Former Archbishop will deliver lecture at the University of Roehampton

The noted scholar and former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams will deliver the second annual Hopkins Lecture at the University of Roehampton. Dr Williams’ lecture: “Sense and Sensuality in the poems of Hopkins and Dylan Thomas” will take place on Wednesday 26 March 2014 at *Holybourne Avenue, Roehampton, SW15 4JD at 5.30 pm. (* Please note change of address).

The Hopkins Lecture was launched last year in honour of the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins spent his novitiate as a Jesuit priest at Manresa House, now the home of Whitelands College, and later returned for a while to teach.

Of his lecture Dr Williams says: “In Dylan Thomas’s centenary year, it seems appropriate to think about the areas in which he learned from Hopkins, about the dramatically different senses in which both were ‘poets of faith’, and about the various ways in which both use a highly charged imagery of the senses to carry spiritual insight”.

Dr Rowan Williams is a theological writer, teacher and scholar as well as a poet and translator of poetry. He studied theology at Christ's College Cambridge , completing his doctorate there and at Wadham College, Oxford. Dr Williams holds honorary doctorates from more than a dozen universities, including the University of Roehampton.

Dr Williams was confirmed as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, in 2002. On 29 April 2011, he officiated at the wedding of the Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. He stood down as Archbishop at the end of 2012 and took up his current position as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

All are welcome to attend the Hopkins Lecture. However spaces are very limited and early bookings are advised to avoid disappointment. Book online at: www.roehampton.ac.uk/hopkins

March 7, 2014