The Reith Lectures is a series of annual

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

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lecture A lecture (from ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history, background, theo ...

s given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the

and broadcast on Radio 4 and the

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. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by

Lord Reith Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

, the corporation's first director-general. Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service that aimed to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver the lectures. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about issues of contemporary interest. The first Reith lecturer was the philosopher and later

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes (, ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in th ...

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

. The first female lecturer was Dame Margery Perham in 1961. The youngest Reith lecturer was

Colin Blakemore Sir Colin Blakemore (1 June 1944 – 27 June 2022) was a British neurobiologist, specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was Yeung Kin Man Professor of Neuroscience and senior fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced S ...

, who was 32 in 1976 when he broadcast over six episodes on the brain and consciousness.

The Reith Lectures archive

In June 2011 BBC Radio 4 published its Reith Lectures archive. This included two podcasts featuring over 240 lectures from 1948 to the present day as well as streamed online audio, and the complete written transcripts of the entire Reith Lectures archive: * Podcast 1: Archive 1948–1975 * Podcast 2: Archive 1976–2012 * Transcripts 1948–2010 * In pictures The BBC found that some of the audio archive of the Reith Lectures was missing from its library and appealed to the public for copies of the missing lectures.

The Reith Lectures 1948–2024

1940s

* 1948

,
Authority and the Individual
* 1949 Robert Birley,
Britain in Europe

1950s

* 1950

John Zachary Young John Zachary Young (18 March 1907 – 4 July 1997), generally known as "JZ" or "JZY", was an English zoologist and neurophysiologist, described as "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century". Biography Young went to school at ...

,
Doubt and Certainty in Science
* 1951 Lord Radcliffe,
Power and the State
* 1952

Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Coll ...

,
The World and the West
* 1953

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...

,
Science and the Common Understanding
* 1954

Oliver Franks Oliver Shewell Franks, Baron Franks, (16 February 1905 – 15 October 1992), was an English civil servant and philosopher who has been described as 'one of the founders of the postwar world'. Franks was involved in Britain's recovery after the ...

,
Britain and the Tide of World Affairs
* 1955

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

,
The Englishness of English Art
* 1956

Edward Victor Appleton Sir Edward Victor Appleton (6 September 1892 – 21 April 1965) was an English atmospheric physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1947 "for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery ...

,
Science and the Nation
* 1957

George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...

,
Russia, the Atom and the West
* 1958

Bernard Lovell Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell ( ; 31 August 19136 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980. Early life and education Lovell was born at Oldland Co ...

,
The Individual and the Universe
* 1959

Peter Medawar Sir Peter Brian Medawar (; 28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987) was a British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ ...

,
The Future of Man

1960s

* 1960

Edgar Wind Edgar Wind (; 14 May 1900 – 12 September 1971) was a British interdisciplinary art historian, specializing in iconology in the Renaissance era. He was a member of the school of art historians associated with Aby Warburg and the Warburg Institu ...

,
Art and Anarchy
* 1961

Margery Perham Dame Margery Freda Perham (6 September 1895 – 19 February 1982) was a British historian of, and writer on, African affairs.The Times, 22 February 1982, page 10. She was known especially for the intellectual force of her arguments in favour of B ...

,
The Colonial Reckoning
* 1962 George Carstairs,
This Island Now
* 1963

Albert Sloman Sir Albert Edward Sloman (1921 – 28 July 2012) was the founding and longest serving Vice Chancellor of the University of Essex, UK. Background Albert Sloman was born in Cornwall and educated at Launceston College, before attending Wadham Coll ...

,
A University in the Making
* 1964

Leon Bagrit Sir Leon Bagrit (13 March 1902 – 22 April 1979) was a leading British industrialist and pioneer of automation. Early life and education Born to Jewish parents in Kiev, in the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), Sir Leon studied law at B ...

,
The Age of Automation
* 1965 Robert Gardiner,
World of Peoples
* 1966 John K. Galbraith,
The New Industrial State
* 1967

Edmund Leach Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropolo ...

,
A Runaway World
* 1968

Lester B. Pearson Lester Bowles Pearson (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian politician, diplomat, statesman, and scholar who served as the 14th prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968. He also served as Leader of the Liberal Party of C ...

,
In the Family of Man
* 1969

Frank Fraser Darling Sir Frank Fraser Darling FRSE (23 June 1903 – 22 October 1979) was an English ecologist, ornithologist, farmer, conservationist and author, who is strongly associated with the highlands and islands of Scotland. He gives his name to the Fraser ...

,
Wilderness and Plenty

1970s

* 1970

Donald Schön Donald Alan Schön (September 19, 1930 – September 13, 1997) was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theor ...

,
Change and Industrial Society
* 1971

Richard Hoggart Herbert Richard Hoggart (24 September 1918 – 10 April 2014) was an English academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture. Early life Hoggart was bor ...

,
Only Connect
* 1972

Andrew Shonfield Sir Andrew Akiba Shonfield (10 August 1917 – 23 January 1981) was a British economist best known for writing ''Modern Capitalism'' (1966), a book that documented the rise of long-term planning in postwar Europe. Shonfield's argument that plann ...

,
Europe: Journey to an Unknown Destination
* 1973 Alastair Buchan,
Change Without War
* 1974

Ralf Dahrendorf Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Baron Dahrendorf, (; 1 May 1929 – 17 June 2009) was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician. A class conflict theorist, Dahrendorf was a leading expert on explaining an ...

,
The New Liberty
* 1975 Daniel J. Boorstin,
America and the World Experience
* 1976

,
Mechanics of the Mind
* 1977

A. H. Halsey Albert Henry 'Chelly' Halsey (13 April 1923 – 14 October 2014) was a British sociologist. He was emeritus Professor of Social and Administrative Studies at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of ...

,
Change in British Society
* 1978 Edward Norman,
Christianity and the World
* 1979

Ali Mazrui Ali Al'amin Mazrui (24 February 1933 – 12 October 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic, professor, and political writer on African and Islamic studies, and North-South relations. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya. His positions included Dir ...

,
The African Condition

1980s

* 1980 Professor Sir Ian Kennedy,
Unmasking Medicine
* 1981

Laurence Martin Sir Laurence Woodward Martin (30 July 1928 – 24 April 2022) was a British academic who was the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University from 1978 to 1990. Life and career Martin was born on 30 July 1928 in Cornwall. Educated at St Austell Gram ...

,
The Two Edged Sword
* 1982 Denis Donoghue,
The Arts Without Mystery
* 1983

Douglas Wass Sir Douglas William Gretton Wass (15 April 1923 – 4 January 2017) was a British civil servant who served as Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury from 1974 to 1983. Wass was born in Wallasey, Merseyside the son of Arthur, a customs official ...

,
Government and the Governed
* 1984

John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959 and was Willis S. and Mario ...

,
Minds, Brains and Science
* 1985 David Henderson,
Innocence and Design
* 1986 Lord McCluskey,
Law, Justice and Democracy
* 1987

Alexander Goehr Peter Alexander Goehr (; 10 August 1932 – 26 August 2024) was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable c ...

,
The Survival of the Symphony
* 1988

Geoffrey Hosking Geoffrey Alan Hosking (born 28 April 1942) is a British historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and formerly Leverhulme Research Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College, Lon ...

,
The Rediscovery of Politics
* 1989 Jacques Darras,
Beyond the Tunnel of History

1990s

* 1990

Jonathan Sacks Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks (8 March 19487 November 2020) was an English Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and author. Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. As ...

,
The Persistence of Faith
* 1991

Steve Jones Steve or Steven Jones may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Steve Jones (English presenter) (born 1945), English musician, disk jockey, television presenter, and voice-over artist *Steve Jones (musician) (born 1955), English rock and roll guitar ...

,
The Language of Genes
* There was no lecture in 1992 because "the BBC simply couldn't find anyone to do them" * 1993

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...

,
Representation of the Intellectual
* 1994

Marina Warner Dame Marina Sarah Warner (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publication ...

,
Managing Monsters
* 1995

Richard Rogers Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside (23 July 1933 – 18 December 2021) was a British-Italian architect noted for his modernist and constructivist designs in high-tech architecture. He was the founder at Rogers Stirk Harbour + ...

,
Sustainable City
* 1996

Jean Aitchison Jean Margaret Aitchison (born 3 July 1938) is a Professor Emerita of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Her main areas of interest i ...

,
The Language Web
* 1997

Patricia J. Williams Patricia J. Williams (born August 28, 1951) is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system. Early life Williams rece ...

,
The Genealogy of Race
* 1998

John Keegan Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan (15 May 1934 – 2 August 2012) was an English military historian, lecturer, author and journalist. He wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, ...

,
War in Our World
* 1999

Anthony Giddens Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is ...

,
The Runaway World

2000s

* 2000

Chris Patten Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes (; born 12 May 1944), is a British politician who was the Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1992, and the 28th and last Governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997. He was made a lif ...

, Sir John Browne,

Thomas Lovejoy Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III (August 22, 1941December 25, 2021) was an American ecologist who was President of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a university professor in the Environmental Science a ...

Gro Harlem Brundtland Gro Brundtland (; née Harlem, 20 April 1939) is a Norwegian politician in the Labour Party, who served three terms as the prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1996), as the leader of her party from 1981 to 1992, and as the d ...

Vandana Shiva Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Ga ...

Charles, Prince of Wales Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, a ...

,
Respect for the Earth
* 2001

Tom Kirkwood Thomas Burton Loram Kirkwood CBE FMedSci (6 July 1951, Durban, South Africa) is an English biologist who made his contribution to the biology of ageing by proposing the disposable soma theory of aging. He is currently a researcher and Associa ...

,
The End of Age
* 2002

Onora O'Neill Onora Sylvia O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (born 23 August 1941) is a British philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. Early life and education Onora Sylvia O'Neill was born on 23 August 1941 in Aughafatten. The daug ...

,
A Question of Trust?
* 2003

V. S. Ramachandran Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (born 10 August 1951) is an Indian-American neuroscientist. He is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box. Ramachandran is a disti ...

,
The Emerging Mind
* 2004

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two transla ...

,
Climate of Fear
* 2005 Lord Broers,
The Triumph of Technology
* 2006

Daniel Barenboim Daniel Moses Barenboim (; born 15 November 1942) is an Argentines, Argentine-Israeli classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin, who also has Spain, Spanish and State of Palestine, Palestinian citizenship. From 1992 until January 2023, Bare ...

,
In the Beginning was Sound
* 2007

Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey David Sachs ( ; born November 5, 1954) is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University, where he was formerly director of The Earth Institute. He worked on the topics of sustainable develop ...

,
Bursting at the Seams
* 2008 Professor Jonathan Spence,
Chinese Vistas
* 2009

Michael Sandel Michael Joseph Sandel (; born March 5, 1953) is an American political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where his course ''Justice'' was the university's first course to be made fre ...

,
A New Citizenship

2010s

* 2010

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow,