Chance to go back to uni with free lectures; Public lectures are all the rage. David Whetstone meets author Frances Spalding who not only gives them but organises them.

HOW many of us, I wonder, have seen the students flocking back to university and secretly envied them? I don't mean for the all-night street parties (you grow out of those) but for the chance to attend lectures given by experts who are passionate about their subject. It seems to be a sad fact that you never fully appreciate that until it's too late.

But the good news is that it's not too late. Insights, Newcastle University's series of free public lectures, is open to all-comers and it boasts some very big names in the arts, science, politics and medicine.

Among the diverse experts coming our way are Margaret Drabble, the celebrated author who will talk on October 6 about writing memoir using the jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor, and Mike Brearley, ex-England cricket captain and current president of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

But the series begins on Thursday with Art in Dark Times: John Piper's Wartime Search for an English Vision, a lecture given by Frances Spalding.

Frances is professor of art history at Newcastle University but is also the university's new chair of public lectures. Her new book about Piper and his wife, Myfanwy, is a beauty -but we'll come to that.

Primarily, Frances is keen to talk about the other distinguished speakers she has booked for the university's Curtis Auditorium.

"It's the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his most famous book, On the Origin of Species, so I was keen to reflect that.

"So we have a leading Darwinian expert, Dame Gillian Beer, who is very eminent and something of a semi-celebrity academic. She makes links between artistic and scientific ideas and was chair of the Booker Prize judges one year (1997)."

Billed as a writer and Darwin scholar, she will talk on October 15 about Darwin and the arts. "What happened to Darwin's early passion for music, poetry and visual art? Did it simply die away or was it transformed in his later theories?" That's what it says on the leaflet. Hopefully Dame Gillian will provide answers.

Bonnie Greer, author and playwright, will touch on gang culture in considering Abstraction and Wit in Black Heritage and Modern Times (Oct 22), Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, will give a lecture called Avoiding the Ultimate Recession (Oct 27) and Nick Hornby will discuss young adult fiction (Nov 26).

It's a distinguished line-up and putting it together hasn't all been plain sailing.

"I think one of the reasons it is hard nowadays is that public lectures are a booming activity," says Frances.

"There are more public lecture series and there are also more literary festivals. People really seem to want to see the person actually speaking and to have the possibility of some debate at the end of it."

Maybe it's a reaction to the fact that so much of what we are told these days is automated. A living, breathing expert is a novelty.

Frances says it helps a great deal that many of the university's academic staff are in regular contact with those who agree to speak.

Indeed, some speakers will not have far to come. "We try to keep an eye on what's topical," says Frances, which is why Steve McLean, senior manager of the recently opened Great North Museum, will offer an insight into the museum's development on October 13.

Frances is thrilled that performance artist Bobby Baker will speak on Mental Health Day, October 8, on Mental Illness and Me.

"She's the most engaging performance artist and in addition to that she has had, for some years on and off, severe depression. She made 7,000 drawings on her experience which was shown in London at the Wellcome Collection.

"Having someone who can talk about this in an easy and amusing way, and from her own experience, should be very special."

Mike Brearley, whose CV includes a spell as lecturer at Newcastle University as well as his cricketing exploits, will talk about leadership, personality and psychoanalysis on October 24.

But this lecture will be at The Sage Gateshead in association with BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival 2009, which is being hosted for the first time at the music venue - another sign of a boom in intellectual chat.

Back to Frances's own lecture, which begins the Insights series on Thursday. It draws on the research for her latest book, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art (Oxford University Press, pounds 25).

Piper, celebrated for depicting architecture, was a modernist who painted in an abstract style. He married Myfanwy Evans who ran an avant garde magazine which espoused his views.

"But he decided something was missing," says Frances.

"John Betjeman commissioned him to design a Shell Guide to Oxfordshire, where he lived, and he reverted to a representational style."

During the Second World War he painted the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and many other notable buildings vulnerable to bombing.

The cover of Frances's book has a fantastically moody Piper painting of Seaton Delaval Hall, which he loved.

Full details of the 5.30pm lectures in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, near Haymarket, are at www.ncl.ac.uk/events/public-lectures

CAPTION(S):

LET'S TALK Frances Spalding, chair of public lectures at Newcastle University, with a copy of her new book FLASHBACK John Piper and wife Myfanwy whose life story is told.