Derek Winterbottom is a biographer of Thomas Hughes and a historian whose books mainly focus on the Isle of Man and the British public schools. He has been a member of the Savile for many years but not as long as this famous Celtic cross has stood in its place in a Manx churchyard.
Thomas Hughes was almost a founder member of the Savile and was already famous throughout the British Empire as the author of ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’, based on his own experience of Rugby under Dr Arnold and published in 1857. It had an amazing impact on the development of education in Britain and elsewhere, as Derek will explain.
The Savile Wine Committee is organising another of the hugely enjoyed and popular “Call My Bluff” Wine Quizzes.
The Call My Bluff team are again Charlie Boyd and Molly Newport of Ellis of Richmond – one of our principal wine suppliers.
The format will be like the September 2025 quiz. Each table of eight – we can cater for eight tables – works as a team. There will be seven or eight different wines – all interesting and none on our Wine List. Served one by one, each wine will have two completely different stories told about it – origin, cepages, terroir etc. You taste, discuss, agree which is True and which is Bluff and vote as a team.
As last time, the wines will be accompanied by a half-time serving of antipasti and cheeses.
Whether you are of the wine cognoscenti or whether you just like wine and enjoy exploring it, this evening is for you – all.
The Caribbean Community of fifteen island states has presented a bill to No. 10 Downing Street for £18trn in reparation for Britain’s involvement in historic slavery. The African Union has recently announced that it is drawing up its own, continental-size claim. The Irish billionaire, Denis O’Brien, is funding a campaign in favour of reparations in Westminster. Lenny Henry has just published a book promoting them. And the Church of England has already committed itself to pay out an initial £100m to black businesses as penance for its own supposed profiting from slave-trading. Does this make good sense? And if not, why not? Nigel Biggar explains.
Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at The University of Oxford, Photographed at Christ Church College. 19/6/20. Photo Tom Pilston.
Nigel Biggar is Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago. And he is a priest in the Church of England.
Described as “one of the leading living Western ethicists” (by John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, New Statesman, 25 November 2020), Professor Biggar was appointed Commander of the British Empire “for services to higher education” in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list and named one of Prospect magazine’s Top Thinkers of 2024. In January 2025 he entered the House of Lords as a Conservative peer.
Among his most recent books are Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt (Swift, 2025); Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023, 2024), What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford, 2020), Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (2014), and In Defence of War (Oxford, 2013).
In the press, he has written on the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Spectator (London), colonialism in the National Post (Toronto), freedom of speech in the Times (London), the ‘Culture Wars’ and illegal migration in the Daily Telegraph (London), the Iraq War in the Financial Times (London) and the Straits Times (Singapore), the possibility of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Northern Ireland in the Irish Times (Dublin), and why Australia should remain a monarchical republic in The Australian (Sydney).
He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; the US Naval Academy, Annapolis; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC.
His hobbies include walking over battlefields. In 1973 he drove a Morris Traveller from Scotland to Afghanistan; and in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944. He enjoys playing an anarchical card-game.
Dr Russell Wilcox has been a barrister in independent practice since 2014. He studied Modern History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and has postgraduate degrees from London University. He has previously published in the areas of legal theory and comparative law.
Savilian John Mason is delighted to present John Duffett.
John Duffett is a professional Magician based in London, and a recent winner of the “Magic Circle Close Up Magician of the Year” competition, one of the most prestigious titles in Magic. He is one of the top entertainers in the country, John has flown all over the world to entertain celebrities, top CEOs and more. He is guaranteed to create laughter and astonishment in this incredible evening of Sleight of Hand Magic and Mind-Reading.
John Mason has conjured numerous events at the Savile Club, including his very popular signature Magic Evenings as well as engaging talks with Bill Browder, focused on his bestselling books.
Stanley Kalms began working for his father’s company Dixons, later Currys PLC, from 1948, helping to develop the brand from a single photography studio into a major retail chain that sold electronic equipment, TVs, stereos, computers and appliances. He became chairman and life president of the group, which also owned the electronic retailers Currys and PCWorld.
He was knighted in 1996 and raised to the peerage in 2004. He was Treasurer of the Conservative Party 2001/2003. He was a member of the Savile Club from 2005.
David Lewis is a Chartered Surveyor and chairman of various privately controlled investment companies. His family interests include the Schorr Collection which is a wide-ranging collection of works of art of which a significant proportion is on loan to public bodies, museums and institutions in the UK and abroad. A full catalogue of the Old Master and 19th century collections was published in 2013 and three addenda in 2022, 2023 and 2025.
He has been a member of the Savile Club since 1996 and is currently the senior trustee.
In his new book, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler, bestselling historian, Tim Bouverie, examines the often-fractious alliance that conquered the Axis. The Grand Alliance was an improbable and incongruous coalition, divided by ideology and politics and riven with mistrust and deceit. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were partners in the fight to defeat Hitler, yet they were also rivals who disagreed on strategy, imperialism and the future of liberated Europe. Only by looking at their points of conflict, as well as of co-operation, are we able to understand the course of the war and world that developed in its aftermath.
Described as ‘an astonishing piece of scholarship’ by James Holland, ‘a masterpiece…that is a pleasure to read’ by Richard J. Evans and ‘the best book I have ever read on the politics of the Second World War’ by Tim Shipman, Allies at War is a fast-paced, narrative history, based on material drawn from over 100 archives, that uses vivid first-hand accounts and unpublished diaries, to take readers into the rooms where the critical decisions were made, while going beyond the confines of the Grand Alliance to examine, among other aspects, the doomed Anglo-French alliance, fractious relations with General de Gaulle and the Free French, and interactions with Poland, Greece and Nationalist China.
In what promises to be a fascinating discussion, Tim will offer a fresh perspective on the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.
Tim Bouverie is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller and New York Times Editor’s Pick, Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He studied history at Christ Church Oxford and was the 2020-21 Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His new book, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler was an instant bestseller and was described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘enthralling and authoritative…deeply researched and gracefully written’ and by the Economist as, ‘Masterful…packed with fresh detail and gossipy anecdotes.’
Henry Whorwood was at Oxford with Tim and has been a member of the Savile since 2023.
