David Oliver is originally from Manchester trained in medicine at Oxford and then Cambridge in the 1980s and after training jobs in numerous hospitals, became a consultant in 1998 – initially at Queen Marr’s Hospital and since 2004 has been Consultant Physician in Geriatric and General Internal Medicine at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. He was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Reading and is now visiting Professor of Medicine for Older People at City University, London and having been a specialist clinical advisor to the Department of Health was then appointed National Clinical Director for Older People at the Department of Health a few weeks before the election (seconded to government alongside his ongoing clinical work). He has been coming to the Battle of the Ideas since the first event and spoken at a number of sessions before as well as judging in the Institute’s Debating Matters competition and is delighted to be back |
"Just when Kant's formulation that 'the public exercise of reason should be free' had begun to seem so remote and exhausted, the Battle should reinforce one's faith in the enduring worth of dissent and of the free traffic in ideas"
Swapan Chakravorty, professor of english, Jadavpur University