Events

Benjamin Franklin, Scotland & the Enlightenment

8/29-9/6/10

Edinburgh, Glasgow & St. Andrews.

Once again, we are going to be traveling back to Scotland to follow in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin. We will visit some previous sites and hear from speakers from our last visit. We will also be adding new places and speakers making this an amazing Franklin experience for all our Friends.

As in our last visit, Professor Peter Jones, FOF Member, will be our local host and will open doors for us at various universities and sites that are related to Franklin and his contemporaries. During our tour, we will be visiting many fascinating places where Franklin and his contemporaries once stood and benefit from the great knowledge of our expert speakers and guides.

Our Continental Airlines flight departs from Newark, NJ [Gateway cities will be arranged through Continental] on August 29th. We return from Edinburgh to Newark on September 6. Hotel accommodations are reserved at The Hotel George [www.principal-hayley.com] on the fashionable Princes Street, just a fifteen minute walk from Edinburgh Castle.

We will limit the tour to approximately 35 participants. In order to price the tour appropriately, we need to ascertain who will be travelling with us to develop our per person cost. If you are serious about attending the tour, please complete the form below and mail with a $100, fully refundable, deposit per person by December 31st. After that, we will accept participants depending upon spots available.

We hope you will join us on this exciting excursion! A full brochure will be forthcoming.

Meet our Local Host:

Peter Jones is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he was also Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. He is the author of a dozen books and more than 100 articles on mainly eighteenth century subjects, but also encompassing the Russian novel, Italian opera, and architecture, his Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century [Yale, 2006] has been widely acclaimed and reprinted. He has held numerous Visiting Professorships in the USA and elsewhere, and served on many governing bodies, including The Royal Society of Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and the National Museum of Scotland. For ten years he chaired every meeting concerned with the design and building of the new Museum of Scotland, opened by the Queen in 1998. He has been a member of the UK Government's Spoliation Advisory Panel since 2000 dealing with cultural property stolen during the Nazi regime - and led numerous seminars around the world for UNESCO, Heads of State and other leaders.
His late wife Jean, a distinguished historian of science who guided The Friends in their Edinburgh visit in 1999, was described by several obituary writers in the national press as 'the cleverest women I have ever known'.