Stuart Maconie’s entertaining lecture

17 October 2011

 

Stuart Maconie, the popular writer and broadcaster, gave an entertaining talk before a large audience as part of the National Identity lecture series, organised by the School of Humanities and Social Science.

The lecture, introduced by Dr Joe Moran, Reader in History, was entitled 'Modern Britain: How we got here,' and drew on Stuart’s hugely successful book ‘Hope and glory: The days that shaped Britain.’

The book evaluates ten key days that contributed to British national identity including the death of Queen Victoria, the Battle of the Somme, the general strike, the 1966 World Cup, Punk Rock, the 1985 Live Aid concert and the victory of New Labour in 1997. 

Stuart’s lecture was punctuated by a series of witty anecdotes and unusual facts on British culture and history which generated a great deal of laughter from the audience.  Whoever knew there were eight different assassination attempts on Queen Victoria’s life, that ‘Pickles’ the dog who found the stolen World Cup trophy in 1966 died in a bizarre accident a year later or that Edmund Hilary, the first person to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1953, didn’t come from Britain but New Zealand.

Stuart, who originally comes from Wigan, currently hosts ‘The Radcliffe and Maconie Show’ and 'The Freak Zone' on BBC 6 Music and ‘Inside Out’ on BBC North West. He is currently preparing a major BBC Radio 2 documentary series on the history of pop music, which will be the subject of his next book.

For details of the series, organised by Professor Frank McDonough (History) and Dr. Sonny Kandola (English) see the web site: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/HSS/115948.htm