Name: Christ's College 'Two Cultures' Debate: Milton vs. Darwin
Start: 2024-11-08T17:30:00+00:00
End: 2024-11-08T19:00:00+00:00
Location: Yusuf Hamied Theatre

A debate to mark the 350th anniversary of the death of John Milton, featuring Colin Burrow, Joe Moshenska, Ruth Padel and David Norman.
About this Event

Christ's College 'Two Cultures' Debate: Milton vs. Darwin

To mark the 350th anniversary of the death of John Milton, poet of Paradise Lost and radical polemicist, we are pitting him against Christ's other most famous son, Charles Darwin, in a battle-of-the-alumni showdown, also paying tribute to C.P. Snow's concept of 'the two cultures' (scientists and 'literary intellectuals'). On team Milton will be Colin Burrow, professor of Renaissance literature at All Soul's College, Oxford and literary critic for the London Review of Books, and Joe Moshenska, professor and author of the recent, celebrated biography of John Milton, Making Darkness Light. On team Darwin, award-winning poet and great-great-grand-daughter of Darwin, Ruth Padel, and Christ's own palaeontologist and professor of natural sciences, David Norman. Christ's English fellows Sophie Read and Katie Mennis will host this engaging and light-hearted evening of disciplinary rivalry.