The Crick Crack Club Presents Professor Ronald Hutton on The Hero

We all love a good hero… and sometimes we love a flawed hero even more! But is there a standard hero mold? What is true heroism? And what is true honour?

Genius professor and exuberant lecturer, Ronald Hutton, launches the Crick Crack Club’s new talks series with a fabulous examination of the figure of the hero in traditional Western epic literature, and what it takes to make a hero.

This talk will examine Joseph Campbell’s classic reconstruction of the worldwide myth of the hero’s journey, and whether this has stood the test of criticism. It will look at the differences between pagan and Christian concepts of heroism, and ponder on whether the similarities are actually more important. And it will focus on that complex relationship between heroism and honour – reconsidering three of the most famous European heroic epics (the Iliad, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, and the romance of El Cid) to illustrate how very potent that relationship has been.
After that, it’ll be your chance to talk, question, muse and mull over what you’ve heard, what you think, what you think is true, and what you wish was true – whilst drinking wine and nibbling nibbles.

Come alone, come with a friend, or come with a hero…!

‘If everybody was satisfied with themselves, there would be no heroes’ Mark Twain

RONALD HUTTON Our very favourite history teacher, Ronald Hutton is the Professor of History at Bristol University, where he has taught for thirty-three years after winning his degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford and being elected to a Fellowship at an Oxford College. He has since been made a Fellow of the British Academy and of three other learned societies. He has published fifteen books and seventy essays on varying aspects of history and prehistory, including sixteenth and seventeenth-century Britain, seasonal festivity in Britain, and the nature and the representation of paganism, witchcraft, magic, mythology and folklore. He has held various public offices, including serving on the commission which runs English Heritage and (at present) chairing the Blue Plaques Panel. He has broadcast regularly on radio and television for thirty years, writing and presenting his own work as well as being a regular contributor to documentaries: his most recent series, “Professor Hutton’s Curiosities,” explored London museums for the Yesterday Channel.

‘I’m a hero with coward’s legs’ Spike Milligan