Talk: "Viscount Haldane of Cloan" by Richard McLauchlan.

Club Room, 12noon. Bar and coffee counter open prior to event.

Scottish Arts Club Members: free. Guests: £5.00 via Eventbrite.

Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount Haldane of Cloan (1856-1928) was a towering, if controversial figure in British politics across the opening decades of the twentieth century. His influence lies at the bedrock of our modern university system and of the nation’s ability to fight the bloody battles of the First World War; yet he is little known today. A philosopher and lawyer by training, this astonishingly versatile Scotsman was also deeply engaged with the world of the arts. His closest friends included J.M. Barrie, John Buchan, and the literary critic Edmund Gosse, while one of the great loves of his life, Frances Horner, had been the favourite muse of Edward Burne-Jones. The creation of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol can even be traced back to Haldane. This talk will introduce this much-neglected figure and shed light on why Haldane’s example of a cultured and artistically engaged statesmanship is so vitally needed today.

Brief CV:

Richard McLauchlan was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Cambridge, where he completed a Ph.D. on the poetry of R.S. Thomas. He is the author of Saturday’s Silence: R.S. Thomas and Paschal Reading and co-founder of the Scottish charity Light Up Learning. For the last five years, he has been collaborating with John Campbell OBE on Haldane: The Forgotten Statesman who Shaped Modern Britain, which will be published by Hurst in May 2020.