Event Type: Branch

Takes Place: 3rd March 2026

Time: 7.00 p.m.

Venue: Lecture Theatre, Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA

Description: In November 1956, a forty-six year old surgical fitter from Plympton named Cyril Hoskin embarked on an extraordinary literary career. Claiming to have been possessed, after a severe head injury, by the disembodied soul of a Tibetan monk named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, his prolific publications described his life as a Himalayan Buddhist in vivid, convincing detail. “Lama Rampa’s” publications have been alternately ridiculed and read with fascination by generations of spiritual seekers, but what is the truth behind them? Dr. Hannibal Taubes was trained as an academic Tibetologist, and has been sometime resident of Plymouth since 2021. In this talk, he conjures the stranger-than-fiction worlds of Asian religion and European esotericism that underlie Hoskin’s account, tracing wondrous transmigrations from ancient Indian monks to feuding visionaries in medieval Tibet, eccentric Victorian lady-travellers to the thriving Buddhist communities of contemporary Plymouth.

Price: Free for national and local members of the HA and for Plymouth University students, Visitors £6.00, concessions £4.00

Tel: 01752 843750

Email: a.cousins345@btinternet.com

Website: www.ha-plymouth.org.uk/

Organiser: Alan Cousins

Lecturer: Dr Hannibal Taubes, University of Manchester

Region: South-West England

Branch: Plymouth