In Journeys Begin Responsibilities
Inaugural H. Peter Stern Lecture, presented by Pico Iyer, travel essayist and novelist
To inaugurate the H. Peter Stern Lecture, Pico Iyer will deliver a special lecture for World Monuments Fund supporters, sharing insights about the wonder of travel and the responsibilities that accompany it.
H. Peter Stern Lecture
The H. Peter Stern Lecture extends the legacy and interests of long-time World Monuments Fund Trustee H. Peter Stern, who became a champion of WMF’s work in 1970.
The H. Peter Stern Lecture extends the legacy and interests of long-time World Monuments Fund Trustee H. Peter Stern, who became a champion of WMF’s work in 1970. He joined the Board of Trustees two years later and served as Vice Chairman until his retirement in 2011. To honor his legacy of service spanning four decades, World Monuments Fund has established the H. Peter Stern Lecture. The series draws inspiration from the work of Arnold Toynbee, an English historian and philosopher of history,who authored a twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, and the influence of this work on Peter Stern. While at Harvard, Stern read Toynbee’s work and resolved to follow in the historian’s footsteps to see what remained of the world’s great civilizations. The series allows WMF to invite a speaker to share a vision of civilization’s great places and continue the cycle of inspiration, awakening of intellectual curiosity, and launch of a search that Peter Stern began many years ago. His search culminated in pragmatic activism, a model WMF hopes others will follow.
About the Speaker
Pico Iyer, born in Oxford, England, in 1957 and educated at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard, is the author of two novels and eight books often found in the travel literature section of bookstores. Among his works are long-running reader favorites Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul and The Open Road (a record of his 34 years of talks and travels with the 14th Dalai Lama).
Pico Iyer, born in Oxford, England, in 1957 and educated at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard, is the author of two novels and eight books often found in the travel literature section of bookstores. Among his works are long-running reader favorites Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul and The Open Road (a record of his 34 years of talks and travels with the 14th Dalai Lama). His most recent book, The Man Within My Head is about Graham Greene and the conundrums of travel everywhere from Bogota to Bhutan and Bolivia to Berkhamsted.
An essayist for Time for more than 25 years, Pico Iyer also writes for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Harper’s and many others. Having spent much of the past 30 years journeying from North Korea to Ethiopia and from Yemen to Easter Island, he has written regularly for Conde Nast Traveler since its third issue, in 1987, and his pieces on travel appear often in The Financial Times, National Geographic, and Granta. A two-time Fellow of the World Economic Forum at Davos, he has also written a film-script for Miramax, helped name an internationally known soft drink, and contributed liner notes to several Leonard Cohen albums.