshop, she is now employed by the Civil Service.
This evening’s events are sponsored by The Noel Arms Hotel Tel 01386 840330
http://www.bespokehotels.com/noelarmshotel
With thanks to Chipping Campden School Parents Association @CampdenPA