CHRIS PATTEN EXPLORES POLITICS AND IDENTITY IN FIRST CONFESSION: A SORT OF MEMOIR

WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER

 5.45pm – 8.15pm

Join us at a 

Rathbone Brothers Plc

8 Finsbury Circus

London EC2M 7AZ

for an evening with Chris Patten as he explores the theme of politics and identity.

Followed by: Q&As • Drinks and canapés • Book sales and signings

Chris Patten (Baron Patten of Barnes) who served as the 28th and final Governor of Hong Kong from 1992-1997, is currently Chancellor of Oxford University. He has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2005. As MP for Bath (1979-92) he served as Minister for Overseas Development, Secretary of State for the Environment and Chairman of the Conservative Party, and was described by The Observer as “the best Tory Prime Minister we never had”.

Chris Patten’s political hero is that epitome of one-nation conservatism, Rab Butler. In the memoir he published last year, First Confession, he quotes with approval Butler’s disdain for austerity economics. “Those who talk about creating pools of unemployment should be thrown into them and made to swim.”

Patten grew up in an Irish Catholic family in north-west London, the son of a music publisher whose forbears had come to England from Co Roscommon. In First Confession he describes it as a 1950s childhood of “Mass and privet”. He made his way to Oxford via Our Lady of the Visitation parish and primary school, run by the Pallottine Fathers in Greenford, and then St Benedict’s, Ealing.

“Part of my complicated identity”, Patten told The Tablet last year, “is that I am a practising Catholic – words that are used as if you are hitting a ball against a wall all the time. It’s part of me, even if some people may not like it.”

With grateful thanks to our hosts     

Copies of First Confession and a selection of other titles will be available for purchase at a discounted price on the night

Ticketing

Tablet subscriber tickets before 24 September: £35 (£40 thereafter)
Standard tickets before 24 September: £40 (£45 thereafter)

Bookings

or call 020 8748 8484

This is a fundraising event for The Tablet Trust Charity No. 271537

Holy Bones, Holy Stones: Catholicism and the material world.

An evening with Professor Eamon Duffy in conversation with Edward Stourton on the importance of the material world – sacraments, saints, shrines, relics, holy images and holy spaces – in the history of the Church, which forms the theme of his most recent book, Royal Books and Holy Bones: Essays in medieval Christianity.

Ticketing
Tablet subscriber tickets before 4 October: £45 (£50 thereafter)
Standard tickets before 4 October: £50 (£55 thereafter)

To book a ticket click here
or call 020 8748 8484

This is a fundraising event for The Tablet Trust 
Charity No. 1173924

Eamon Duffy was born in Dundalk, Ireland in 1947. He is Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and former President of Magdalene College.  

He is a former member of the Pontifical Historical Commission, sits on many editorial boards, and is a member of the Fabric Commission of Westminster Abbey. He is a fellow of the British Academy, an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, an honorary fellow of the Ecclesiastical History Society, an honorary Canon of Ely Cathedral, and holds honorary doctorates and awards from many universities  in Britain and North America. 

His books include The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c1400-c1580 (Yale, 1992) and Saints and Sinners: a History of the Popes (Yale, 1997), now in its third edition and translated into many languages. The Voices of Morebath, Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2001), won the 2002 Hawthornden Prize for Literature. Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England, was published in 2016 by Bloomsbury, also the publishers of his most recent collection of essays, Royal Books and Holy Bones. He is a regular broadcaster on radio and television.

Edward Stourton is a journalist and presenter of BBC Radio Four programmes including The World at One, The World this Weekend, Sunday and Analysis.

He is a regular contributor to the Today programme where, for ten years, he was one of the main presenters. He has written and presented several high-profile current affairs programmes and documentaries for radio and television and also writes for national newspapers and magazines.

Check out our picture gallery here 

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Peter Stanford in conversation 
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An evening with Peter Stanford in conversation with Christopher Jamison OSB and author Sarah Dunant, where they discussed Peter’s new book – What We Talk About When We Talk About Faith – a collection of the best of his interviews with household names and less familiar figures, but all people of achievement with resonant stories to tell.

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This was a fundraising event for The Tablet Trust

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