2020 Lecture

Michael Crick

Broadcaster and author

The 2020 Philip Geddes Memorial Lecture was delivered by Michael Crick on Friday, March 6. He spoke on the topic of “Impartiality: the devil’s right of reply”.

Michael is best known for his hard-hitting television journalism, a craft he honed at ITN, where he began his career as a trainee, at Channel 4 News and at the BBC where he spent 19 years as political editor of Newsnight. As Geddes Trust chairman Peter Cardwell noted during his introduction, it is a testament to Michael’s tenacity that over his career the five words most feared by any politician quickly became “Michael Crick is in reception”. He is also the author of many books including biographies of Jeffrey Archer and Michael Heseltine, he is currently working on a new unauthorised biography of Nigel Farage and making online videos for the Daily Mail.

The Geddes Trust is deeply grateful to Michael for giving up his time to deliver a fascinating lecture and was especially delighted at the personal reflections he offered on Philip Geddes as the pair were contemporaries at Oxford.