Tuesday 12th January 2027, 8pm, Hallhill Sports Centre Bar
At our next ‘green drinks’ and discussion evening we will be discussing Robert Macfarlane’s 2026 Reith Lectures. Please put the date in your diary now.
“At a time of ecological crisis, extreme weather events and a rapidly heating climate, Robert Macfarlane’s Reith Lectures will examine what is in his view one of the most consequential stories humans tell themselves: that our species stands above and apart from the rest of nature.”
Each lecture will take one of the four classical elements as its focus:
- The first lecture, Earth: The Ladder and the Web, traces the rise and consolidation of the ‘human superiority complex’ –– the belief we are perched atop a ladder of life, rather than entangled in a web –– beginning with one of the earliest works of world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
- The second lecture, Air: The Great Thinning, uses birds to examine some of the consequences of human exceptionalism, and shows how recent scientific breakthroughs are disclosing the superpowers of other life-forms, thereby challenging the paradigm of our uniqueness.
- The third lecture, Fire: Deep-Time Thinking, argues for ‘deep-time’ perspectives in both our politics and our story-telling, such that we can become better ancestors to future generations.
- The final lecture, Water: The Geography of Hope, takes rivers and water as its focus, exploring some of the extraordinary ways in which law and democratic structures are being radically re-imagined in order to give voices, votes and even rights to rivers, oceans, whales and mountains.
Robert Macfarlane says “It feels both a great honour and a big responsibility to be this year’s Reith Lecturer, at a time when what is at stake in our relations with the larger living world is nothing less than everything. In my view, the solutions to the crisis we find ourselves in lie in imagination as well as legislation; in stories as well as science. I want these lectures to be urgent, hopeful, vivid and surprising; I hope they will spark debate, touch hearts and open minds.”
The lectures will be broadcast weekly on Radio 4 starting on Tuesday 24th November at 9am. Each lecture will then be available on BBC Sounds.
We’re looking forward to the discussion!