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 ...

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

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 World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Lord Reith, 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,
Doubt and Certainty in Science
* 1951 Lord Radcliffe,
Power and the State
* 1952 Arnold J. Toynbee,
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,
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,
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,
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,
Art and Anarchy
* 1961 Margery Perham,
The Colonial Reckoning
* 1962 George Carstairs,
This Island Now
* 1963 Albert Sloman,
A University in the Making
* 1964 Leon Bagrit,
The Age of Automation
* 1965 Robert Gardiner,
World of Peoples
* 1966 John K. Galbraith,
The New Industrial State
* 1967 Edmund Leach,
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,
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,
Europe: Journey to an Unknown Destination
* 1973 Alastair Buchan,
Change Without War
* 1974 Ralf Dahrendorf,
The New Liberty
* 1975 Daniel J. Boorstin,
America and the World Experience
* 1976

,
Mechanics of the Mind
* 1977 A. H. Halsey,
Change in British Society
* 1978 Edward Norman,
Christianity and the World
* 1979 Ali Mazrui,
The African Condition

1980s

* 1980 Professor Sir Ian Kennedy,
Unmasking Medicine
* 1981 Laurence Martin,
The Two Edged Sword
* 1982 Denis Donoghue,
The Arts Without Mystery
* 1983 Douglas Wass,
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,
The Rediscovery of Politics
* 1989 Jacques Darras,
Beyond the Tunnel of History

1990s

* 1990 Jonathan Sacks,
The Persistence of Faith
* 1991 Steve Jones,
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,
Sustainable City
* 1996 Jean Aitchison,
The Language Web
* 1997 Patricia J. Williams,
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,
The End of Age
* 2002 Onora O'Neill,
A Question of Trust?
* 2003 V. S. Ramachandran,
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,
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,