News and Opinion

I've just put a page about Richard Carlile among the short biographies on our website. His name has come to mind since he was one of the many victims of the so-called "Society for the Suppression of Vice" founded by the sainted William Wilberforce, whose involvement in the abolition of the slave trade, 200 years ago, is widely celebrated (e.g. 'In Our Time' on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 22nd), though his other less laudable activities, on behalf of evangelical christianity, tend to be forgotten. The Society began with King George III's 1787 Royal Proclamation 'For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality', which Wilberforce suggested, and followed by setting up the Proclamation Society , which became the SSV in 1802. An interesting publication on the history of these issues is Making English Morals : Voluntary Association And Moral Reform In England, 1787-1886 by M. J. D. Roberts. ...

560 million and 50 year Birthday for Leicester's oldest celebrity Dr Mark A. Purnell of the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester has kindly invited us to the Annual Saturday Seminar to be held at the University on 10 March. LEICESTER'S FOSSIL CELEBRITY: CHARNIA AND THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY LIFE Tickets for the seminar and reception are £20.00 with a buffet lunch or £15.00 without - full details and application for tickets here ). Organised by Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society Section C (Geology) in conjunction with the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, & Leicester Museums and Galleries The reception will formally open an exhibition of local and international Ediacaran fossils called 'Charni@ 50' and will launch a new BGS map of the geology of Charnwood. The public exhibition opens 11 March - 15 April 2007.