Twentieth-Century Humanist Celebrates Centenary<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

Harold J. Blackham, British philosopher and author, one of the founders of IHEU in 1952 and the first Executive Director of the British Humanist Association, celebrated his 100th birthday on 31 March 2003. Blackham has been one of the leading figures in British Humanism. His published works include Six Existentialist Thinkers (1952) and Humanism (1976). Blackham worked with intellectuals such as A. J. Ayer and Julian Huxley, but he was also a tireless campaigner and practical Humanist, who sought to spread moral education in schools and was involved in founding the British Association of Counselling. He has lived in the Wye Valley since his retirement, where Harry Stopes-Roe, Jane Wynne Willson, and Babu Gogineni visited him last year (see IHN, November 2002). A celebratory lunch was arranged by Barbara Smoker and Jane Wynne Willson in London to mark his birthday. Blackham, frail now but still engaged with life, attended the event with his son Paul. Sir Hermann Bondi, himself a veteran Humanist activist, was among the speakers. It was a warm and inspiring Humanist occasion. Jim Herrick, of the Rationalist Press Association, writes of Blackham: “He lived the exemplary life of a liberal humanist – thought and action welded together.”

 

Blackham’s Best

Excerpts from H. J. Blackham republished to mark his hundredth birthday

 

To mark his 85th birthday in 1988, a booklet of quotations from Harold Blackham’s writings was compiled and published by Barbara Smoker, who, in common with many others, looks upon him as her mentor. With additional material, it is republished to celebrate his 100th birthday on 31 March 2003.

Taken from nine of his books and from articles in a variety of publications, the excerpts are arranged under 19 thematic headings from ‘Life’ and ‘Human Nature’, through ‘Morality’ and ‘Knowledge’, to ‘Religion’ and ‘Literature’ – and of course ‘Humanism’. Available from Barbara Smoker, 51 Farmfield Road, Bromley, Kent, BR1 4NF, UK. ISBN 0 8512695 1 X, £4.50 + postage.