Professors, Ladies and Gentlemen
Your conferral of this Professorship is a great honour. Over the years I have received a number of such honours - a Doctorate in the United States and Professorships in Leuven and in Birmingham but none has touched me as much as this. Why? Because a Professorship in International Relations from St Petersburg State University symbolizes and expresses for me the extraordinary and hopeful changes of our time.

Since 9/11 the world has focused on the dangers that confront us. But these are much less than those we faced before the Cold War ended. Then the fulcrum of International relations - their very core - was the ultimate danger of nuclear conflict between the USSR and the West. The danger was real and it has gone. Our nightmares are still real - of terrorist acts as awful or worse than 9/11 - but the spectre of mutual extinction has passed and we should be grateful for it and grateful to all those both in Russia and the West who helped rid the world of the worst that could happen to the world.

So a Professorship in International Relations from this University expresses for me the return to normality in relations between Russia and the West - relations that can now be studied without ideology, without hypocrisy, without propaganda and without prejudice. I rejoice in this.

I have chosen to speak on English and International Relations. As International Chairman of the English Speaking Union allow me to focus on the role - especially - of spoken English and to start by recalling my first memory of English spoken publicly from a platform. It is a memory of my father and provides a surprising link to the City of St Petersburg.

My father, the Reverend John Watson was a Methodist Missionary to South Africa where I was born. In January 1944 (a date this city will never forget) I was three years old and my father was Principal of the largest orphanage in South Africa just outside Cape Town. In that part of the world it is summer in January and I recall all the children of the orphanage being called to assemble on a great green lawn before the Principal's house.

My father addressed the children, the staff and of course his own family. He spoke of a great Allied victory, a great Russian victory, the great victory of Leningrad - the final defeat of the Nazi siege of this City. Aged three and in far away South Africa I of course had no idea of where or what Leningrad was or meant. But I did realize that something wonderful had happened.

I recalled this episode while writing about my childhood last year and today, and with you, it seems right to share the memory.

My father was an excellent public speaker, an effective preacher and later broadcaster. We cut a deal when I was a bit older. I was allowed to miss Sunday School which I found infantile. In return I listened to his sermons either in Church or at home when they were broadcast. We discussed these sermons before and after their delivery and I learned from him the power of the spoken word, the importance of structure and syntax and the need for story and simile.

He used the English language to try and change things for the better - in his pastoral work as Methodist Minister, Clergyman and Priest but also politically for he was much opposed to the Apartheid Regime in South Africa. This led to conflict with the authorities and in 1954 we returned to England. But my bond with him was his sermons and our discussion of them. For him spoken English was a gift to be used, enjoyed, thought about, deployed to change matters and men for the better.

The English Speaking Union sees English in somewhat the same way. Let me explain.

We believe that the English language is faced with a unique opportunity and obligation. Here at the opening of the 21st Century English finds itself the lingua franca of the modern world, the working language of the global village.

Last Thursday at Westminster Abbey in London we celebrated the 85th Anniversary of the ESU. It was an extraordinary event attended by over 1,600 people. In my address I said this of the events that have shaped the ESU. I asked:

"So what of the events that shape us? Above all else it is the explosion in the use of English globally."

Of the four most numerous languages - Chinese, Hindi, Arabic and English - the English language alone owes its prominence to its use as a 2nd language world-wide. There are many reasons for this and many consequences.

Of reasons, the Empire and Commonwealth, the British Diaspora across the world, America's magnetic attraction for millions of immigrants are the most important. The consequences include the global role of English today in the sciences, in trade, in international organization, in international negotiations, in transport, entertainment, information technology and communications of every kind.

But for those of us who speak English as our mother tongue one consequence should be avoided - that of any false pride of ownership. We - perhaps particularly the British and Americans amongst us - do well to remember that English today belongs to all who use the language".

I concluded my address with these words.

"It is our opportunity and obligation to offer English to a volatile world at a dangerous time - not as a means of dominance but as a uniquely universal means of understanding - shared not owned - not for "global glory", but for a dialogue that can reap a "world harvest".

I quoted in that last paragraph from an extraordinary and powerful poem written especially for the Service by the West Indian Poet John Agard. Let me read it to you:

Out of a scattering of tongues Out of Babel's inheritance how reassemble sense from this gift of rich confusion? how resurrect a rainbow from a tower of ruins? How begin to begin the dance of utterance? So armed with my hybrid dictionary - not so concise Oxford - I face the wilderness of the Word, letting English be my bridge to a world harvest - a gathering from continents retracing empire's footsteps seeing this time not global glory but dialogue in the distance

One sentence is particularly relevant:

"Retracing empire's footsteps, seeking this time not global glory but dialogue ….."

Here in this City - a City which will surely play a pivotal role in International Relations and global culture in this 21st Century, I am struck by similarities of potential for the Russian language as well as for English.

Russian has like English been at times the expression of Empire - under the Tsars and under Soviet Communism. Since the ending of the USSR there have been those particularly in East and Central Europe who have rejected Russian for this very reason. In the quite recent past the same has happened to English. For example in Sri Lanka English was dropped from the school curriculum and in Hong Kong after the hand-over its teaching was restricted. But in both these cases and in many others that post-colonial reaction has been reversed because of the need for English as a language that links the local to the global and sometimes overcomes internal differences within a state.

The Russian language is a gift to the world. It is a language of great power and beauty and I am sure that it will continue to serve the world and Europe.

I wish to conclude by focusing briefly on three areas where I believe English as a lingua franca has an especially important role to play at this time.

First, in the fragile and volatile world situation since 9/11 it is more than ever important that we understand the fears and aspirations of other countries, other ethnic groups, other religious persuasions. A shared language will help us to share these hopes and fears. English is that shared language.

Second, in the readjustments of power and alliances, English has a crucial role. It has become the main working language of the European Union's Institutions. Over 70% of the communications between the Council, the Commission and the Parliament, and between those institutions and the wider world are conducted in English. English is the principal working language of NATO. It has been the most important language in the negotiations for the enlargement of the European Union. It is thus a language at the very heart of change. Russia is a vital part of this re-adjustment of alliances, a partner in the way forward and the 21st Century's lingua franca is vital to the process.

Third, we have realized during this last decade as the ESU has expanded so dramatically in countries where English is a second language that a critical driver of this expansion is the urge felt by young people to acquire the language so that they may survive and prosper in a global environment. It is for them a bridge and a key to success and self fulfillment. It is for this reason that so much of our work is focused on youth.

The bronze horseman - Peter the Great - leaps from granite at the centre of St Petersburg. Andrei Bely's famous piece of prophecy and reflection on this most powerful statue is much quoted. One passage from what he has written appears in translation in the publication "St Petersburg Open to the World". This wonderful book by young people was given to me only yesterday by the ESU of St Petersburg and it contains this translation by the 14 year old Sonia Sirakanian:

"There will be a leap in history, there will be a great disturbance, the ground will break, mountains will collapse".

All this has happened, there has been a leap in history, a great disturbance, the ground has broken and mountains have collapsed. Barriers that seemed impenetrable have fallen. Mutually hostile coalitions of powers that seemed intractable have gone. The Cold War has ended. A democratic Russian Federation has been born. Europe is uniting. Our world has changed beyond recognition.

But Andrei Bely was ultimately wrong in his prophecy, for he concluded "As for St Petersburg it will sink".

Threatened as it has been by sea and storm and invader, St Petersburg remains - today a City of beauty, culture and light - a beacon in International Relations and I am proud to accept this Professorship of this great University in this great City.