Ilchester Lectures

The Ilchester Lectures are a series of academic lectures in the University of Oxford, England, founded by William Fox-Strangways, 4th Earl of Ilchester (1795–1865).

Ilchester was a British diplomat and later a Whig politician. He served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Lord Melbourne from 1835 to 1840 and then was Minister Plenipotentiary to the German Confederation from 1840 to 1849. On his death in 1865 he left a bequest for the founding of a series of lectures in Slavonic studies, the first of which were given in 1870.