Writing in good faith: a pilgrimage in fiction, film and thought
Writer and broadcaster Rhidian Brook gives the annual Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture.
The Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lectures are given in memory of Dean Eric Symes Abbott (1906-1983), who was at various times Dean of King's College London, Warden of Lincoln Theological College, Warden of Keble College Oxford, and Dean of Westminster. The Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Fund was endowed after his death by his friends to provide for an annual lecture on spirituality and pastoral theology.
The speaker
Rhidian Brook is an award-winning writer of fiction, television drama and film.
His first novel, The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (1996), won several prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award and was adapted for a film starring Jonathan Pryce. His third novel, The Aftermath (2013), was an international bestseller and translated into 25 languages; he co-wrote the film adaption that starred Keira Knightley.
For television, Brook wrote an original screenplay for the BBC drama, Mr Harvey Lights A Candle, starring Timothy Spall; was a writer on two seasons of Silent Witness; and wrote the original screenplay of the Pathe film Africa United. He has adapted his most recent novel – The Killing of Butterfly Joe (2018) – for film.
Brook has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for The Day for 25 years. A collection of his Thoughts, entitled Godbothering, was published in March 2020. 2025 will see the publication of his Passion Week book, Notes on an Execution. He is currently writing a novel inspired by the year he spent living in Jerusalem.
Tickets
Places are free but should be booked in advance via the Eventbrite website.
