Founder's Day Lecture | Gilbert White, the Revolutionary Outdoor Naturalist

This is our Founder's Day Lecture 2025, and an in-person event only. There is no live stream.

(The talk will be followed by a book sale/signing and drinks reception in our historic library, where a paid bar will be available.)

Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne, published in 1789, was a quietly ground-breaking book. No one had written so vividly before, combining scholarship and science with close observation in the field, ‘watching narrowly’ as he called it. Every page is illuminated by his knowledge of the woods and fields of his own parish, where he was born and lived most of his life, and by his empathy with the creatures he found there, from hedgehogs and bats, harvest mice and frogs to his beloved swifts and swallows.

In her illustrated talk Jenny Uglow explores White’s life, ideas and habits of recording in journals and letters. Asking how he came to be called ‘the father of ecology’, she looks at his insistence that all nature is interlinked, including human life, and at how he teaches us to see the riches of our own local patch – a lesson we are following today.

Jenny Uglow’s books include biographies and group studies including The Lunar Men and the panoramic In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon’s Wars. Her most recent book is . A Fellow of the Linnean Society, she is particularly interested in links between science, art and literature. She lives in Borrowdale, Cumbria.

Welcoming ceremony

A Welcoming Ceremony for new Fellows will take place at 5-5.30pm on the day of the Founders Day Lecture.

Inclusion will be based on a first come first served basis and only those with confirmation will be able to take part on the day. If you would be interested in taking part in the Welcome Ceremony, please register your interest by contacting [email protected] with your name and the date of the Welcoming Ceremony you wish to join.

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Concessions

Please buy the concession ticket if you are:

• 65 years of age, or over
• Under 26 years of age
• Currently in receipt of UK government benefit (including, but not limited to, Income Based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit, and Universal Credit).
• Currently in full-time education.

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This is an in-person event at the Linnean Society of London on Piccadilly, London, only. There will be a recording, which will be uploaded to our later.

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Host or Publisher Linnean Society of London