Centenary lecture

Wills Memorial Building, 6.00pm, Admission free

Thursday 18 June 2009

Professor Linda Colley, FBA, Shelby MC Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University

Writing constitutions into British history

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Download this lecture (mp3, 58Mb)

Lecture description

Today, Britain famously possesses no single written constitution, yet in the past it generated many important documents to do with political freedoms and the regulation of power and also shaped the written constitutions of many of its one-time colonies. In this lecture, Linda Colley explores these islands’ mixed history of constitution-making and some of the possible consequences of this for the 21st century.

Biography of Professor Linda Colley, FBA

Shelby MC Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University

A graduate of Bristol and Cambridge, Linda Colley has taught history at Cambridge, Yale, the London School of Economics and, since 2003, Princeton.

She is the author of a number of books, including, most recently, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (Yale University Press), Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (Jonathan Cape), The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (Harper Collins/Random House) and Taking Stock of Taking Liberties (British Library Publications).

She is a distinguished public speaker and a regular contributor to the Guardian, the London Review of Books, The Nation, the New York Review of Books and The Times.