Greg Bruce: ‘That Glorious Night in Oxford’: David Lange and the speech that shaped a nation

When David Lange stood before the Oxford Union on the night of Friday 1 March 1985, debating the motion that nuclear weapons are morally indefensible, and told his American opponent he could smell the uranium on his breath, New Zealand watched in awe.

Journalist and author Greg Bruce argues New Zealand became, in that moment, the most important country in the world. The speech was, Lange later said, the high point of his career in politics. It changed the way the world saw New Zealand and the way New Zealanders saw themselves.

In this talk, Greg discusses his research and vision for the non-fiction novel he’s writing about that extraordinary night and the extraordinary man at its centre, and the extraordinary times in which that man lived and led.

Speaker

Greg Bruce is an Auckland-based writer and the author of Rugby Head (Penguin Random House, 2022). He spent a decade as a feature writer, essayist and critic at the New Zealand Herald, where his writing earned a devoted readership and four national media awards. For the past year, he has been freelancing for The Listener, The Spinoff, New Zealand Geographic, Stuff, Metro, North & South and the New Zealand Herald. He also writes the newsletter Exit Strategy. He is currently researching and writing That Glorious Night in Oxford, a non-fiction novel about David Lange’s legendary 1985 Oxford Union debate speech.

In person and via Zoom.

Free. Koha from non-members appreciated.