Saturday 1st February 2020

10:30am Coffee and pastries will be served before the lecture (outside the PH at the top of the Marble Corridor)

11.00am Sir David Lidington Lecture in the Princess Hall until 12:00pm

Rt Hon Sir David Lidington KCB, CBE will be giving a talk entitled “Politics & Public Life”.   

Nationally, many young people see Parliament and traditional politics as irrelevant to their lives and are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to join a political party or to vote at elections.

David Lidington will argue that democratic politics is more important than ever in an age of clashing global interests and dramatic technological, economic and environmental change. 

Please click here to book.

Biography: Rt Hon Sir David Lidington KCB, CBE

David Lidington served as MP for Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for more than 27 years until he stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2019 General Election. 

In more 20 years on the Conservative Party front bench, he served as an Opposition spokesman on Home Affairs, Treasury, Environment and Agriculture, Northern Ireland and Foreign Affairs. Between 2010 and 2016 David was the United Kingdom's longest serving Minister for European Affairs, visiting 45 European countries and representing the United Kingdom at the EU, NATO, the Council of Europe, OSCE and the UN Security Council. In Theresa May's governments, he served successively as Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office. In that last role, David acted as deputy to the Prime Minister.

Before his election to Parliament, David worked in British industry and served for three years as special adviser to Douglas Hurd when Lord Hurd was Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary in the Thatcher and Major governments. 

David was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School, Elstree, and Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, where after his first degree he took a PhD for work on law enforcement in the reign of Elizabeth I. 

David has twice captained a winning University Challenge team: first when Sidney Sussex College won the series in 1979, and for a second time in 2002, when the BBC marked the show's 40th anniversary by screening a tournament of previous winners to find the "champion of champions". 

Outside politics, he enjoys choral singing, theatre and hill-walking. 

He is married to Helen, a school teacher, and they have four sons now in their twenties.