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Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, who has faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct in the past six years, received a standing ovation at the University of Oxford, where he, at one point, had been a visiting lecturer.

This event was centered around a lecture on cancel culture. It was the first time Spacey had spoken on stage since he was found not guilty of sexual assault in July.

Spacey performed a five-minute scene from Timon of Athens, a play written by William Shakespeare, at the event held at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theater.

The session was moderated by the New York Post columnist, Douglas Murray, in honor of the late conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton.

Murray invited Spacey to speak at the lecture.

Months prior to his death in 2020, Scruton was fired as a U.K. government adviser after a controversial interview he gave with the left-leaning New Statesman magazine in 2019.

During this interview,...

On Monday night, the University of Oxford hosted What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Cancel Culture, a lecture from columnist Douglas Murray honoring the late conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton. There, Kevin Spacey performed a five-minute scene from Timon of Athens, marking his first onstage appearance since being acquitted of sexual assault in July. The audience punctuated his performance with a standing ovation.

Before the performance, Murray said: “In an era of cancellation and defenestration, we sometimes forget that we both cannot go on like this and that we have...

Kevin Spacey made a surprise appearance at an Oxford lecture honoring late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton on Monday night, performing for the first time since he was acquitted of sexual assault charges in London.

In a clip from the event titled “what Shakespeare can teach us about cancel culture,” The Spectator associate editor Douglas Murray invited Spacey on stage to perform a monologue from “Timon of Athens.”

“In an era of cancellation and defenestration we sometimes forget that we cannot go on like this and that we have been here before. We know this because our greatest writers and artists have addressed this question in their own times,” Murray said, referencing when Scruton was briefly dismissed from a government commission in 2019 over offensive remarks he made in an interview with the New Statesman.

“It’s about what happens when a society drops a person for no reason,” Murray told the Times about the particular scene.

In what is thought to have been his first public appearance in the U.K. since being found not guilty of sexual assault charges in a highly publicized London trial, Kevin Spacey received a standing ovation by an audience at Oxford University on Monday, Oct. 16, after giving a performance as part of a lecture on cancel culture.

The two-time Oscar winner delivered a five-minute scene from Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare’s play about wealth, greed and betrayal that many contemporary critics have said explores what is today referred to as cancel culture.

Spacey, 64, who is understood to have remained in London since the trial ended in July, was introduced by journalist, writer and free-speech advocate Douglas Murray, associate editor of arch-conservative magazine The Spectator. Murray described Spacey as “one of the great actors of his generation and somebody I’m proud to call a friend.”

Written by Shakespeare in the early 1600s,...

Kevin Spacey was rewarded with a standing ovation after an appearance at a University of Oxford lecture about cancel culture.

In what is thought to be his first stage appearance since he was acquitted of sexual assault earlier this year, Spacey delivered a five-minute scene from William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens.

He was introduced by writer and free speech advocate Douglas Murray, who opined on what Shakespeare can teach us about cancel culture as part of a lecture given in memory of philosopher Sir Roger Scruton.

Spacey’s impassioned performance, prompted by cue cards, was met with a standing ovation and a round of applause that lasted for more than 40 seconds. Emma Webb, who appeared to be in the audience for Spacey’s turn, described it as a “phenomenal performance.”

The reception came days after London’s Prince Charles Cinema dropped its offer to host the premiere of Spacey’s new film,...

The Face of God by Roger Scruton, Wolf by Garry Marvin and Mg Lord's The Accidental Feminist

The Face of God by Roger Scruton (Continuum, £18.99)

According to Roger Scruton, a dolphin doesn't have a face, but a house does. This is a series of face-based meditations on the self, love, religion and art, and a critique of scientific reductionism. Scruton laments the various ways in which we can "deface" each other and the world, through "pornographic culture", environmental degradation, and modern "gadget architecture". Rembrandt, Wagner, Kant and Hegel are the good guys; the bad guys are Dawkinsite new atheists, Quentin Tarantino, and "postmodern people".

Of interest to long-term Scruton-fanciers will be the passing revelation that he now believes anthropogenic global warming is real, and the sympathetic use he makes of Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, while promising to rescue their proto-thoughts from swampy continental darkness and bring them into the light of "philosophy as argument,...