Talks take place on Thursday afternoons, starting at 2pm, and usually take place in the Lecture Hall, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA. These are free for Oxford u3a members but you are welcome to attend as a guest for a donation of £5 (£2 for members of all other U3As).
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Simon Keable-Elliott – Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable, WW1 Chaplain
7th November 2024 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Educated at Sherborne School and Durham University, Simon first worked in Fleet Street – as a barman – before managing and owning restaurants in London. He trained as a teacher and spent 25 years as Head of Politics and Director of Model United Nations at a secondary school in Croydon. He now works as a writer and speaker, publishing his first book Utterly Immoral last year. Robert Keable was his grandfather.
Simon Keable-Elliott discusses Robert Keable’s time as a chaplain during the First World War and the events that led him to write his notorious novel Simon Called Peter. He looks at the critical reception to the novel, the attempts to ban it and the book’s great success. The author’s life was truly extraordinary. As a child he was an evangelical preacher. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, became a priest, worked in Zanzibar and Basutoland as a missionary and gained a reputation as a writer of devotional books. His life was changed by the war. Afterwards he left the church and later fled the country to go and live in Tahiti. He continued to write and remained an international celebrity throughout the 1920s.