Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

For my final interview from southern Scotland, it was a pleasure to meet David McNaughton, who was, until recently, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Florida State University. We begin our conversation by discussing the incongruities of celebrating Christmas in Florida and whether and how it might be deemed an inversion of what is natural and right. David grew up in Gateshead and reminisces about the primary school he went to in the Yorkshire Dales where every child from the ages of 5 through to 11 was taught in a single room by one teacher. He went to grammar school in Nottingham where he developed an interest in French poetry, Dante and Conrad. We discuss how the best way to get people to read a text is to ban it and why being in a darkened theatre amounts to total absorption, as when he was once completely immersed in the experience of watching the silent film ‘Napoleon’ (1927) over several hours. David, who came from a family of schoolteachers, explains how he ended up becoming a phi