A lecture at the American University of Rome examining whether early Hollywood, with its celluloid dreams and theme-park cemeteries, was the beginning of the end of the western humanist tradition.

Drawn to Los Angeles for a variety of reasons that included everything from easy money, political disaffection, spiritual longing and the Mediterranean-style climate, writers such as Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Anthony Powell, J.B Priestly, Dodie Smith, Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse represent an incursion of expert settlers representing British culture and civilisation.

This inaugural lecture by Lisa Colletta will explore how the British experience in southern California challenged traditional ideas of national identity and power and implicated them in a complex of choices and influences filtered through the Hollywood dream machine. The lecture takes place at 19.00 in the university's Auriana Auditorium.