Talk by Sir Rupert Gavin on how English became the world's lingua franca, with a book signing, welcome drink and an exclusive evening view of Dr Johnson's House.
Sir Rupert Gavin is at Dr Johnson's House on Wednesday 27 January 2027, with a talk titled Amorous or Loving?: The Highly Peculiar Tale of English and the English. It's part of the Author's Hour collection at the house, and it's returning by popular demand.
The talk traces how English went from a marginal dialect spoken by about 200,000 people in the late 9th century to the world's lingua franca, spoken by 1.6 billion today. Gavin follows that story through Beowulf, Chaucer and Wycliffe, then Tyndall, Shakespeare and Donne, and on via Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens to the present day. It's a long stretch of ground to cover in one evening, and the names he pulls in — from the early epics to the heavyweights of the 19th century — give you a sense of the scale he's working with.
Gavin himself has spent forty years in the British cultural world. He's a theatre producer who's helped mount more than 300 high-profile productions, collecting 28 Olivier and 7 Tony awards along the way. He's led organisations as diverse as the BBC, Odeon Cinemas and British Telecom, and he currently leads the English National Ballet. That's a lot of different hats for one career, and the range of names he's worked with probably informs the way he talks about the language.
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The evening includes more than just the talk: your ticket gets you a welcome drink and an exclusive evening viewing of the museum, so you can wander through the house after hours. Gavin will also be signing copies of his book, which has drawn praise from Lucy Worsley, Antonia Fraser, Zeinab Badawi and Simon Callow. Doors open at 6pm, the talk starts at 6:30pm, and tickets are £27.50.
