Honorary graduate Dr Caroline Lucas urges students to make time to “feed their imaginations”

Former Green Party MP and leader Dr Caroline Lucas spoke of the power of literature to help everyone navigate challenging times as she collected her honorary degree from the University of Exeter.

Dr Lucas, who began campaigning on environmental issues while a student at the University of Exeter, urged students to make time to “feed your imagination”.

For 14 years Dr Lucas was the Green Party’s only MP. Her first experience of campaigning was as an undergraduate student at the University of Exeter, where she volunteered at the CND shop in the city and attended CND rallies. Dr Lucas returned to the University of Exeter to study for her PhD in Renaissance literature.  She remains passionate about the practical value of literature and how it can help people better consider existential issues and promote better policymaking.

Dr Lucas said it was a “huge privilege” to receive the honour, for which she was “truly grateful”.

She told those at the ceremony she was struck by how much the world had changed since she was studying for first degree 40 years ago because of the introduction of social media, the internet, and the growing understanding of how fragile our planet is.

Dr Lucas said she believed literature could help us all navigate challenging times because of the power and importance of the imagination.

She said: “In many ways political failure can be seen as a failure of imagination. Unless we can imagine a greener fairer world I think we will struggle to achieve it.”

Dr Lucas said her study of literature had taught her not to be afraid to embrace complexity.

She said: “I think my favourite words in the whole of Shakespeare are from King Lear, when the Earl of Gloucester says to Edgar: “and that’s true too”. You know the siren voices of right-wing populists would have us believe there are simple binary answers to the multiple complex crisis we face today. It seems they are unable to understand several things can be true at the same time. That’s true too, four little words that I believe could do wonders to diffuse the polarisation and intolerance which too often scars todays political discourse.”

Dr Lucas urged the new graduates to nurture hope, to remember conviction matters and to remember there is an urgent need to tackle the climate crisis. She asked them to help create “another world”.

Before her time as an MP Dr Lucas served for 10 years in the European Parliament.  She has also served as both Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.  She is a writer, campaigner and keynote speaker, with a particular interest in the role of education and the arts in mobilising action on the climate and nature emergencies.  She has won numerous awards for her work: in 2020 she topped the list of the BBC Radio Woman’s Hour One Planet Power List of influential activists, educators and campaigners, and in 2024 the UK’s largest sustainable business awards scheme presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award.   

She is Co-President of the European Movement, and a Trustee of the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne.  Her latest book, a Sunday Times bestseller, is Another England: How to Reclaim our National Story.