THE INAUGURAL DAVID YOUNG MEMORIAL LECTURE, GIVEN BY SAVILIAN PROFESSOR NIALL FERGUSON, INTRODUCED BY SAVILIAN MARTIN VANDER WEYER.

A celebration of the life and ideas of Savilian Lord Young of Graffham (1932-2022), politician, business leader, lifelong champion of entrepreneurship – and the cabinet minister who famously brought Margaret Thatcher solutions not problems.  

Professor Ferguson will speak on “The Constitution of Academic Freedom” – a chance to discuss the current debates on free speech at universities, including his involvement in founding a new university in Austin, Texas, and to relate today’s debates to Lord Young’s thinking on education.

David Young was born in London into a Jewish immigrant family from Lithuania and Russia. Trained as a solicitor, he worked as an assistant to Sir Isaac Wolfson before becoming a property entrepreneur and financier in his own right.

He entered politics after the 1979 general election as a special adviser to Sir Keith Joseph at the Department of Trade and Industry; headhunted by Norman Tebbit to be chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, he made such a favourable impression on the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, that she appointed him to the House of Lords in 1984 (as Lord Young of Graffham) and made him minister without portfolio, with a roving economic brief.

He went on to be Secretary of State for Employment (1985-87) and for Trade and Industry (1987-89) — having played a key role in the 1987 Conservative election victory. After Thatcher’s resignation in 1990 he was chairman of Cable & Wireless and a director of Salomon Bros, the US investment bank, and a venture capital investor.

He returned to Downing St in 2010 as enterprise adviser to David Cameron, with a remit to encourage start-ups and cut red tape for smaller businesses. He was made a Companion of Honour in 2015.

Niall Ferguson is one of the world’s most renowned historians. He is the author of sixteen books, including Civilization, The Great Degeneration, Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, and The Ascent of Money. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the managing director of Greenmantle LLC. His many prizes include the International Emmy for Best Documentary (2009), the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service (2010), and the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award (2016).

Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator and the author of The Good, the Bad and the Greedy: Why We’ve Lost Faith in Capitalism (2021), for which David Young wrote the Foreword. 

Dress code – Black Tie. Members only.