Gresham College Lectures
Episodes
3038 episodes
Gambling Fever: The Mirage of Sudden Riches
Gambling is an activity as old as human social life itself, sometimes carried out alone but, more often than not, by crowds or whole nations. Lottery systems have historically been used as a means of allowing 'Fate' to decide upon the distribution...
Miracle Cures: Spas, Shrines and Spirits
Professor John Pick outlines an 'industry' of relics, religious or otherwise, and the influence of these objects on mass behaviour and belief.This lecture is part of Professor Pick's series, Rumour, Disease and the Madness of Crowds. The other...
Money Mania: The South Sea Bubble
At the beginning of 1720, almost the whole of England thought that investing money in the South Sea Company was an admirable idea; by the end of 1720, they were equally convinced that the company was made up of nothing but rogues and vagabonds. Wh...
God Speaks First to His Englishmen: The Armada of 1588
Was English success against the Spanish Armada an instance of divine 'deliverance'? Reverend Professor Richard Chartres examines the evidence.
Victorian Values: Lecture Three
In his final lecture on nineteenth-century values, Richard Chartres looks at Archbishop Benson, who stood in great contrast to his predecessors. He was apathetic towards both sport and politics, uncomfortable speaking to laypeople and intolerant o...
Victorian Values: Lecture Two
The subject of Richard Chartres' second lecture on Victorian morality is Archibald Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury between 1868 and 1882. Tait was a champion of tolerance and demonstrated great faith and optimism towards the times he lived in. Was ...
1888: Jack the Ripper
What were the rumours surrounding the grisly murders of 1888 and how do they compare to the rumours attached to later serial killers? This lecture is part of Professor Pick's series, Rumour, Disease and the Madness of Crowds.
Victorian Values: Lecture One
The Revd Professor Richard Chartres begins his series on Victorian morality by considering Charles Thomas Longley (1794-1868), perhaps the most critically neglected Archbishop of Canterbury of the nineteenth-century.
1848: The Chartists' Revolution in London
Pollsters and percentages have, to a degree, done away with that species of political rumour that precedes and predicts revolutions. Professor Pick outlines how this type of rumour operated in the context of a feared Chartist revolution in Victori...
1665: The Great Pestilence of London
By the end of 1664, talk of plague in Europe was beginning to spread throughout England. What rumours occurred and how did rumour operate before and during the time of the Great Plague in London? How did the Government attempt to silence the 'rumo...
Advances in Medicine and their Social Aspects
There have been far greater advances made in medicine over the last twenty years than in the past four centuries. What are the implications for society?
Popular and Unpopular Science
The popularisation of science has never been very popular - particularly amongst scientists, who equate it with a lowering of standards. Nevertheless, while pure and applied science have transformed the world we live in beyond recognition over the...
Recent Developments in the Legal Regulation of Deep Seabed Mining: Lecture Two
Much debate and dispute surrounds the exploration and exploitation of deep ocean polymetallic nodules. In the second of two lectures, Professor Kenneth Simmonds untangles the complicated political and legal issues of seabed mining.
Recent Developments in the Legal Regulation of Deep Seabed Mining: Lecture One
Much debate and dispute surrounds the exploration and exploitation of deep ocean polymetallic nodules. In the first of two lectures, Professor Kenneth Simmonds untangles the complicated political and legal issues of seabed mining.The second le...
The Religious Picture Today in the Soviet Union
Richard Chartres looks in detail at a number of contemporary developments concerning the Soviet Union's Council for Religious Affairs. He considers the resurgence of Islam in Central Asian republics, Baptist advances in the Ukraine, and the sense ...
Forty Years of the Health Service
Professor John Griffiths charts the history of the National Health Service and its precursors. What have been its major benefits and drawbacks? How might it improve?
Making Music Live in the Community
Peter Renshaw outlines the work of a project committed to integrating musical performance into the wider community. He explores how workshops within social institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons might increase the accessibility and re...
Audience for Music in the Year 2000
Peter Renshaw looks ahead to musical performance in the 21st century, highlighting opprtunities for change: the physical context of a performance space, the social backgrounds of an audience and attitudes towards communicating knowledge.This i...
The Christian Church in the Soviet Period
Ever since the Revolution of 1917, Russia has considered atheism to be a precondition for social progress. Religion is dismissed as "an opiate for the people" (Marx) or as "moonshine" (Lenin). How has the Russian Orthodox Church, the main Christia...
The Russian Orthodox Church Before the Revolution
There are older Christian Churches existing within the Soviet Union, but none can compare with the Russian Orthodox Church in terms of its impact on Russian culture. Richard Chartres guides us through its long history, from the tenth-century to th...
Laughter and Television
The comedian today is in crisis. The ways of making us laugh have become fewer and blander, and there are less opportunities for comics to learn the tricks of the trade. Television, and the media more generally, should be uniting the nation in lau...
Stand-Up Comedy
Professor Pick traces the evolution of the modern stand-up comic, a figure that emerged out of the music halls and American vaudeville circuits at the end of the nineteenth-century.This lecture is part of Professor Pick's 'Comedy and Laughter'...
The Radio Comedians
What makes the British laugh? Professor Pick looks in detail at the role of comedy on BBC radio, particularly between the years of 1930 to 1950, arguing that comedians should be seen as some of the greatest artists of the twentieth-century.
Uranus' Eccentric Magnetic Field
Professor Hide explains what makes the planet's magnetic field so extraordinary.
Jupiter's Red Spot
Jupiter's Great Red Spot was first discovered in 1664 by former Gresham Professor Robert Hooke, but thanks to images captured by the Voyager space probe, it has attained a new popularity in the twentieth-century. Professor Hide outlines its import...
Pictorial Representation: The Twentieth Century
Professor Kilmister considers the impact of the advent of computers on graphical representation in mathematics.
Pictorial Representation: Nomography
Historically, how did people make calculations and solve equations without using a slide rule? Professor Kilmister considers in detail one possible method: the nomogram.
Pictorial Representation: The Slide Rule
What has been the role of pictorial representation in geometry? Is it now little more than a lost art? Professor Kilmister begins his series by examining the history and uses of the slide rule.
Alternative Medicine: Are Elizabethan Disciplines Relevant Today?
Professor Griffiths is joined by Dr Siân Griffiths and Robin Rusher, acupuncturist, to explore the links between Elizabethan medicine and contemporary alternative therapies.
Why Geometry?
The Professorship of Geometry established by Sir Thomas Gresham is the oldest Chair of mathematics in Britain, predating the Savilian Professorship at Oxford by 23 years and the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge by 67 years. What induced Thomas Gresham ...
The Japanese Market and Services
Simon Crow provides an overview of the Japanese service industry. Why should the Western financial sector bother with Japan and how might it do so?
Science Today and Science Then
Professor Hide compares contemporary science with science as it was at the time of the foundation of Gresham College in 1597.
The Japanese Political System
How can a country be democratic when it has been ruled without interruption by a conservative party for over thirty years? Is parliamentary democracy as practiced in Japan a mere façade for oligarchic rule by the Japanese establishment? Sir Hugh C...
Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary?
Professor Jan Kott, author of the highly influential study, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, explores the continued importance of the Bard in our lives. He considers the impact of twentieth-century theatre, including the works of Brecht and Beckett, ...
Japanese Management Practice in the UK
In this lecture, Dr Malcolm Trevor looks at Japanese companies in the UK in the light of quality control, and the problematic relations between local component manufacturers and the main Japanese assemblers they supply. What are the implications o...
The Rise and Fall of the Entrepreneur
The entrepreneur is an innovator, a promoter, often a risk-taker, someone with a desire to create and a willingness to take full responsibility for his or her actions. In this lecture, The Rt Hon The Lord Young of Graffham charts the changing role...
Adopting a 'Philosophical' Approach to Life
Determinist biology, collectivist psychology and relativist morality: these three ideologies summarise the unspoken assumptions and values that shape the people we are and the world we live in - but not for the better. In this lecture, Dr Jules Go...