Hear from actor and honorary graduate Samuel West on arts funding, the humanities and academia

Slow Horses star Samuel West has issued a passionate defence of the humanities.  

West received a School of Advanced Study honorary degree in February, together with BBC radio producer and disability champion Victoria Brignell. 

“I think the biggest problem in the world at the moment comes down to an empathy deficit,” says West, speaking shortly before receiving his honorary award during the School of Advanced Study graduation ceremony last month.  

“We're not practised at imagining what things are like for other people. That's where the humanities come in, because humanities graduates are traditionally good at that sort of critical thinking, good at making that sort of imaginative leap.”   

Graduate students help expand the boundaries of knowledge, says the Doctor of Literature Honoris Causa.  

On a day like this, to mark the extraordinary hard work, the endless essay crises, the massive numbers of cups of coffee, take a moment to realise how powerful that room is and how educated, how clever in extraordinary and difficult ways, how so few people will understand the subject of your PhD perhaps, but how important it is for that to exist because it's new knowledge, new work.  

“That's a massive thing, a massive step forward, a massive battle against the forces of ignorance,” he says. 

His love of the humanities is not West’s only tie to the University of London, a world-class hub of research. The Bafta-nominated actor also has a longstanding connection to Senate House.  

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‘The Day of The Triffids’, by John Wyndham, was one of the very first audiobooks he ever recorded in his career – aged 27 – and features Senate House as a symbol of one of the last vestiges of hope in a post-apocalyptic world. 

“A comet supposedly comes to Earth and makes 99 per cent of the population blind. They wake up in the morning and their optic nerves are burnt out and they die, and the population is reduced to medieval levels,” he explains.  

“This building in The Day of the Triffids is the one from which somebody sends up a spotlight, a sort of bat signal for anybody who can still see to come. The day of the Triffids was the second audio book I ever recorded when I was 27. I've done 104 now, so I remember it was great fun. And, when I realised I was coming to this building to get my degree, I thought, ‘oh, good, it's still sending out the bat signal. 

“‘It's still sending out a bright beacon of hope to the people who can see it. Long may that continue.’” 

West has long been a passionate advocate for the arts, now serving as a trustee of the Campaign for the Arts, a movement that fights for greater access to culture.    

He chaired its predecessor organisation, the National Campaign for the Arts, from 2012 to 2022, and worries that a lack of funding in the arts could hamper the next generation of talent from emerging. 

“I probably grew up at the point where Britain was best funded in terms of affordable access to the arts, and we are cashing that cheque 45 years later. But we're also simultaneously squeezing that pipe of talent and opportunity dry by removing that funding and removing that opportunity.” 

The issue has come under renewed focus recently, with the UK government announcing a £270 million funding pot for museums, theatres and other cultural venues in England.