Diarmaid MacCulloch

One of the world’s leading historians of the Church Professor Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch gives this year’s Duke of Gloucester Lecture and talks about his award-winning work in print and as a television presenter.

MacCulloch is best known for his work, A History of Christianity, which won the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman prizes and was adapted into a six-part BBC television series. His Thomas Cranmer won the Whitbread Biography prize , the James Tait Black prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He has more recently been seen on television as presenter of Sex and the Church, which explored how Christianity has shaped western attitudes to sex, gender and sexuality. He is also author of Silence: A Christian History and All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation.

MacCulloch is professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England but declined a priesthood because of the Church’s attitude to homosexuality. Here he talks to author and priest Angela Tilby, Canon Emeritus at Christ Church, Oxford.

The 2015 Duke of Gloucester Lecture was given by then prime minister David Cameron; and in 2016 by Professor Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Faith and Religion