To give you an idea of what we do, here are some of the topics we have covered this year::

               Jean-Jacques Rousseau      Romanticism - What’s it all about?        Romanticism in Art, presented by Caroline Lewis

                                          The 17th Century and the Age of Reason, starting with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke        

                                                          Why We Believe,, presented by Caroline Lewis and Francis Buxton  

                       A Fresh View of the World: Some Ideas from Other Places and  Other Times, presented by by Caroline Lewis 

                                                               Challenging Materialism, presented by Carolyn Bridgewater                                     

                     JANUARY 2026   What is Happiness?   After a very lively November meeting on Challenging Materialism, it was good to see that the energy was very much still in the room. This is not a passive group, I’m very pleased to say. It is a safe place to voice any ideas and be prepared for those ideas to be challenged. 

                      FEBRUARY:                 Schopenhauer on Happiness and Jeremy Bentham on Utilitarianism

                                                   Plenty to get our teeth into there. Result: Utilitarianism put on the shelf for the time being. 

                      MARCH:      Extracts published in The Observer, from Richard Layard’s 2020 book  Can We Be    
                                          Happier? Evidence and Ethics,  produced a robust response.
                                             Richard Layard  was appointed the UK’s Happiness Tsar on 2007.   

                          APRIL:     What do William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Voltaire’s Candide have in common?

                        MAY:        April’s topic continued.
                                             No surprise that Candide provided so much discussion that we didn’t get around to Lord of the Flies.

                                         

 

                                                                                                                    

                                                                                     We meet on the third Friday of the month at 11.30.                                                            
                                                               It’s a good idea to check the monthly programme for current details.

                                              .  Any ideas about future topic or offers to present a topic would be warmly welcomed