Litfest and Lancaster University are delighted to announce that the 2026 Lancaster History Lecture will be given as part of Litfest 2026 next March 18 by Dan Hicks, who is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.

Drawing on his controversial book, Every Monument Will Fall, which traces the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, heritage, memory, and colonialism, Professor Hicks will offer an urgent reappraisal of how we think about culture, and how to find hope, remembrance and reconciliation in the fragments of an unfinished violent past. Each year The Lancaster History Lecture, which is a collaboration between Litfest and the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (FHASS) at Lancaster University, speaks to the importance of history and the humanities in understanding the world – and also in shaping the world.

The inaugural lecture was given in 2024 by Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the World, and in 2025 the speaker was Helen Castor, author of The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV.

Bill Swainson, a Trustee of Litfest, said: ‘We are delighted that Dan Hicks will give the 2026 Lecture and speak to the theme of how we remember the past and the way in which history shapes our lives.’