The Peace Lectures are thanks to Dr Alan Lacey, a life-long pacifist who taught philosophy at King’s College London for over fifteen years, and who left a generous bequest to fund a lecture series promoting peace.
Dr Alan Lacey studied Classics and English at Cambridge University. He joined Bedford College, London in 1954 as a Lecturer and was promoted in 1973 to Senior Lecturer. From 1984 to 1991 he taught at King's College London in the Philosophy Department. After his retirement in 1991, he taught part-time until 1998.
Alan was extraordinarily diverse in his interests, which included Buddhism: he wrote on Ancient Philosophy (Plato and Aristotle, but also the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle), Nozick, Bergson, and ‘Modern Philosophy’. His most characteristic feature was the way he cared about his students: his philosophical work was seamless with his constant engagement with them. Whatever he was thinking about as a philosophical topic was infused with a kind of gentle inquiry. In sum, he had a sort of profound humanity which made his commitment to pacifism totally unsurprising to his many friends, colleagues, and former students.