D-Day Lectures

Just War Theory and the Law of the Conduct of War – Tuesday 21st May

Establishing and Maintaining Peace – the International Rules Based System – Tuesday 28th May

Join us in the quire for two fascinating lectures given by Lieutenant Colonel the Revd Nicholas Mercer as the cathedral marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day Landings.

The landings were the beginning of the end of the Second World War and we owe a debt of gratitude to those who served there in order to liberate Europe from the threat of tyranny.  We are also indebted to those who established systems of international rules which – however imperfectly – have helped maintain relative peace in Europe for over 75 years since those dark days of 1944 and 1945.  Nicholas Mercer is a powerful and compelling speaker.  He has been there and done it – a practising Christian Military Lawyer who found himself in the thick of war.  He speaks from first hand experience of how wars begin and are conducted, and of the pressures on the mechanisms which are meant to ensure peace.

About Lieutenant Colonel the Revd Nicholas Mercer

Educated at St Andrews and Oxford University.  He was admitted as a solicitor in 1990 and subsequently commissioned into the Army Legal Service 1991. He served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cyprus and Germany and was the Command Legal Adviser for the HQ 1st (UK) Armoured Division during the Iraq War 2003. Ordained 2011 and named Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year 2011-2012 for “integrity and courage in the face of the dissembling and denial of human rights abuses in Iraq 2003”. Trustee of Redress 2011-2022 and member of Liberty Executive Committee and Policy Council. Formerly Rector of the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and British Antarctica, he has been Rector of Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire since 2019.