The Saturday Talk - William Morris's Claims to a Decent Life

Presentation by John Blewitt

William Morris is best known as the founder of the English arts and crafts movement in the nineteenth century and a designer of immensely popular flat pattern designs for wallpaper and textiles. However, he was also deeply committed to seeing the end of what he felt was a rapacious and exploitative economic system which blighted the lives of many people and degraded urban and rural environments. He summed up his beliefs in his four claims to a decent life: "First, a healthy body; second, an active mind in sympathy with the past, the present, and the future; thirdly, occupation fit for a healthy body and an active mind; and fourthly, a beautiful world to live in".

BIO: John Blewitt is a retired university lecturer whose books include William Morris and John Ruskin: A New Road On Which The World Should Travel (University of Exeter Press, 2019), William Morris and the Instinct for Socialism (Merlin Press, 2019) and William Morris's Politics and Socialism (University of Exeter Press, forthcoming 2025)

Entrance is FREE

Free tea or coffee and a biscuit served from 10.00 when the doors open. The talk starts promptly at 10.30.

You are welcome to bring a friend.