Australian “living treasure” Dr Barry Jones attracted one of our largest audiences yet for a Fleeman Lecture, with many guests as well as members turning up in force for the 2009 lecture, following the Annual General Meeting on October 3.

Barry, who prefaced his lecture, entitled Samuel Johnson and his Great Contemporaries, with a caution that he did not regard himself as a Johnson specialist, nonetheless gave his audience some fascinating insights into Johnson’s opinions and attitudes towards such contemporaries as Laurence Sterne, Edward Gibbon and Jonathan Swift.

He paid powerful tribute to Johnson’s contribution towards shaping and defining what became modern English and to his personality which led to what Barry called “the greatest biography in the language.”

The lecture will be published in a forthcoming issue of the JSA Papers.