Macclesfield Literary & Philosophical Society programme 2018-19

Membership of the Macclesfield Literary and Philosophical Society for the 2018-2019 season costs £20 per person which covers entry to all meetings.

For those not wishing to become members a guest fee of £5 is payable on the door for each meeting. 18 year-olds and under are admitted free.

Programme of Meetings 2018-2019

Thursday 13th September 2018
Where the Wild Winds Are
Writer and traveller Nick Hunt spoke to the society about his first book in 2016. He returns to start our season with a talk based on his second book. Where the Wild Winds Are is the story of following Europe’s winds.

Tuesday 16th October 2018
The Elephant in the Room: Donald Trump, Republicans and Conservatives
The elephant in the room is big, orange and noisy. Jon Herbert is a senior lecturer at Keele University’s Research Institute for the Social Sciences. He has a particular interest in the American Presidency and the US government as a whole.
The AGM will follow the talk and discussion.

Thursday 15th November 2018
Why Edit Literary Texts?
Marcus Walsh was a Professor of English literature at Birmingham and Liverpool Universities. A literary editor by profession and inclination, he has edited works by Christopher Smart and Jonathan Swift. Currently he is a General Editor and volume editor for the OUP Writings of Alexander Pope.

Tuesday 17th January 2019
Mary Shelley and the Romantic Self
Mary Shelley shared the Romantic era’s fascination with what makes a human self. In this talk Fiona Sampson, author of the acclaimed biography In Search of Mary Shelley, explores the Romantic ideas through the prism of Shelley’s life and work, including her novel Frankenstein.

Thursday 14th February 2019
Aka-doctor from Ba-light visits Remote Nepal Village
Sarah Clarke is an independent optometrist based in Macclesfield. In March 2018 she visited Rukumkot in Western Nepal with a backpack full of donated glasses and a tenuous connection to the surgeons at Rapti Eye Hospital. “I was only planning to visit my daughter … I got a little carried away.”

Wednesday 13th March 2019
The Ethical Roboticist
Alan Winfield is Professor of Robot Ethics at the University of the West of England at Bristol, co-founded the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and is visiting professor at York. Alan is an advocate for robot ethics, actively engaged in the development of new ethical standards for robots.

Wednesday 10th April 2019
James Watt and Industrial Britain
2019 is the 200th anniversary of steam engine pioneer James Watt’s death. Dr Malcolm Dick is director of the Centre for West Midlands History at Birmingham University, and he has published books on Joseph Priestley, Matthew Boulton and John Baskerville.

Tuesday 7th May 2019
The Scottish Clearances: Journeying to the Land of Freedom
Fleur Houston has ancestral roots in the Scottish Highlands. She is a graduate of Aberdeen, Oxford and Cambridge universities and a minister of the United Reformed Church. Her book, You Shall Love the Stranger as Yourself: the Bible, Refugees and Asylum, draws on her extensive experience of refugee issues.