Debunking Robin Hood - Talk and Conversation w. Prof Ronald Hutton

Robin Hood is the most celebrated outlaw hero in world tradition, a pretty impressive achievement, seeing as heroic outlaws are found all over the planet.

Our favourite history teacher, Prof Ronald Hutton, returns to the Crick Crack Club to debunk Robin Hood; give Maid Marian the once over, and scrutinise Friar Tuck’s waistline. He’ll muse over which roads are best for a good highway mugging and ask: Why is Robin so famous? How long has his legend been in existence? What has been added to it and when? And finally – the awkward matter of – Did Robin Hood ever actually exist?

‘We need a bedrock of story and legend in order to live our lives coherently’ Alan Moore

TIMETABLE

7.00pm Talk begins
8.15pm Audience Wine & Conversation (timing may vary)
9.15pm Event finishes (timing may vary, depending on how much chattering goes on)


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.