The Italian Chapter (Florence)
Recent News:
- UCL Chapter Orations 1954-2003 now online
- The Vatican Letter
- Crabtree's Australian CV
- Crabtree's Combined UCL-Australian CV
2025 Oration
The Fifty-First Annual Celebration of Joseph Crabtree's life and works was held on 12 February 2025 - two days before the 271st anniversary of his birth - at the Graduate House, Melbourne University, in the Lower Crabtree Hall, a room especially labelled for the occasion.
Our fifty-first Orator was Mr Kieran Thompson.
Kieran Thompson's oration delved into the surprising history of Crabtree's invention of modern rocketry, its pivotal role in the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon, and its surprising connection to the Cold War space race.
A Defence and Technology strategy consultant, providing strategic advice on matters including rocketry to companies around the world, Kieran is a dedicated Crabtree scholar of some 10 orations. His involvement with Crabtree stretches across his entire existence, having first been told bedtime stories of our Esteemed Idol's derring-do as a small boy. He thereby seeks to expand upon our collective Crab knowledge and delve into areas where he has noticed a potential Crab-hand in his professional life. A keen historical scholar, he has also been experimenting with artificial intelligence to assist in peeling back the layers of conspiracy that obscure the life and works of our elusive polymath.
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"Much was known about Joseph Crabtree, poet and polymath, in the nineteenth century; much was forgotten or deliberately obscured in the twentieth century - until 1951. In that year it happened that, at one of Professor Hugh Smith's weekly seminars for scholars of all disciplines or none, two or three of those present discovered a common interest in the life and work of the extraordinary great man, Joseph Crabtree. This interest grew and intensified until Hugh Smith and others at University College London were inspired to set up the Crabtree Foundation at the College."
(from the Prolegomenon to Volume 1 of the Collected Orations of the Crabtree Foundation)
On 17 February 1954 Professor James Sutherland, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at UCL, delivered the oration entitled "Homage to Crabtree". The meeting was presided over by Professor Hugh Smith, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at UCL, and twenty-four scholars were present.
This was the inaugural meeting of the Foundation which ever since has been dedicated to researching and publicising the life and work of Joseph Crabtree (1754-1854). Crabtree's achievements had been grievously overlooked, misinterpreted, occasionally traduced and in some cases quite deliberately suppressed, leading to a situation amounting, in Professor Sutherland's words, "almost to a conspiracy of silence". The traduction continues to the present day, as can be seen by the deletion in late 2014 of the Wikipedia entry on Crabtree, which had been compiled by scholars in order to reveal his contributions to the wider community.
Since that inaugural meeting the Foundation has now expanded to over 400 members, or more correctly "Scholars", in the first President's words, "scattered as they are over the face of the world", who have established chapters in Australia, Italy and Southern Africa. Each chapter typically meets annually on the Wednesday closest to Saint Valentine's Day, the day of Crabtree's birth, for a dinner and an oration by a distinguished scholar on some hitherto undiscovered aspect of Crabtree's career and genius. Their findings have established the international scope and diversity of Crabtree's life and achievements.
The Australian Chapter was formed in Melbourne in 1975 at a dinner arranged by the late Professor Arthur Brown to honour Bryan Bennett, a fellow Orator of the Parent Foundation. Also believed to be at the dinner were Richard Belshaw, Keith Bennetts, Don Charlwood, Pat Kilbride and Gordon Taylor; all future Orators. Each year since then the Chapter has celebrated Crabtree's birth with a dinner and oration.
Initially the Chapter met at the Club at Monash University, and in 2010 moved its dinner and oration to the aptly-named Savage Club in the City.
