Price: Free
In the year marking the 250th anniversary of the formal naming of The Lunar Society, we welcome Jenny Uglow, historian and biographer, who wrote on Priestley in ‘The Lunar Men: the Friends who Made the Future’ (2002). Her new book is ‘A Year with Gilbert White’, published September 2025.
What did a radical Dissenting minister and an Anglican curate in Hampshire have in common? In the five years that Priestley was minister at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds, Gilbert White, often called ‘the father of ecology’, was beginning to plan his famous Natural History of Selborne.
In this illustrated talk, Jenny Uglow examines their lives and ideas, charting the way that both men were inspired to look closely at the life around them, making discoveries and developing ideas that would change the way people saw the world.
Note from Events Secretary: we would naturally have had this lecture on the night of the full moon, but that falls on Bonfire Night, which would have risked numerous ‘noises off’ during the talk.
