George Orwell lectures
The speaker for the annual George Orwell lecture series is selected in turn by the Department of English and Humanities and the Department of Politics. The subject of the lecture is left to the speaker, on the proviso that the topic should have been of interest to Orwell.
The lecture is funded by the George Orwell Memorial Fund and is held in November every year.
| Year | Speaker | Title of lecture |
| 2011 | Alan Rusbridger, Editor-in-Chief of Guardian News & Media | ‘Hacking away at the truth: an investigation and its consequences’ |
| 26 November 2010 | Ferdinand Mount, former Orwell Prize judge (2009), former head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement and novelist and author | |
| 17 November 2009 | Hilary Mantel, CBE | "More like a castle than a realm": Thomas Cromwell's Radical England |
| 2008 | Andrew O'Hagan, writer and novelist | The English |
| 2007 | Michael Rosen, writer, broadcaster and Children's Laureate | The Politics of Response - Orwell's contribution to the questions of how we read and what reading is for |
| 2006 | Neal Ascherson | Homo Brittanicus, Soctophobia and All That |
| 2005 | DJ Taylor, writer and critic, Winner of the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for Orwell: The Life | Projections of the inner 'I': George Orwell's fiction |
| 2004 | Helena Kennedy, QC | Just Law: The changing face of justice and why it matters |
| 2003 | Stefan Collini, FBA | From Authority to Celebrity - Intellectuals in Modern Britain |
| 2002 | Professor Patrick Wright | |
| 2001 | Iain Sinclair | Houses of Memory and London's Orbital Motorway |
| 2000 | Martin Wolf, CBE | Nation, State and Globalization |
| 1999 | Professor Sir Bernard Crick, BSc(Econ), PhD, FRSA, HonDSc, HonDLitt | The English Problem: National Identity and Citizenship |
| 1998 | Professor Peter Davison | Orwell's 'little list' |
| 1997 | Frank Field, MP | Inside the Whale: the Relationship between the State and the Individual |
| 1996 | Professor Richard Lacey, MA, MD, PhD, FRCPath, DCH | The Ministry of Agriculture: the Ministry of Truth |
| 1995 | Professor Anthony Giddens, MA, MA, PhD | Risk |
| 1994 | Rt Hon Roy Hattersley, MP | But is it Socialism? |
| 1993 | Helena Kennedy, QC |
Changing the Legal Culture:
|
| 1992 | Robin Cook, MP | Socialist Values |
| 1991 | Penelope Lively | Fiction and Agnosticism |
| 1990 | Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, KBE, PhD, DrPhil, FBA | Must Revolutions Fail? |
| 1989 | Bruce Kent, LLB | Big Brother, Big Sister and Today's Media |
