FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2022

6.45pm to 7.15pm Atrium Drinks

7.30pm Dinner

Black Tie

Couples welcome

€65 pp

GUEST SPEAKER – Howard Haslett

Howard was born in Belfast in 1944 and educated at The Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He is an Honours graduate in English and French of Trinity College, Dublin, and in Divinity of the University of Edinburgh.

From 1973 to 1999 Howerd was Chaplain to Edinburgh Academy, exercising there a pastoral and teaching ministry as well as coaching rugby, athletics golf and leading major rugby tours to South Africa, New Zealand, Western Samoa, Chile, Argentina and Zimbabwe.
 
Rugby has given him a lifetime of pleasure as player, referee, coach, selector, tour manager and as President in 1986 of Edinburgh Academicals, Scotland’s oldest club.

Speaking after dinner has enabled Howard not only to visit rugby people in places as far flung as Inverurie, Cardiff Arms Park, Lansdowne Road, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Bermuda, Houston (Texas) and South Africa, but also through the Royal Variety Club and Lord’s Taverners to pay tribute to players such as David Sole, Roy Laidlaw, John Rutherford, Ian Paxton andJohn Allan. Burns’ Suppers and St Andrew’s Nights have taken him not only to many places in Scotland and England but to Nairobi, Bahrain, Cairo, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Houston, South Africa and Jakarta. He has also had the pleasure of addressing gatherings of people in all branches of trade and industry throughout the world.

His interest in Burns was kindled by teaching the Bard’s poetry to Higher and A-level, in the days when he occupied a classroom more often than a pulpit, and twice he has spoken at the West Sound Supper, still considered to be the biggest in the world.

He was ordained to the ministry of the Church of Scotland in 1972 and served for a time as assistant minister in St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh before becoming Minister of Traprain from which he retired in 2010.
 
He is married to Alix,  and his elder son, Patrick, had a career as a contracted rugby player in the Scottish squad ended by a serious neck injury.  His time is now spent between Haddington, Scotland and Soucirac, France.

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