Reflections on History Today and the Appearance of a New World Disorder?

I was very tempted, when I received an invitation fresh off the press last month to attend my own inaugural lecture, to make inaugural lectures my theme tonight particularly in terms of the ground they covered and the perspectives they gave of the scholarly evolution of The University of New England. This temptation was made stronger by the fact that this is the 50th Anniversary of the Inaugural Lecture series. It was a temptation I eventually resisted because the archive of inaugural lectures was dauntingly vast and varied, and has been touched on anyway in Matthew Jordan's recently completed 'A spirit of true learning'.