The environmental and land reform campaigner Alastair McIntosh has been confirmed as the closing speaker for Malvern Festival of Ideas 2019.
A pioneer of modern land reform in Scotland, he helped bring the Isle of Eigg into community ownership. On the Isle of Harris he negotiated withdrawal of the world’s biggest cement company from a devastating “superquarry”.
Alistair has authored a plethora of books including Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power and , his honorary academic posts included fellowships at the University of Ulster and Edinburgh (School of Divinity), and honorary professorial posts at the University of Strathclyde and, currently, the University of Glasgow in its School of Social Sciences.
In this closing session of the festival, Alastair will take as his springboard David Owen’s position that was laid out in the opening session: namely that narcissistic hubris drives much of modern politics. Drawing on his book on climate change, Hell and High Water (2008), he will explore how we have been manipulated by depth psychology and what marketing gurus like B.J. Cunningham have pushed as ‘corporate religion’. Drawing on his most recent book, Poacher’s Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (2016), he will take Donald Trump as a case study. Trump’s mother grew up just 8 miles from where Alastair was raised on the Isle of Lewis. Hard times in the 1920s led to her emigrating, and with it, arguably, to her son being raised without being held within the basket of a loving community. What might be the antidote? Not just for Trump, but for us all? His talk will close by walking through the island on a pilgrimage, reflecting on our collective psychohistory, asking what it means to be a human being in these times, and spiritually calling back the means by which to decolonise the soul.
Advanced booking for this event is highly recommended. To get yourself a ticket for this event (and others) please call 01684 565708 or head to our eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/malvern-festival-of-ideas-2019-tickets-52443048570
For see the entire 2019 programme, please visit the Official Malvern Festival of Ideas website: http://www.malvernfestivalofideas.org.uk/