Saturday Seminars

SATURDAY 21 NOVEMBER - SATURDAY 5 DECEMBER

During The Making of Moo we are planning TWO Saturday morning seminars at 10.30am which will complement the production, and we hope will encourage debate and discussion.

Saturday November 21 there will be a seminar entitled WHY RELIGION? - ANY QUESTIONS chaired by Bamber Gascoigne. With Professor Lewis Wolpert, Adam Ford and Ruth Gledhill.

Saturday December 5 there will be a seminar in which the proposition that RELIGIOUS BELIEF DOES THE WORLD MORE HARM THAN GOOD will be discussed. Guests including Lord Harries (former Bishop of Oxford) and Ariane Sherine (Creator of the Atheist Bus).


Professor Lewis Wolpert was born in 1929 into a strict Jewish household and was, he records, 'quite a religious child until I gave it all up around 16 and have been an atheist ever since'.
He is Emeritus Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College London. He recently published Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief.
Adam Ford was chaplain at St. Paul's Girls' School for 25 years until 2001. He was also Priest in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen at St. James's Palace and for seven years was vicar of Hebden Bridge. His degrees are in Theology and Buddhism.
Ruth Gledhill is the Religion Correspondent of The Times, a post she has held since 1989. She lives locally and is married to Times writer and Orange Tree playwright Alan Franks (Previous Convictions).
Bamber Gascoigne is the creator of History World, the online History encyclopaedia (www.historyworld.net). He is scholar, author, playwright, novelist, critic and television presenter - particularly of University Challenge - but also of The Christians a 13 part documentary history of the rise and growth of Christianity, which he wrote and created with his wife, Christina.


The Rt. Revd and Rt. Hon The Lord Harries of Pentregarth is perhaps better known as Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford from 1987 to 2006. Since 2008 he has been the Gresham Professor of Divinity.
He was a founder member of the Oxford Abrahamic Group, bringing together Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars. He has been a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and has chaired the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research. He has been a regular contributor to the BBC's Thought for the Day.
Ariane Sherine is a comedy writer, journalist and creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign. She has also edited The Atheists Guide to Christmas.

To book for the seminars call the Box Office on 020 8940 3633.