Enchanted Trees: A Colloquium with Dr Adam Stout

This Open University event celebrates a new book by historian Adam Stout: Glastonbury Holy Thorn: Story of a Legend, published by Green & Pleasant Publishing in 2020 (cover image created by Piers Browne).

The event will open with a 30-minute lecture on the Glastonbury Thorn by Adam, followed by three shorter presentations by OU academics on the broad theme of 'enchanted trees' in history, art, religion and culture. This will be followed by an open discussion and Q&A session.

Dr Adam Stout has been researching and publishing on local history themes since the late 1970s but it was not until 1997 that he went to university to study archaeology. He went on to do a doctorate at the University of Wales Lampeter, which formed the basis of his 'big book', Creating Prehistory: Druids, Ley-Hunters and Archaeologists in pre-war Britain, published by Blackwell in 2008. He is very interested in how ideas about the past are constructed, and over the last fifteen years has been researching the history and evolution of 'the idea of Glastonbury' and its relationship to the real place. He lectures regularly and has published widely on this theme, most recently a full-length book called Glastonbury Holy Thorn: Story of a Legend, which seeks to show how this miraculous tree is the thread that connects the town's medieval and modern mythologies.

Chair: Dr Jessica Hughes (Classical Studies)

Respondents: Dr Marion Bowman (Folklore, Religious Studies), Dr Robert J. Wallis (Art History), Dr Maria Nita (Philology, Religious Studies), The Open University

Please book a place via Eventbrite.