War Halls: Royal Houses from the Saxons to the Hundred Years' War

Early Royal residences have much to teach us about the role of British Kings. Simon Thurley reveals all the palace secrets here: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/war-halls-royal-houses-from-the-saxons-to-the-hundred-years-warTh...

Entertainment in London in the 18th Century

How would a Georgian Gentleman amuse himself and his friends. Mike Rendell discusses the possibilities: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/entertainment-in-london-in-the-18th-centuryUsing extracts from personal family collections...

Entry into the European Community, 1971-73

The history, politics and personalities that led to entrering the European Community in 1973: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/entry-into-the-european-community-1971-73This lecture analyses the reasons for the successful negoti...

The First World War: Disease, The Only Victor

The impact of disease has bee nentirely understated as a part of the First World War. The lecture examines its true role: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-first-world-war-disease-the-only-victorThe First World War was the f...

Michelangelo, Copernicus and the Sistine Chapel

A detailed examination of the themes, motifs and secrets held with Michelagelo's masterpiece: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/michelangelo-copernicus-and-the-sistine-chapelIt is argued that Copernicus' theory of the sun-centre...

Advocacy - 'as if' the Person Represented, or 'for' the Person Represented?

Is Advocacy an inate skill or can it be taught? How might we teach it: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/advocacy-as-if-the-person-represented-or-for-the-person-representedUK lawyers used to think that advocacy was a God-giv...

Echoes of the Big Bang

We revisit the remnant radiation of the Big Bang that pervades the sky as the cosmic microwave background in the light of the recent Planck telescope mapping. The most precise measurements of its properties to date have confirmed our understanding...

Fashion and Visual Culture in the 19th Century: Women in Red

Fashionable dress in the nineteenth century had a moral dimension. Introducing the theme of the morality and modernity of fashion, this lecture considers the visual representation of the fallen women, courtesan and prostitute in the arts of the pe...

The Work of Medecins Sans Frontieres

The vital and incredible work of Médecins Sans Frontières is explained by the Chairman of MSF UK: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-work-of-medecins-sans-frontieresMédecins Sans Frontières/DoctorsWithout Borders (MSF) is an ...

Eye on the Future: How can modern scientific knowledge help to prevent blindness

This lecture examines how the treatment of infecion , injury and disease will change as science progresses: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/eye-on-the-future-how-can-modern-scientific-knowledge-help-to-prevent-blindnessGene th...

Modern Reading in Historical Context: From Gutenberg to Naked Women

How do we read 'in the age of distraction'? When did what we understand as modern reading begin to take shape: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/modern-reading-in-historical-context-from-gutenberg-to-naked-womenDid the publicati...

Rights, Law and Religion in a Liberal Society - Lecture Two

An all encompassing examination of Religion's place in a liberal society: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/rights-law-and-religion-in-a-liberal-society-lecture-twoThere have been quite a few high profile legal cases relating to...

Music in Context: For Self-promotion - Mozart

An investigation of Mozart's Quintet for piano and winds K.452, completed March 30, 1784 and premiered two days later at the Imperial and Royal National Court Theater in Vienna.This lecture by Professor Christopher Hogwood will be followed...

Snails in Art and the Art of Snails

Matisse, Dali and even medieval monks all found beauty and allegory in Snails. Steve Jones examines their representation, and what science can tell us about them: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/snails-in-art-and-the-art-of-snails...

The Oedipus Effect

The Oedipus Complex has fascinated psychologists for decades, but what, if anything does it tell us about human nature?: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-oedipus-effectMany writers, from Sophocles to Freud, have seen profou...

Probability and its Limits

Probability is the examination of uncertain processes, but it's useful for far more than games of chance: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/probability-and-its-limitsThe modern theory of probability is considered to have begun i...

Finding Stable Matches: The Mathematics of Computer Dating

Can an algorithm find true love? Professor Mann looks at the mathematics that powers dating websiteshttp://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/finding-stable-matches-the-mathematics-of-computer-datingComputer systems use mathematics to f...

Can the Euro Survive Globalisation?

Globalisation is an economic force of nature that has taken many Institutions by surprise. Can the EU continue in a world it was not designed for? http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/can-the-euro-survive-globalisationThe euro was ...

The Sanctity Of Life Law Has Gone Too Far

When does some one have the right to die? Should it be the decision of the family, or should this be decided in court? http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-sanctity-of-life-law-has-gone-too-farProfessor Gillon would argue that ...

Designing IT to make Healthcare Safer

If preventable error in hospitals was a disease, it would be our sixth biggest killer:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/designing-it-to-make-healthcare-saferErrors in healthcare are a huge problem that is ften invisible. If it w...

What's Happened to Childhood?

Our perception of childhood is shaped by the common narratives. Hugh Cunningham exams the narratives, their formation and what we can learn from them: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/whats-happened-to-childhoodOur understandin...

The Lives of Stars

Professor Carolin Crawford answers every question you've ever had about the most romantic stellar bodies, the stars: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-lives-of-starsStars are an ubiquitous feature of our local Galactic envir...

Fashion and Visual Culture in the 19th Century: The Crinoline Cage

The middle of the nineteenth century was the great age of the crinoline. Lynda Nead examines what this unique fashion meant to women, how it empowered and constrained: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-crinoline-cageThe midd...

Measuring Up Cities: Rough Around The Edges? (Panel Discussion)

The panel discusses what the future of cities look like and how important it is that we understand the present: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/introduction-to-long-finance-symposium-measuring-up-citiesAlderman Professor Micha...

Concluding Remarks for Measuring Up Cities

Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli presents concluding remarks and closes the Long Finance Measuring Up Cities symposium: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/concluding-remarks-for-measuring-up-citiesThe Lord Mayor's Annual Lectu...

Firm Migration - The Neglected Component of Change

Martin Houghton looks at one key aspect of city measurment that throws new light on the growth or decline of a city: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/firm-migration-the-neglected-component-of-changeThe Lord Mayor's Annual Lectu...

Towards the Scientific Theory of Cities

Dr Hyejin Youn discusses the many ways that natural sciences can inform and illuminate the study of cities: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/towards-the-scientific-theory-of-citiesThe transcript and downloadable versions of the...

Counting What Counts or (Simply) Measuring the Measurable?

Dr Laura Davison examines the unique challenges of assessing the City of London's progress and growth: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/counting-what-counts-or-simply-measuring-the-measurableIn this part of the 'Measuring Up Ci...

Competitive Cities: What we can measure and What we can't

Professor Tony Travers of LSE reveals the basic data that we can use in measuring cities:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/competitive-cities-what-we-can-measure-and-what-we-cantProfessor Tony Travers is the Direstor of LSE Lond...

Introduction to Long Finance Symposium "Measuring Up Cities"

The introduction to the Long Finance Symposium 'Measuring Up Cities': http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/introduction-to-long-finance-symposium-measuring-up-citiesAlderman Professor Michael Mainelli welcomes the Gresham College, ...

Tomorrow's Cities

The Lord Mayor of the City of Lonodn presents her Annual lecture on the Cities of the futur: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/tomorrows-citiesIt has been argued that economists mistakenly use nations as their unit of analysis w...

Return of the Microbes: How infections are once more taking over

A number if infectious diseases cause blindness. After decades of improvement in treatment many were thought to be on the edge of extinction.Whilst this was achieved with smallpox, the promise if eradication of trachoma and river blindness...

Ancient Reading in an Historical Context

Professor Jack examines the prehistory of reading as well as the early attitudes to reading in the ancient world: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/ancient-reading-in-an-historical-contextThis lecture will explore the varying wa...

Rights, Law and Religion in a Liberal Society - Lecture One

Lord Plant examines the issue of identity and religion before the law in a liberal society: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/rights-law-and-religion-in-a-liberal-society-lecture-oneThere have been quite a few high profile legal...

Notation, Patterns & New Discoveries

While ideas are undoubtedly more important than mere notations, the power of a good notation cannot be over-stated: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/notation-patterns-and-new-discoveriesAs an example of this, in the mid-1980's ...

New Atheism - New Apologetics: The Use of Science in Recent Christian Apologetic Writings

The rise of the New Atheism has stimulated a new interest in Christian apologetics: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/new-atheism-new-apologetics-the-use-of-science-in-recent-christian-apologeticThis interest has flourished in b...

Criminal Minds

What makes a criminal? Are they born or made? Professor Wilson examines the evidence: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/criminal-mindsHow do personality, social deprivation and upbringing affect criminality? Is crime due to econ...

Surfaces and Topology

If we count the number of vertices, v, on a cube, v = 8, number of edges e = 12, and number of faces f = 6, then v¬ - e + f = 2. The same is true for a tetrahedron where v¬ = 4, e = 6 and f = 4. In fact, the mathematician Leonhard Euler obtained t...

User Error: Why it's not your fault

We all make mistakes when we use computer systems - forgetting to save the last document version, neglecting to add the promised email attachment, texting the wrong person, or buying the wrong train ticket. Mistakes can be just irritating or have ...

The Changing Shape of UK Trade

One of the consequences of the move in the terms of trade against the UK is that we will have to export much more and to places much further away to pay for our essential imports. This lecture explains the likely scale of these shifts and puts the...

Music in Context: In Advertising - Ravel and Saint-Saëns

A consideration of classical music that has been created with advertising in mind. Dr Stephen Rose's lecture will be illustrated by live performances by a Royal Academy of Music chamber ensemble of Ravel's Introduction for harp, flute, clarinet an...

The Decision to Seek Entry into the European Community

This lecture analyses the background to Harold Macmillan's decision in 1961 to join the European Community, a reversal of previous Conservative policy. Labour opposed entry, although, in office after 1964, it too sought to join the Community. But ...

Music in Context: In the Teaching Studio

Professor Stephen Rose in conversation with Florian Mitrea (piano). This event will include live musical performances of pieces by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Bartók which were created for teaching and study.The transcript and download...

Was Karl Marx always wrong?

This lecture looks at the impact of globalisation, the distribution of labour incomes and profits. It points out that the multiplication of the world's labour supply has tilted the balance in favour of the capitalist. It examines this in the conte...

Fuelling the Debate: The English Corn Law returns, the Corn Laws and the birth of political economy

The Corn Returns, agricultural data from the 18th and 19th centuries, represent a key resource for historians trying to understand the emergence of modern agricultural markets and the effects of protective tariffs. This lecture explores how the C...

Scientists Must Protect and Promote Human Rights: It is Principled and in their Interest

National science academy members worldwide, concerned about dozens of unjustly imprisoned colleagues (none of whom advocates violence but many are tortured, some are murdered) use their high-level connections, cultural/political knowledge, and per...

Imported Plant Diseases

The current threat of ash dieback and the devastation to the countryside caused by Dutch elm disease in the 1960's and 70's will be familiar to many. Other less well known diseases continue to threaten crops in the developed and developing countri...

Law as a New Religion and Other Topics

Law is everywhere providing answers to almost everything. Ever larger numbers of students want to be part of the legal mechanisms that control us, regulate us and take over from politicians when politicians sense their own incapability. It is almo...

Feast or Famine: The Psychology of Eating

Is body weight due to a constitutional "set point" or to eating style? Do diets work or are they inevitably doomed to fail? Is self-monitoring (e.g., calorie counting, food diaries and regular weighing) useful or counterproductive. What accounts f...

Modern Art in Churches

Beginning with Walter Hussey at St Matthew's, Northampton, in the 1940's, churches have been much bolder than many earlier decades in commissioning modern art. Richard Harries looks specifically at modern works of art that have been placed in chur...

The Story of your Blood

Blood has long been used as an aid to diagnosis but now more than ever it can be key to establishing the cause of disease. From glass bottles to complex plastic systems, the storage of blood has evolved and so too have the processes used to analys...

The End of the Grotian Era? Maintaining Order and Good Governance at Sea

70% of the Earth's surface is not subject to sovereign administration and remains an anarchic space. New technologies pose serious challenges to the notion of High Seas Freedom. Is regulation inevitable and, if so, who will impose it and how?<...

Transplantation and the Eye

The first successful solid organ transplant was the cornea in Moravia in 1905. However both science and clinical tools then available were unable to allow further advances. The discovery of the natural barriers to transplantation enabled understan...

Reading for Pleasure

What do we mean by 'reading for pleasure'? How does reading for pleasure feel? Why has novel-reading by women long been associated with eroticism? This lecture, by Belinda Jack will be illustrated by images of readers from Ancient Rome to the pres...

Liberalism: A Challenge to Religion

A liberal state will put ideas about rights and individual autonomy at the centre of the relationship between the individual and the state. However, it is sometimes argued that the liberal state should be neutral, not seeking to impose an overall ...

The Honourable The Irish Society in the Modern Era

A review of the more recent history and activities of The Honorable The Irish Society, the talk will focus on the Societies' activities in the 20th century, as it tried to find a viable role in the aftermath of the Irish Land Acts, the effect of p...

Comets - Visitors from the frozen edge of the Solar System

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/comets-visitors-from-the-frozen-edge-of-the-solar-systemGresham College has been giving fre...

Should the UK Adopt Money GDP targets?

Following the lecture on 'A New Theory of Economic Growth' in the previous year, and with a new Governor of the Bank of England, this lecture looks at a different way of targeting economic policy to deal with the paradox that inflation has been co...

Symmetries and Groups

One of the most important patterns that a mathematician looks for is whether or not an object has symmetries i.e. is left unchanged or invariant after some operation, for example reflection or rotation. A square has many symmetries under the opera...

At an Amateur Domestic Evening: Haydn Symphony no. 104 'London', arr. Salomon

A lecture on Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 104, commonly known as the 'London' Symphony, illustrated with live musical extracts of the piece.Music will be performed by the Baroque Ensemble from the Royal Academy of Music, including the follo...

The Iran Tribunal

Many innocent Iranians suffered terrible atrocities and death in the regime of the Ayatollahs in the 1980s. The UN failed to record the crimes in a formal way at any court or tribunal. Groups from around the world established an informal tribunal ...

From the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market

This lecture analyses early moves towards European unity in the early 1950s - the European Coal and Steel Community and the abortive proposal for a European Defence Community, a European Army. Britain was sceptical towards these initiatives. The ...

Is Man Just Another Animal?

Many people agree with Gilbert and Sullivan that Darwinian man, though well behaved is nothing but a monkey shaved. The recent discovery that we share around 95% of our DNA sequence with our closest relative suggests that there may be some truth i...

'Le habit noir' - Men in Black

In 1863 Charles Baudelaire, wrote about the 'Painter of Modern Life' depicting the uniformity of male dress codes with its black suits, top hats and patent leather boots as having created 'a cortege of undertakers'. Whereas women's dress was const...

Having a Laugh? Comedy and Comedians

Humour depends upon a delicate balance of emotional arousal (a threat, hostility, taboo, sexual arousal) and technique (mechanisms rendering a joke safe and socially acceptable - "just in fun").The origins of humour in non-humans and child...

The Grand Narrative of the History of Computing

A discussion of the core concepts of modern computing and their basis in history.Dr Doron Swade offers a new analysis of the history of computing, suggesting that instead of a linear progression from one phase to the next, it is better underst...

Alan Turing: The Founder of Computer Science

Professor Jonathan Bowen reflects on the brilliant work and tragic life of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science.This is a part of the 2013 Gresham College / British Society of the History of Mathematics conference.The trans...

The History of Computing in Colour

Only looking at coloured imagery leads to new viewpoints and narratives for otherwise well-known histories, and the history of computing is no exception.Martin Campbell-Kelly reconstructs a history of computing from surprisingly rarely-seen co...

1295: The Year of the Galleys

This lecture is about an extraordinary set of English shipbuilding accounts dating from the 1290s, when the ports of London, Southampton, Ipswich, York, Newcastle and other places constructed eight war galleys for King Edward I. These accounts ar...

The Eye at War: Preventing and treating combat injuries a 2000 year journey

Deliberately blinding opponents has always been part of warfare.Sophisticated protective armour has ancient origins. With the incrementally rising incidence of eye injuries with each successive modern war, eye protection had to be re-inven...

The Private Diary and Public History

In recent years, the diary of the private citizen has emerged as a particularly fertile source for both academic and non-academic historians. But private diaries are inherently opaque texts, with a complex sense of audience, and this lecture will ...

Fungal Threats to our Crops and Trees

Fungal infections present major threats to the health of the world's most important crops - rice, wheat, maize, potatoes, soybean and sugarcane - and are responsible for massive economic losses throughout the world. Fungal diseases of trees, inclu...

Creativity in Art, Creativity in Science

In his lecture, Professor Miller will consider the concept of creativity in the context of his research into the history and philosophy of nineteenth and twentieth century science and technology, cognitive science, scientific creativity, and the r...

The Londonderry Plantation from 1641 until the Disengagement at the end of the Nineteenth Century

The events that led to the Londonderry Plantation had momentous consequences, not only for Ireland, but also for the political development of England. The far-reaching effects are still very much with us today. Professor Stevens Curl will consider...

Quasars - The Brightest Black Holes

Quasars are among the most dramatic objects anywhere in the cosmos. They emit prodigious amounts of energy, all due to a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy. Visible far across the Universe, quasars can be used to trace both the early...

Public Key Cryptography: Secrecy in Public

For centuries massive intellectual effort has gone into methods of ensuring secure communication, because of its importance in diplomatic, commercial and military affairs. Up until recently these methods have relied on the exchange of a secret key...

Non-native Plants: A London Perspective

Studies on biological invasion generally focus upon non-urban environments, but areas of high density of human activity are often heavily impacted by non-native biodiversity. This talk will focus on current trends in London's flora and discuss ave...

The Building of England: Retrospect and Prospect 410 AD to 2000

In this the final lecture in his series on the history of English building Simon Thurley looks back. What can be concluded from a survey of 1,400 years of English architecture and social life? How English is English building and how are Saxon hall...

Unwelcome Guests: Alien Animal Invaders

Human dispersal around the world has been accompanied by a range of other species that have established themselves outside the limits of their natural distribution. These invaders, non-native, exotic or alien species, are changing the natural worl...

In Prison Camp: Messiaen 'Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps'

A lecture with live musical illustrations on Olivier Messiaen's 'Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps' ('Quartet for the End of Time'), which was composed whilst imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp, Stalag VIIIA, Silesia, in 1941.The musicia...

The Mathematics that Counts

Combinatorial mathematics is concerned with selecting, arranging and counting objects of various kinds. Included under its wide umbrella are permutations and combinations, graphs and networks, certain geometrical problems, and sudoku puzzles. This...

Modern Art - Enemy or Friend of Religious Art?

Lord Harries will speak about his new book, being launched this week. The book is based on his series of lectures on 'The Image of Christ in Art', which he delivered during this term as Gresham Professor of Divinity, and examines ways in which art...

The Black Dog: Causes and Cures for Depression

Is depression a response to unfortunate life events, or an unfolding of constitutional predisposition? The "learned helplessness" conceptualisation. Chemical and brain changes observed in depression - are they the cause or a manifestation of the ...

Religion: A Challenge to Liberalism

It is frequently argued that liberalism as a set of political ideas arose out of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion that culminated in the Peace of Westphalia. Does liberalism provide a way of dealing with contested doctrines and, if it do...

Unwelcome Guests: Human Diseases

Shakespeare wrote of island Britain as 'This fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war'. A look at Britain in the 21st century in an age of rapid travel, major migrations and emerging drug resistant infections will...

The Vietnam Informal Tribunal

Informal Tribunals dealing with armed conflicts include that established for the Vietnam war by Bertrand Russell. This - and other similar tribunals - showed how the citizen is not bound by the willingness of the great international organisations...

What is Reading?

Neuroscience is beginning to explore what happens when we read by monitoring the areas of the brain that are stimulated while we read. Do these findings matter to the Humanities? Is there neurological evidence that the brain responds differently t...

The Currency of Management: What Managing Money Teaches Us About Managing People

The implicit 'currencies' behind managing real people will be discussed - how communities exchange things and in the process create their own form of currency. The currencies within organisational communities can be power, influence, status and ca...

The Red Planet

Many robotic spacecraft have been sent to explore the cold, dry and dusty surface of Mars. They reveal a world not so dissimilar to Earth, shaped by meteor impacts, volcanic activity, weather and flash flooding. In addition, recent discoveries inf...

Fighting the Forger: The Secrets of your Passport

Martin Lloyd traces passports back over three thousand years, using illustrations from his collection of historic passports to discover how passport design was influenced by a desire to confound the forger, how it developed from the handwritten pa...

How does globalisation affect inequality globally?

Looking at globalisation and its impact on the world's distribution of income, it is argued that, while in individual countries it may raise inequality, the overall impact of transferring incomes from richer countries to poorer ones means that for...

Britain and the Continent

The first lecture seeks to contrast Britain and the Continent in terms of history and institutions, contrasts emphasised by the Second World War. The effect of these contrasts was that Britain would be required to undergo a greater degree of adjus...

Butterflies, Chaos and Fractals

In 1972 the meteorologist, Edward Lorenz, delivered a lecture with the title Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas? In this he showed that dynamical systems can exhibit chaotic, seemingly random,...

Images and Illusions of Investment Banking - This Is Not My Beautiful House; This Is Not My Beautiful Wife

David Weaver, who has worked in various capacities on Wall Street since 1982, will examine current public perceptions of investment banking by deconstructing just exactly what is, in fact, the definition of the term, and how it has evolved. His g...

Treaty-Making and International Relations

Professor Spence will explore the impact of the Treaty of Utrecht - 300 years after its creation - and other major treaties, and of the role of diplomacy.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresha...

Stravinsky, Britten and the Lure of the Classical Past

Professor Cross examines the themes of metamorphosis and other classical myths in music.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events...

The Tree of Life

Illuminating one of the City of London Festival's main themes, the Bishop of London will explore trees as spiritual, mystical and religious symbols of faith and life.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available fro...

The Privatisation of Law: Has a World Court finally been created by modern international arbitration?

This is the 2013 Gray's Inn Reading.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-privatisation-of-law-has-a-world-court-finally-...

Britten and the String Quartet: A Classical Impulse - String Quartet No.3

This is the third in a series of three talks and performances marking the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. The Badke Quartet will perform Britten's String Quartet No 3 in G major (1975).The transcript and downloadable versions ...

London-Derry Connections: The early years, 1613-1640

How did the City of London come to be involved in the Irish plantation? How well did the City discharge its obligations as colonial entrepreneurs on behalf of the English crown? Why did Charles I seek to confiscate the City's holdings in the 1630s...

Poetry of War

Poet Gillian Clarke has responded through her writing to many of the world's wars and troubles - for this special event she will read from her own work and that of war poets such as Wilfred Owen.The transcript and downloadable versions of ...

The Plane Forest: Does the City have the Right Trees?

The City of London actively seeks to make the most of its green spaces and plant trees wherever possible. But does it plant the right sort of trees? What are the right sort of trees?The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture a...

Free Speech, Idiocy and the Challenge of Citizenship

What use are rights we do not exercise? Peter Bradley calls for a reinvigoration of our commitment to free expression and argues that association between citizens and the free, face-to-face exchange of ideas, information and opinions is a key not ...

Why Give? The Case for Investment in Excellent in Arts and Music

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Mayor, Alderman Roger Gifford, will make the case for investment in excellence in Arts and Music, building on London's tradition of philanthropy - precursor to the important connection between commerce and community in the pr...

Making and Running Great Gardens 1700 - 1900

Britain's great gardens are among the glories of our countryside. But how much did they cost to build and maintain, who supplied their plants and equipment and what was involved in maintaining, managing and staffing them? This lecture, based on or...

What have Henry VIII and Elizabeth I got to do with 21st century development policy?

Development is a key term in the modernising global world. It is a target for many of the world's economically poorer nations. It is widely considered that history self-evidently demonstrates that sustained economic growth and development is a rea...

The Mosley Riots

The 'Battle' of Cable Street which took place on the 4 October,1936 has become the defining myth of the East End of London and of the left,memorialised thereafter as the defeat of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts amid the cries of 'They shall no...

Taking Modern Money Apart

"Money just isn't what it used to be", my grandmother used to observe with a sigh... We could add today, and soon it won't be any longer what it now is! Money (and its relatives) are evolving, fast, in response to the revolution in information a...

The Historic Collections of St Paul's Cathedral

The historic collections have undergone some interesting developments in recent years. We will learn of new insights that have been revealed, and the roles of the library, architectural archive and object collection in the Cathedral's life.Th...

Choosing a Past for the Future: Why today's environment policy is also history (but doesn't know it)

It is hard to imagine an area of policy more future-orientated than environmental policy. Whether deciding the destiny of forests, nature reserves, protecting species, or seeking to arrest climate change, the policies we set now are shaping the wo...

From Soap Boxes to Tea Sets: How the Suffragette Movement got into People's Hearts and Homes

The women in the suffrage movement were modern day experts on public campaigning, infiltrating hearts and homes with messages for 'the cause'. Antonia Byatt, who was the first director of The Women's Library, looks at some of the techniques they ...

The UK and the New Face of Europe

How will the Eurozone crisis impact on the UK's relationship with the EU?In the past, the UK has always insisted on keeping a seat at the heart of the system. But it now suggests that it would be happy for Eurozone members to integrate more cl...

Summit Diplomacy: Some Lessons from History for 21st Century Leaders

It is not easy to see how matters could be worsened by a parley at the summit.'Winston Churchill coined the term 'summit' in 1950, during some of the darkest days of the Cold War. In the second half of the twentieth century summit meetings...

From Grub Street to Fleet Street: The Development of the Early English Newspaper

From the broadsides of the sixteenth century to the broadsheets of the 19th century, taking in the Civil War newsbooks, the gutter press of the 18th century, the rise of the Sunday papers full of sex, sport and sensationalism, and the birth of the...

Killing Us Softly: How Demographics Drive Global Economics

Basic economic accounting suggests that economic growth depends on productivity gains and changes to the workforce. With service sector productivity gains diminishing and baby boomers across Europe approaching retirement, businesses face crucial ...

The Window on the Soul

Vision is the dominant sense through which sighted people have developed our culture. It requires enormous computational power: over half of the human brain is assigned to create vision from the electrical impulses generated by light. Since anci...

Armageddon in Cyberspace: Panel Discussion

A panel discussion on the future of the internet, both for the individual and for the state.The panel includes Ben Hammersley, Alexander Carter-Silk and Professor M. Angela Sasse. It is chaired by Professor Tim Connell

Armageddon and the Cyberghost: Cyber-attacks as acts of war

The states' right to retaliate against attack is a central pole of international law and politics. But how are we to understand this in the age of the internet. Would China, Russia or the USA be right to retaliate against a cyber-attack from anoth...

Avoiding Collateral Damage: Protecting people, not just systems

The internet is a great opportunity, but also a great threat. Whose responsibility is it to protect internet users? Can we trust corporate or state bodies to take sufficient care? Can we trust ourselves to know the threats?

The Happiness of the Half-Cyborg

"The future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed"... Three essential truths about the connected world that we live today, and what they mean for how we should live our lives.

Armageddon in Cyberspace: An introduction

An introduction to the questions surrounding the internet today: What risk do we face as individuals, businesses and nations? Can we protect ourselves from the ghost of connectivity?

The KGB's Bête Noire

Founded in 1969, Keston Institute was the "voice of the voiceless" and regularly reported on the situation of persecuted believers in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. From its foundation, to ensure the reliability of its reporting, K...

Britten and the String Quartet: A Classical Impulse - String Quartet No.2

A talk and performance to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. The Badke Quartet will perform Britten's String Quartet No 2 in C major (1945) after a short lecture by Professor Roger Parker FBA.The transcript and downl...

The Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library: Safeguarding Britain's Horticultural Heritage

The fascinating history of gardening and horticulture in Britain. Brent Elliott will take us through some of the library's unique collection of manuscripts, scrapbooks, archives of designers, photographs, portraits of gardeners, magazines, nurser...

Sir Keith Joseph and the Market Economy

Sir Keith Joseph was the most articulate and powerful of the postwar exponents of the market economy at a time when it was distinctly unfashionable. He it was who provided the ideological dynamic for what came to be called Thatcherism. Indeed, Mar...

The City of London in Literature: Place, People and Pursuits

Novelists reflected contemporary attitudes and influenced the way the City was seen both by the wider public at the time and then by later generations. Could long dead novelists have been far more powerful than long dead economists? Consider the...

Rome: Corelli and Geminiani

An investigation into the performance style required by Corelli in his Op 5 solo violin sonatas and their arrangements as concertos by his pupil Geminiani.To be performed by a Royal Academy of Music historical performance ensemble....

Sorting out Transport in London

London has some major disadvantages that would make any transport policy difficult. However, even given the constraints, the current policy mix is so far away from ideal that it could be costing each household about £1,000 more than it should if t...

Britten and the String Quartet: A Classical Impulse - String Quartet No.1

The first in a series of three talks and performances to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten.The Badke Quartet performs Britten's String Quartet No 1 in D major (1941).

Faces in Court 1893-1918: Drawings of William Hartley from New Scotland Yard's Crime Museum

William Hartley (1862-1937) was an early Fleet Street photographer whose fame was achieved from his court room sketches from the Old Bailey, Bow Street and other famous courts. Six volumes of his original sketches were donated to the world famous...

Perils in Professionalism

Richard Chaplin looks in detail at professional networks and highlights recurrent pitfalls.

Public Interest Communities or Selfish Cartels? - Panel Discussion

How is public interest determined and monitored; do professional bodies and professionals walk the talk? Is the changing nature of professional partnerships likely to have an impact on the public interest role of the professions? Professional serv...

Domain Versus Process Expertise: Professional Perspectives - Panel Discussion

What features and competencies make a good professional? What common competencies do professionals need in different sectors? What are the cost and feasibility implications of a quality professional? How does the form of regulation interact with b...

Good Professionals are Annoying

Michael Parker offers a 'provocative' analysis of just what makes a good professional so good (and so irritating!).

Professions for Good: Trust in the Professions - Findings from a series of roundtables

There is a perception that the recent financial crisis has led to a breakdown in trust between members of the public and the business and professional communities in the UK. To discuss the matter in more detail and to explore how the professional ...

Origins and Development of the Professions

Professor Sir Roderick Floud introduces the symposium, What Makes a Good Professional?

Music and Conflict Resolution

Music takes many forms and for a majority of listeners the highest levels of emotional satisfaction from music are derived from the organic relationship between dissonance (harmonic tension, disruption or conflict) and consonance (harmonic resolut...

Conflict Resolution: Panel Discussion

Ian Ritchie, Simon Keyes and Sir Geoffrey Nice discuss issues raised during the afternoon. Professor Tim Connell chairs the panel and provides concluding remarks.

Conflict Resolution: Introduction

Professor Tim Connell introduces the symposium and outlines the key issues at stake in conflict resolution.

Seeking Disagreement Success

If a failure of disagreement is usually some form of polarisation or conflict, what does successful disagreement look like? It's not agreement. It may be some form of recognition that the different interests of antagonists in a dispute require so...

War Crimes Courts that Reconcile: Oxymoron or Possibility?

Domestic criminal justice systems have objectives of retribution and deterrence. It is no part of such systems to bring peace and harmony to individuals whose divisions, of whatever kind, have taken shape in a crime. In contrast, international cri...

Technology and Vision

The discipline of Ophthalmology is recognised both as an early adopter of new technology and a developer of novel techniques. Soon after lasers were invented, they were being used to treat diabetic eyes and new lasers developed into exquisite too...

When Galaxies Collide...

There is a whole Universe of different shapes, sizes and colours of galaxies. We shall look at some of the 'ordinary' galaxies and then move on to consider the more peculiar systems, discussing quite how and why they came to morph into such strang...

Tony Benn and the Idea of Participation

Tony Benn has been the most prominent modern spokesman of the movement for participatory democracy. It was he who secured the right of hereditary peers to renounce their titles, the right of the people to vote on membership of the Common Market in...

Proof by Computer and Proof by Human

The idea of a proof as a simple, easily-checked method of establishing truth has undergone modification in the age of computers. But the specialisation of the mathematical world has resulted in difficulties with even entirely human-made proofs. ...

State Involvement in War Crimes Trials

International war crimes courts deal only with the responsibility of individuals for crimes they committed. In order to avoid over-simplification of understanding what may have happened by the necessary concentration on individual criminal respons...

Lessons from the Past, Warnings for the Future

The concluding lecture takes the example of HIV/AIDS and discusses how reactions to the epidemic mirrored those found in the social and cultural perception of earlier epidemics. As in earlier epidemics, sufferers have been ostracized, persecuted ...

What's it Worth? Values, Choice and Commodification

This is a part of the lecture series, Religion and Values in a Liberal State.

The Boyle Lectures: Science and Religion in Dialogue

A review of the past ten years' of the Boyle Lecture and their contribution to the dialogue between Christianity and our contemporary understanding of the natural world.

London: Music under the shadow of Handel

This is a part of the series of lectures and concerts, European Capitals of Music.

"The fangs of the serpent are hid in the bowl": The Temperance Movement

This is the fourth in a series of four 'Mondays at One' lectures, From Gin Lane to the Band of Hope.

The Winning and Losing Nations

A look at the world in 2020 and, more speculatively, 2050. Which countries are the likely beneficiaries of the changes? We will examine key major economies: China, India, Russia and Brazil, and key regions such as the Middle East and Africa, as ...

The Historic Collections of Lambeth Palace Library

Lambeth Palace Library, founded in 1610, is the historic library and record office of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the principal repository of the documentary history of the Church of England. This lecture outlines the foundation of the libra...

The Psychology of Money

It has been claimed that economics is just a branch of psychology. Certainly movements on the stock market reflect human greed and fears. The desire to acquire wealth is a major driving force in human behaviour and our relationship with money sa...

Modelling the World

An area of which 19th century British mathematics could be uniformly proud was applied mathematics where new techniques were used on a wide range of problems. Figures such as William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin), Peter Guthrie Tait, George Stokes...

Cannabis Britannica: The rise and demise of a Victorian wonder-drug

In 1800 cannabis preparations were almost entirely unknown in Britain as only the medical men of the period had any interest in them and few had access to samples of the plant. However, by the 1840s cannabis was being touted as one of the wonder-d...

The Radiant Illusion: Middle class recruits to Communism in the 1930's (Seminar) - Panel Response

The Radiant Illusion - Middle class recruits to Communism in the 1930's (Seminar)

God's Good Order and the Artist's Patterns

For centuries of western history, the beauty of art was conceived as a response to, and a reflection of, the cosmic artistry of a good God, who patterned all things well. Aesthetic order was therefore a manifestation of cosmic order, and beauty an...

Six Degrees of Innovation: Investing in Green Technology - Panel Discussion

A panel discussion between Professor Richard Templer, Chris Hewett and Jan-Peter Onstwedder, chaired by Professor Michael Mainelli.The panellists start by examining the role of different sectors in green investment, and looking at the problems...

Financial Innovation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Professor Thorsten Beck is joined by John Authers and Barbara Ridpath for a panel discussion on Financial Innovation. The panellists first share their thoughts on financial innovation (such as human behaviour and the role of structured investment ...

Financial Innovation: The Bright and Dark Sides

How to Innovate, What to Regulate: Conference Introduction

Enoch Powell and the Sovereignty of Parliament

Enoch Powell was the most powerful postwar exponent of the idea of the sovereignty of Parliament and indeed of English nationalism, opposing the coming of a multiracial society, devolution, and entry into the Common Market, as the European Union u...

The Gordon Riots of 1780: London in Flames, a Nation in Ruins

In June 1780 the most destructive urban riots in English history erupted onto the streets of London. Sparked by resistance to the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, the riots soon escalated into a sustained assault on government properties and instituti...

Middle Class Recruits to Communism in the 1930s

Why did some idealistic young people join the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s? What was the attraction of Communism and which beliefs, events or material circumstances prompted them to join? How did the Party respond to this predomi...

Paris: Debussy and Ravel

Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp is contrasted with Ravel's very different Sonatine for the same combination.Rehana Browne fluteGeorge White violaMary Reid harpThis is a part of the series of lectures and...

Coming to Terms with Modern Times: English architecture in the post-war era

The Second World War intensified and magnified debates that had been current amongst architects since 1914. It also marks a fault line in English architectural history. Architects, supported by politicians, decisively moved away from tradition and...

Exoplanets and how to find them

Each week new observations add to the tally of 'hot-Jupiters' and 'super-Earths' found in orbit around nearby stars. Other planetary systems appear commonplace in our Milky Way, but how closely do they resemble our own Solar System, and what are ...

The Phantom Cup that Comes and Goes: The Story of the Holy Grail

The Holy Grail conjures up images of a romantic and heroic past, of magical journeys and brave knights. What do we really know of its origin and meaning? It has entered the language as a phrase that embodies an infinitely desirable but attai...

How computers get it wrong: 2+2 = 5

When lives depend on calculations, human error can kill. From the early days of computing, one problem has been that they generally work with a fixed number of digits, creating rounding errors. Chaos Theory has shown new ways in which computer a...

An Infernal Spark: Drink, Addiction and Disease

Addiction is a familiar feature of contemporary society. Not only do we have access to numerous substances linked to dependency, but we apply the term 'addiction' to an increasing array of other activities: shopping, eating, gambling and so forth...

Will there be a shortage of spending power?

This lecture will look at the world surplus of savings as incomes gradually shift proportionally towards those who traditionally save a high proportion of their earnings and away from those who traditionally spend most of what they earn. In theor...

How Mathematicians Think About Patterns

There are many kinds of pattern in mathematics and many ways to think about them. But when it comes to visual patterns, one viewpoint stands out; symmetry.This talk explores some basic ideas about symmetry, and shows how it helps us to underst...

Animal Eyes

How does my dog see? Do eagles have better vision than humans? This homocentric view of vision with its associated mythology is explored in this review of survival strategies used by various animals in their environments. The way we see is pred...

'The Great Unwashed'

Typhus, the subject of the fifth lecture in the series, was caused by a bacterium hosted by the human body louse, and has thus always been associated with dirty and overcrowded conditions and spread above all by armies marching across the countrys...

Selling Yourself Short: The body, property and markets

It might be thought that if I own anything then I own my body and this idea has been crucial in justifying rights to private property through the exercise of my intellectual and physical capacities. In addition if I own my body it might be though...

Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Late, 1971-1976

'In the history of art late works are the catastrophes,' proposed Theodor Adorno. In this illustrated lecture Paul Kildea, author of the first major biography of Benjamin Britten in twenty years, disputes the narrative of decline that has engulfe...

The Leveson Inquiry: Trauma or Catharsis?

This lecture analyses the crisis of trust and confidence which produced the Leveson Inquiry into the press and looks ahead to the likely outcomes.

How To Be A Lie Detector

There are many circumstances in which it is important to detect deception. Whether people are evaluating a partner's account of their activities involved in police investigations, jury duty, high-level diplomacy or simply deciding who to vote for...

Are Averages Typical?

Not necessarily, for example the average person has fewer than two legs! This is because some people have fewer than two legs but nobody has more than two, so dividing the total number of legs by the total number of people to get the average give...

Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Middle, 1945-1970

The success of Peter Grimes caught Britten by surprise. It gave him enormous capital, but for the most part he chose to spend it outside London, away from the emerging music institutions the new Labour government was determined would establish the...

Legal Process as a Tool to Rewrite History - Law, Politics and History

Trials at the ICTY concerned political violence and criminality that resulted from disintegration of a federation from which seven new successors states were formed. That process has been defined as a 'clash of state projects', where violence hap...

A Haberdashery Shop on London Bridge: Journal of a Georgian Gentleman

The fascinating story of eighteenth century haberdasher who recorded what he ate, what he purchased, how he slept and what the weather was like in obsessive detail. He also kept newspaper cuttings and admission tickets, he copied sermons, and col...

Darkness Audible: Benjamin Britten at 100 - Early, 1913-1945

On the day Penguin publishes Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, the first major biography of Britten in twenty years, author Paul Kildea traces the emergence of the greatest English musician of the last century.In this illustra...

Forwards and Backwards: Architecture in inter-war England

The First World War brought far reaching changes to England. These included a huge expansion of the suburbs, the massive growth of motoring and a debate about how England should look in the future. This was not a simple battle between conservation...

The Age of the Universe

Detailed observations of galaxies, clusters, and the fine structures in the cosmic microwave background have refined the age of the Universe to 13.75 billion years. But they have also revealed the unexpected presence of dark energy, causing a hug...

The Economics of the Very Long Run: From Fire to Finance in Two Million Years

An economist's view of two million years of human history, covering milestones such as fire, trade, private property, agriculture, towns - and writing, accounting and finance. In particular Professor Schaffer examines why living standards for the...

Arithmetic by Computer and by Human

Long multiplication, long division and logarithms are, for many, dim-remembered memories, and few now use these skills. We will examine some of the tools that help us, from the abacus to calculators. Computers are the ultimate arithmetic tool bu...

Vision and the Artist

Visual disorders affect the way we see, and therefore would be expected to influence how we depict the world in drawings and paintings. This fascinating subject is explored using images created by artists with known defects. We examine how possi...

Blue Funk and Yellow Peril

'Asiatic cholera', which arrived in Europe in the early nineteenth century, was widely seen as Asia's revenge on Europe for the extension of European empires in the East. During the nineteenth century governments reacted first by trying to establ...

Just Markets

This lecture focuses on the question of whether justice in relation to markets is entirely to be seen as being procedural - that justice is a matter of securing the conditions of non-coercive economic exchange between free individuals. Or is justi...

How to make Western Economies more Competitive

We will examine the practical implications of the new economic growth theory. With competitiveness and inflation as the main constraints on economic growth in the West, economic policy needs to be targeted at bringing down inflationary pressures a...

Quakers Living Adventurously: The Library and Archives of the Society of Friends

Since the seventeenth century, members of the Religious Society of Friends - also known as Quakers - have often suffered for their beliefs and activities. In the early days, many were sent to prison. In later times they were prominent in the ...

Sleep and Dreams

Why do humans sleep? How much do we need to function effectively? How are our sleep patterns affected by artificial light? What, if anything, is accomplished by dreams? Do they have important personal meaning and provide portents, or are they ...

The Queen of Mathematics

Carl Friedrich Gauss one of the greatest mathematicians, is said to have claimed: "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics." The properties of primes play a crucial part in number theory. An intrigui...

Incest and Folk-Dancing: Two things to be avoided

How closely are we related to each other, and how recently do we all share an ancestor? The answer to those questions is: closer and more recently than you might think.Professor Jones discusses patterns of relatedness in ancient and modern pop...

The Governance and Voting System of the City of London

The unique governance and voting system of the Square Mile will be explained.

How the Zebra Got its Stripes

In Rudyard Kipling's Just So story, the Leopard got its spots when the Ethiopian painted them on with his fingers. In the real world, the answer to the question of where patterns come from is not so simple. While the processes of natural selection...

Roy Jenkins, Europe and the Civilised Society

Roy Jenkins was Home Secretary from 1965 to 1967 and again from 1974 to 1976. He sponsored homosexual law reform and the legalisation of abortion as well as legislation outlawing racial discrimination. He helped create what its supporters called t...

Vienna and Schubert: 'Death and the Maiden' String Quartet

Schubert String Quartet no.14 in D minor, 'Death and the Maiden' Jubilee Quartet: Tereza Privratska and Alanna Tonetti-Tieppo violin Stephanie Edmundson viola Lauren Steel celloThis is a part of the series of lectur...

Panel Discussion: Never Again?

The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. Dickens himself covers scandals we would recognise today in Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickleby. Beyond Dickens, the South Sea Bubble (of course), railway shares, bonds in newly...

Ghost of Scandals Future: Great Expectations

The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. Dickens himself covers scandals we would recognise today in Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickleby. Beyond Dickens, the South Sea Bubble (of course), railway shares, bonds in newly...

Ghost of Scandals Present: Modern Pitfalls

The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. Dickens himself covers scandals we would recognise today in Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickleby. Beyond Dickens, the South Sea Bubble (of course), railway shares, bonds in newly...

Ghost of Scandals Past: A Short History of Financial Scandals

The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. Dickens himself covers scandals we would recognise today in Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickleby. Beyond Dickens, the South Sea Bubble (of course), railway shares, bonds in newly...

What the Dickens? The City's Great Financial Scandals, Past and Future

The litany of great financial scandals is long, and sadly unending. Dickens himself covers scandals we would recognise today in Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickleby. Beyond Dickens, the South Sea Bubble (of course), railway shares, bonds in newly...

The Art of the Underground: 150 Years of Re-designing London

The London Underground today is one of the world's largest and busiest urban metros. Exactly 150 years ago, on 9 January 1863, when the inaugural train left Paddington for Farringdon with invited guests, the Metropolitan Railway was hailed as an a...

Mind over matter

Charlatan "cures" and "alternative" treatments are widespread and popular. Despite lacking any credible rationale, people often seem to benefit from them. The power of suggestion and "placebos" is impressive. What accounts for miracle cures and ph...

From One to Many Geometries

For 100 years up to the end of the 19th century the study of geometry was completely changed with the development of non-Euclidean geometries and the use of techniques to think of geometries in higher dimensions - a development essential to Einste...

Vienna and Schubert: The 'Trout' Quintet

Schubert Quintet in A, D.667 "Trout"Eleanor Corr violinXin Xin Liu violaHannah Rose Innes celloJack Maran Hewetson double bassMorta Grigaliunaite piano

Atmospheric Phenomena

When light from the Sun and the Moon enters our atmosphere, it is sometimes reflected, refracted and dispersed by tiny ice crystals, water droplets and dust to produce a whole host of fantastic atmospheric visions. Some are even more common than ...

Risk, Equality and Opportunity: The Roles for Government Finance

Adrift and barely floating amidst financial crises, governments claim that they cannot afford to deliver on all their promises. Necessity has brought forth new views on government finance and how it can be used to achieve social ends. Many of th...

John Graunt's Bills of Mortality: Panel Discussion

The symposium concludes with a panel discussion where representatives from the Government Actuary's Department and the Office of National Statistics speak on how changing mortality patterns interact with contemporary policy and planning issues. Th...

A Grauntian Perspective on Contemporary British Mortality

Speakers present the current 'state-of-the-art' of mortality studies in the UK, Europe and beyond, with consideration to the influence of Graunt.

Current Trends in European and Middle Eastern Mortality

Speakers present the current 'state-of-the-art' of mortality studies in the UK, Europe and beyond, with consideration to the influence of Graunt.

More complex than Graunt could imagine: Theoretical and practical thoughts about tempo effects in the conventional period life table

Speakers present the current 'state-of-the-art' of mortality studies in the UK, Europe and beyond, with consideration to the influence of Graunt.

John Graunt, the law of decline and the origins of urban historical demography

Speakers open the symposium with an historical approach, examining mortality patterns in London.

Using Mortality to Compare the Health of Populations

The symposium concludes with a panel discussion where representatives from the Government Actuary's Department and the Office of National Statistics speak on how changing mortality patterns interact with contemporary policy and planning issues. Th...

Parochial registration and the Bills of Mortality

Speakers open the symposium with an historical approach, examining mortality patterns in London.

New Insights Into Mortality Patterns of Early Modern Cities

Speakers open the symposium with an historical approach, examining mortality patterns in London.

Mortality Past and Present: John Graunt's Bills of Mortality - Introduction

An introduction to the conference marking the 350th anniversary of the publication of John Graunt's London Bills of Mortality in 1662.

The Future of the Past: Treasures from the RIBA Collections

The British Architectural Library at the RIBA is the largest and most comprehensive resource in the United Kingdom for research and information on all aspects of architecture. Its collections are one of the top three in the world and the finest in...

The White Plague

The third lecture in the series deals with tuberculosis, of all diseases the most widely represented in literature, opera and drama. The disease has been present in humans since prehistory and hence has a particularly long pedigree of representati...

Markets, Freedom and Choice

This lecture focuses on the relationship between markets and freedom and the extent to which freedom should be seen as being entirely a matter of freedom of choice and the number of choices which an individual has available. Markets have often bee...

Time for a Change: Introducing irreversible time in economics

An exploration of the remarkable consequences of using Boltzmann's 1870s probability theory and cutting-edge 20th Century mathematics in economic settings. An understanding of risk, market stability and economic inequality emerges.The lecture ...

The Evolution of Vision

Did the eye evolve and, if so, how? Creationists and evolutionary biologists have argued over this controversy since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. About 830 million years ago, in the Cambrian period, an explosion of the numb...

The Survey of London

The Survey of London is the closest thing we have to an 'official' history of London, providing a fascinating insight into some of the City's most famous and characteristic districts and buildings.

A New Theory of Economic Growth

Traditional economic growth theory is based on a view that economic capacity is fully utilised. But with huge changes in relative advantage, it is possible for a part of the world to be faced with such a huge loss of economic competitiveness that ...

English Architecture and the First World War

The First World War had a devastating effect on Britain. Human and economic loss was accompanied by a loss of confidence and direction. This lecture looks at both the cultural effects of the War and its architectural impact. Both saw a struggle to...

Iain Macleod and Decolonisation

Iain Macleod was, with Joseph Chamberlain, one of two great Colonial Secretaries of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, he ensured the rapid ending of Britain's African empire. This allowed Britain to avoid the imperial traumas which afflicted F...

Panel Discussion: Future Prospects

Philanthropy has always been a feature of public life from faith and good works in medieval times to charitable giving today. This symposium looks at philanthropy in its historical context, reviews the work of the great philanthropists of the nine...

Philanthropy New: At the Intersection of Money and Meaning

Philanthropy has always been a feature of public life from faith and good works in medieval times to charitable giving today. This symposium looks at philanthropy in its historical context, reviews the work of the great philanthropists of the nine...

Bridge over Troubled Waters or a Bridge Too Far? Philanthropy During Turbulent Times

Philanthropy Old: Setting the Boundary Posts

Philanthropy has always been a feature of public life from faith and good works in medieval times to charitable giving today. This symposium looks at philanthropy in its historical context, reviews the work of the great philanthropists of the nine...

Introduction to Taking and Giving: Roles in Philanthropy Old and New

Philanthropy has always been a feature of public life from faith and good works in medieval times to charitable giving today. This symposium looks at philanthropy in its historical context, reviews the work of the great philanthropists of the nine...

Why the Enlightenment still matters today

"The Enlightenment" has been regarded as a turning point in the intellectual history of the West. The principles of religious tolerance, optimism about human progress and a demand for rational debate are often thought to be a powerful legacy of th...

X-ray Astrophysics - The high energy cosmos

X-radiation is only emitted by the hottest and most energetic parts of the Universe - sites of gigantic explosions, plasma heated to millions of degrees, and where there are intense magnetic or gravitational fields.

Genius or Madness?

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide" (Dryden). There often seems to be a link between creativity and mental illness. Many great poets, playwrights, artists and composers suffered from depressio...

Polynomials and their Roots

We are familiar with the formula for solving a quadratic equation where the highest power of the unknown is a square. The quest for a similar formula for equations where the highest power is three, four five or more led to dramatic changes in how...

Policy making through a public prism

Tony Stoller, Chair of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, considers the relationship between popular discourse and policy-making. Drawing upon recent examples from a wide range of sectors, including adult social ...

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was one of the most important mathematical physicists of all time, after only Newton and Einstein. Within a relatively short lifetime he made enormous contributions to science which this lecture will survey. Foremos...

Peter Guthrie Tait: A Knot's Tale

Peter Guthrie Tait (1831 - 1901) was significantly less famous than his friends Maxwell and Kelvin, but unfairly so because he was an important and prolific mathematical physicist. He was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinbu...

Lord Kelvin and the French 'F' Word: The Greatest Victorian Scientist?

Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1846 to 1899. An FRS, FRSE, knighted in 1866, awarded the Order of Merit in 1902, and in death buried beside Newton at Westminster Abbey, Kelvin was in h...

The permanent International Criminal Court - the ICC - and Africa

The permanent International criminal Court - the ICC - was long in planning and finally came into existence after the ad hoc Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals (the ICTY and the ICTR) were seen to have had some success. However, problems facing the ...

The Great Pox

The sexually transmitted disease syphilis is generally thought to have been imported into Europe from the Americas in the late fifteenth century as part of the 'Columban exchange', in which other diseases, notably smallpox, travelled in the other ...

I've Got the Power: Now What?

A panel discussion on issues of leadership, with Dr Douglas Board, Simon Caulkin and Dr Liz Mellon, chaired by Professor Michael Mainelli.

Science, Politics and Intuition in Executive Selection

How to spot an exceptional leader (or not), according to a top UK board-level headhunter.http://gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/science-politics-and-intuition-in-executive-selectionAn HR manager, a politician and a business executive...

Think Like a Leader

Academics have spent decades studying leaders, trying to decode the DNA that can be passed on, in order to develop leaders at all levels. As a result, we have a whole industry dedicated to describing, observing and measuring the behaviours that le...

Leading at the Top: Power and Politics - An Introduction

Professor Michael Mainelli introduces the symposium and outlines what he sees as the four major themes of leadership: vision, popularity, integrity and power.http://gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/leading-at-the-top-power-and-politics-an-int...

The Ageing Eye

As the eye ages, profound structural changes occur, leading to visual impairment and even blindness. Exciting discoveries in biological science and surgery are opening up possible new treatments for these common conditions. The economic impact on ...

The Historical Collections of the Guildhall Library

Originally founded in the 1420s under the terms of the will of Richard Whittington, Guildhall Library now specialises in the history of London, but amongst its many other collections of national and international importance is the largest collecti...

The Future of London Theatre

John Maynard Keynes was asked how he saw the future and replied "The future is not seen, it is made". However, you cannot make the future when dealing with something conceived out of passion. Thus, the future of London Theatre - whether buildings ...

Acting on Evidence: How Medical Research has informed Historical Drama

John Powell is an experienced medical advisor on a range of television dramas including Casualty 1909 and Downton Abbey. In this lecture he will explain how research in hospital archives and in medical journals has informed drama storylines, and h...

Britain Needs an Ivy League

Professor Kealey argues the case for world-class universities being established in the UK as charitable bodies independent of the state for teaching, alongside the benefits of access to state funding for research.The lecture is delivered by Pr...

Aneurin Bevan and the Socialist Ideal

Aneurin Bevan was the leading postwar representative in Britain of the socialist ideal. He is best remembered for the creation of the National Health Service which he regarded as a symbol of applied socialism, a national service free at the point ...

West End Theatre in China

In June 2011 the first ever Mandarin language production of a first class musical opened in Shanghai to an ecstatic reaction from audiences, the Press and some might say most importantly, the Government. The Chinese version of Mamma Mia! has brok...

Is the growth in the emerging economies additional or are we growing more slowly?

Speakers look at the limits to world economic growth from an environmental and economic perspective. Will inflation caused by rising primary product prices be likely to be the key constraint on economic growth? Douglas McWilliams, Thras Moraitis...

Building the Victorian City: Splendour and Squalor

By 1900 Britain had produced the world's largest cities and the first industrial cities. These phenomena led to vast technical, social and architectural challenges. Victorian architects and engineers met these with some of the most impressive feat...

Our nearest neighbour, the Moon

Our only natural satellite has been an object of fascination for humankind since prehistory. Despite being the only other place in the Solar System we have visited in person, we are still making startling discoveries about the Moon - and what it r...

Personality and the Brain

Personality is partly inborn and mediated by brain structures, hormones and neurotransmitters. It influences social behaviours such as gambling, sexual behaviour, extreme sports, impulse control disorders and criminality. Is there an additive pe...

Markets in their Place: Moral Values and the Limits of Markets

The aim of this lecture is to be both self contained but also an introduction to the other lectures. Market based orders are usually thought of as embodying a sense of individualism and moral subjectivism. At the same time there is unease about b...

Is Theatre History? The Alternative Explosion

Theatre can be seen as yesterday's art form. The Greeks did it. Shakespeare did it best. We have just lived through the century of film and television. Now we are in the new digital age. Is the survival of the theatre now really threatened? If so,...

Panel Discussion: Why wait for a generation? What can be done now?

Outcomes and Change: New Thinking in the Third Sector

Transport, Health and Wellbeing: The Potential for Equity and Wellbeing Gains for Young People

What can we do that's positive?

What Counts? What Works? What Matters?

Vienna and Schubert: Fantasy in F Minor, D. 940

Florian Mitrea and Alexandra Vaduva, piano duet.This is a part of the series of lectures and concerts, European Capitals of Music.

London Theatre: Past Glories, Today's Success and Tomorrow's Opportunities

As Head of The Society of London Theatre (SOLT), the organisation which represents all theatre owners and producers in the West End, both commercial and subsidised, Julian Bird will be talking about the history of London theatre and its relative s...

Darwin and Derivatives: 19th Century Insights into 21st Century Finance

What lessons might the financial sector learn from Darwin's theory of evolution?This is the 2012 Sir Thomas Gresham Docklands Lecture.

Anatomy Museums: Past, Present and Future

Some of our hospitals - notably St Bartholomew's - house unique museums including not only works of art and documents but surgical and medical equipment and fascinating anatomy collections. Professor Ayliffe will tell us about some of the treasur...

The Black Death

Bubonic plague first swept Europe in the age of Justinian, in the sixth century, killing an estimated 25 million people in the Byzantine Empire and spreading further west. Its most devastating outbreak was in mid-fourteenth-century Europe, when it...

Ghosts of Departed Quantities: Calculus and its Limits

In 1734 Bishop Berkeley published a witty and effective attack on the foundations of the calculus as developed by Newton and Leibniz. But it took nearly 90 years for the calculus to be given a rigorous foundation through the work of the prolific ...

In Mahler's Footsteps: Mahler's relationship with the natural world

Architect Keith James Clarke experiences the Austrian landscape and scenery that inspired Mahler. He travels by foot and bicycle to rediscover Mahler's much-loved haunts.

The Greatest Ever Economic Change

Are we sleepwalking into the most serious economic challenge that we have ever faced without any serious thinking about its scale and implications? We will examine the industrialisation of two thirds of the world in its historical context, make c...

International Criminal Tribunals: Experiments? Works in progress? Institutions that are here for good, or maybe not?

In the last twenty years several international courts have been established to try crimes committed in armed conflicts. Public expectation of what these courts may achieve is high; but are the courts living up to that expectation? Is the public ...

Trading Places and Travelling - Musical Legacies of the Hanseatic League

The cities of Northern Europe developed their trading links with our own City of London. An important by product of their economic success was the flowering of culture in all these cities and their attraction of talent from other places.

Human Livelihoods Depend on Wild Flowers: Kew's Millennium Seed Bank explained

In this talk Dr Robin Probert explains why human livelihoods depend so much on wild plant diversity. He outlines the current threats to wild plants across the globe and how Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership works to conserve plants and make s...

The Lost World of 1962

In this lecture, Dominic Sandbrook, the acclaimed historian of Sixties Britain, marks the 50th anniversary of the City of London Festival by looking back at Britain in 1962. Fifty years on, the Britain of Harold Macmillan, Acker Bilk, Jimmy Greave...

Resetting the Human Compass: The Use and Value of the Arts

How might the arts help 'reset' the direction of the human compass in our difficult times? Is an instrumentalist approach to the arts and culture ever a good thing? Knighted for his services to literature and Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009, Sir A...

Children's Self-Control and the Health and Wealth of their Nation: Tracking 1000 children from birth to maturity

Policy-makers are considering large-scale early intervention programs to enhance children's self-control, with the aim of reducing crime and improving citizens' health and wealth.Experimental studies and economic analyses are suggesting that s...

"A Stout Heart in the Great Cesspool": Arthur Conan Doyle and London

From the impressions of his first youthful visit, to his mature years when all doors opened for him, London was an important backdrop to much of Conan Doyle's life and work. From the Sherlock Holmes stories to The Lost World (in this, the 100th an...

Privacy and Publicity in Family Law - Their Eternal Tension

There is general agreement among non-family lawyers that family procedures should be more transparent. But exactly what role should the media play in matters of family justice?This is the 2012 annual Gray's Inn Reading.

The Grande Messe des Morts and the Absence of God

David Cairns delivers this lecture ahead of the City of London Festival performance of Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts Op. 5 (Requiem) by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Colin Davis, which took place at St. Paul's Cathed...

Literary London Crime: The Dark Eyes of London

London is a city of secrets, a shifting, seething mass of intrigue, venality and violence, in constant cultural flux. The perfect setting for crime fiction - but how does the modern writer decode this centuries' old conurbation?Cathi Unsworth ...

What has the City ever done for us? - The Lord Mayor's Annual Gresham Lecture

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Mayor, Alderman David Wootton, examines the role, contribution and connections of the City and business - fundamental elements of our community.This is the 2012 Lord Mayor's Annual Gresham Lecture.The other Lord Mayor...

Parliament and the Public: Strangers or Friends?

How can the House of Commons engage more effectively with the public which it serves? Can modern technology assist this enterprise?This is the 2012 Gresham Special Lecture.

The Postmodern Detective: Contemporary London Crime Fiction

The urban detective has traditionally been a figure supremely able to penetrate the mysteries of the city, yet set apart from the populace he protects. Have recent London crime stories abandoned their confidence in the interpretative abilities of ...

Star Dust

Interstellar space is not truly a vacuum devoid of matter. Mixed into vast diffuse clouds of atomic gas are minute grains of silicate and carbonate materials known as 'dust', alongside complex molecules deep in the cold hearts of nebulae. We shall...

'This ain't the shop for justice': Crime in Dickens's London

From his childhood acquaintance with London, when he feared he might become 'a little robber or a little vagabond', Charles Dickens was fascinated by crime. His novels all include criminal activity of some kind as he investigates criminal psycholo...

Cary Grant: Hollywood's exquisite, charming enigma

To millions of moviegoers around the world Cary Grant epitomises the glamour and style of Hollywood in its golden years. With his luminous dark hair and mischievous smile he was one of its greatest stars. This lecture is an attempt to look behin...

Innovation in the Social Sciences

Innovation is seen as the key to economic growth. But is this true of innovation in services, which now employ 75% of us, as well as in manufacturing industry? This lecture explores innovation in the "knowledge industries" through the development ...

Illuminated Psalter Manuscripts

Psalters containing the 150 Psalms were immensely popular medieval manuscripts, used by a wide array of patrons for liturgical, scholastic and devotional purposes. This lecture explores how the Psalms inspired a rich tradition of literal, histori...

Regulating the Regulators

One of the Coalition Government's first actions was to attempt a bonfire of the quangos. In order that the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater, one has to consider what areas of life do and do not need regulation. The Human Fertilis...

Britain in the 20th Century: A new consensus? 1990-2001

The fall of Margaret Thatcher left a legacy that was both contested and divisive. During the 1990s, the Conservative Party, under the impact of divisions on Europe and on economic policy, began to fragment. But, after four election defeats, Labour...

Twenty-first Century Threats: Lyme Disease - Is it safe to walk in the park?

It was lovely last weekend. Warm enough to wear shorts and sandals taking the dog for a walk in the park. How can this nasty red rash on my ankle have anything to do with it? Don't remember being bitten. There was a little black thing on my an...

The Art of Rhetoric

Most people fear giving speeches, almost as much as the rest of us dread listening to them. The lectern has a cruel capacity to render even the mighty vulnerable. Fortunately there is a science to the art of public speaking and it dates back to ...

Drawings in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts

Medieval drawings are frequently viewed as the poor cousins of fully-painted miniatures. But in England, an appreciation of drawing persisted throughout the Middle Ages. Based within the late 10th and early 11th centuries, this lecture proves th...

Home Office Mathematics

The Chief Scientific Adviser is the head of Home Office Science, which provides scientific advice and support to the whole range of the Home Office's work as the lead government department for immigration and passports, drugs policy, crime, counte...

The Challenge of the Solo

Pavlo Beznosiuk, one of the world's leading baroque violinists, explains and demonstrates the challenge of music for solo violin; works by Nicola Matteis and Heinrich Biber lead to a discussion and performance of the famous Chaconne from Bach's So...

The Inconsistent Sun

Changes in the Sun's output can endanger health, power supplies and satellite systems. To prepare adequately for such events and to make judicious use of solar energy we need to investigate the Sun's 4.7 billion year history.

The Legal Profession - Regulating for independence

Britain's legal profession is renowned the world over for its skill and independence. The cab rank rule governs barristers, ie they are obliged to accept the next case that presents itself, thereby ensuring that even the most unpopular of defendan...

Large telescopes and why we need them

Beyond the Solar System, all astronomers have to work with is the light that falls to the Earth from distant cosmic objects. Newer, larger telescopes are always needed to boost scientific progress, and the next generation of facilities - whether t...

The Making of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts are some of the most beautiful artefacts to survive from the Middle Ages. Their production involved transforming animal skins into parchment; copying texts; painting and gilding minatures; and binding folios between boards...

The BBC - Defending the public interest

From 2007 the Governors were replaced by Trustees; but there was still disquiet about the best method of regulating the BBC. BBC regulation is fragmented: some regulatory functions rest with OFCOM, and the National Audit Office investigates some f...

Britain in the 20th Century: Thatcherism, 1979-1990

Margaret Thatcher sought to solve the deep-seated problems of the British state outside the parameters of the postwar settlement. The main ideological victims of the collapse of the postwar settlement were One Nation Conservatism, the paternalisti...

Final Score

Why are there so many different scoring systems in operation in sport? We look at how structuring matches into a series of sets affects the relative roles of luck and skill in determining the winner of the contest. Did table tennis make a signific...

Twenty-first Century Threats: Malaria

In 1955, the World Health Organization announced an ambitious plan to eradicate malaria from the face of the earth. Now, nearly sixty years later, malaria still afflicts some 250 million people of whom over a million, mostly children, die each yea...

Brain Reconstruction: the next biomedical breakthrough, or a biological impossibility?

How close are we to true brain reconstruction? Professor Jack Price details the latest advances in this field of neuroscience, as well as covering the conceptual and regulatory obstacles that researchers face.This is part of a special series o...

The New Normal: Rebalancing Our Priorities

It is time for the banking and financial sectors to stop apologising and start changing. But how?Professor Costa outlines three key themes for change needed in order to estable a "New Normal" for how we operate in the commerical and financial ...

The BBC - Protecting it from the Government

For 80 years the BBC Governors were charged with regulating the BBC and representing the interests of the licence fee payers. The Governors appointed the Director-General, approved strategy, oversaw complaints and were accountable to Parliament. D...

The Roman Denarius and the Euro: A precedent for monetary union?

A look at the way the Roman Empire has sometimes been used as an historical precedent for the European Union, and specifically the way that the integration of the Roman monetary system has been seen as a (sometimes justifying) precedent for modern...

Part Six: Panel Discussion on Thinking Theologically About Modern Art

Part Five: Is there a God-shaped hole in contemporary art?

Part Four: Marching to an Antique Drum?

Part Three: A Sense of the Sacred?

Part Two: Modern Art - The Art of Modern Life?

Part One: The 'Desublimation' of Modern Art - A Theological Task?

Philanthropy Then, Philanthropy Now

This lecture outlines the challenges of modern-day society and how they affect a charity's ability to deliver its purpose, and discusses how a 'Good Society' could be built through the individual, community, market and state. Sponsored by the ...

The Universities - Under regulation

All universities are anxious to raise funds and some have come under criticism for accepting funds from despotic regimes which are seeking credibility and influence. What are the limits of fundraising? British universities have also acquired a re...

Decolonization: The End of Empire?

European empires, re-divided after the defeat of Germany in 1918, continued to expand after the First World War, reaching their greatest extent in the early 1940s. The imperial ambitions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany created new empires that t...

On the Waterfront

What can maths tells us about the best way to rig a rowing eight? Does a cox help or hinder a racing boat? How does the speed of a kayak or a canoe depend on the number of paddlers? And what if you fall in - can maths tell us anything about the be...

Twenty-first Century Threats: Tuberculosis

This lecture is a part of the series Twenty-First Century Threats. Other lectures in this series include the following: HIV/AIDS ...

The Lost Hospitals of London: St Luke's

The extraordinary story of this neglected quarter of London that in the late 19th century boasted seven major hospitals, of which only one survives today.This is part of 'The Lost Hospitals of London' Mondays at One Series.

To Wear or Not to Wear: Changing social norms with regard to eyewear

Studying the history of spectacles brings together the twin themes of technological development and mankind's increasing understanding of physical optics, but it is as much about charting different historical attitudes to the face and one's appear...

Contemporary Christian Art

Contrary to much opinion, the current scene of faith-related art is very much alive. There are new commissions for churches and cathedrals, a number of artists pursue their work on the basis of a deeply convinced faith, and other artists often res...

Profiling a Killer

How do the real Crackers operate and how successful are they? Intuitive approaches to criminal profiling capture the imagination but actuarial methods are often more effective. The new science of geographical profiling is described and how it has...

The End of Space and Time?

Robbert Dijkgraaf's focus is on string theory, quantum gravity, and the interface between mathematics and particle physics, bringing them together in an accessible way, looking at sciences, the arts and other matters.

The Opening Salvo

Beethoven: String Quartet in F major, Op. 18 No.1With the Wilhelm QuartetHow to be revolutionary without scaring away your public? How to announce yourself as a new broom without alienating the more stalwart connoisseurs? Beethoven faced t...

The Lost Hospitals of London: Bethlem Hospital - Worth a Visit?

Bethlem Hospital was an integral part of London's charitable provision for the poor in medieval and early modern times. Hand in hand with public benevolence went great public interest in the objects of charity. Until 1770, the Hospital was open (a...

100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Sport

A lecture to mark the publication of Professor Barrow's latest book, 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Sport.The book asks the question, "What can maths tell us about sports?"...

The Universities - Over regulation

A century ago, British universities started to receive government funds. Since then, the universities have increasingly been called on to assist in meeting national objectives, as defined by successive governments, in return for decreasing amount...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Collapse of the Postwar Settlement, 1964-1979

he 1960s saw a new course in British politics - the commitment of both major parties to entry into the European Community, as the European Union was then known, and a conversion to the doctrine of planning. This involved a greater degree of state ...

London's Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital

In 1739, Captain Thomas Coram was dismayed at the sight of children dying on the dung heaps of London. These children, mostly foundlings and orphans, were products of a poverty-stricken society where the attitude towards babies born outside of wed...

Gresham's Law in Economics: Background to the Crisis

Sir Thomas Gresham said that "bad money drives out good". In Economics, bad theory has driven out good. This fact shaped the decisions of bankers and regulators and thus serves partly to explain the crisis that broke in 2007 and whose shadow exten...

On Top of the World, 1830 to 1914

Economic dominance brings cultural dominance and the architecture of Empire was, in part, a template for the world. But as the century turned there were already signs of big changes which were to go on to shape the England we now live in.This ...

Clusters of Galaxies

Clusters of galaxies are the largest organised structures in the Universe that appear gravitationally bound, containing thousands of galaxies all confined to a volume of space only tens of millions of light years across. They are laboratories for ...

Values and Value in the Marketplace

Lord Green will speak about issues related to his recent book Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World. The description for this book is as follows:How should we create wealth in societies, and why is it necessary to d...

The Lost Hospitals of London: Leprosaria

Today, any mention of the medieval leper conjures up alarming images of exclusion, ostracism and fear, but such ideas are largely the product of the Victorian age, and have only limited basis in reality. By focusing upon the institutional provisi...

Part Three: Investing as if the Future Mattered

Part Two: Pros and Cons of Stable Monetary Value

Part One: Procyclicality of Financial Regulation and how to deal with it

Olympism: Fair Play

Fair Play is at the heart of sports ethics, and of Olympic ethics. But what does it mean, and how does it work?

Exploitation and Resistance

This lecture looks at the impact of empire on the colonizers and the colonized. In Europe, ideologies of imperialism emerged, increasingly mingled with racism. These had a material effect on the attitudes of political elites that helped push Europ...

Twenty-first Century Threats: HIV/AIDS

Over the last decades, HIV/AIDS has emerged as a major new disease, reversing gains in life expectancy that had been won over many decades in numerous countries, and becoming a leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the di...

Whither to the Creeping Paralysis? Progress on the road to curing motor neuron disease

The lecture will cover a description of how we diagnose and treat Motor Neuron Disease, why motor neurons degenerate and the genetic basis of disease. It will also cover new cellular and animal models of disease that are informing us about disease...

Searching for New Ways

From the 1960s to our own time artists who have wished to express Christian themes have explored a number of very different artistic ways of doing so. Amongst those considered in this lecture are Albert Herbert, Norman Adams, John Reilly and Craig...

Whatever turns you on

How do sexual fantasies vary and how do they arise? How do they relate to unusual sexual practices such as fetishism, transvestism and sadomasochism? Are these predilections just harmless variations or is there a sinister side?This is part of ...

Let's Twist Again: Throwing, Jumping, and Spinning

Throwing things, and jumping up and down or along, lies at the root of many Olympic events. In the gymnasium, the velodrome, and the diving pool we also see the key role of rotation in dramatic displays of strength and speed. What light does simpl...

Olympism: Education

Education through sport is seen as the cornerstone of Olympic ideology. How has this key aim been implemented by London 2012?

Is it possible?

Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F major, k.370With Mea Wade and players from the Royal Academy of MusicHarnessing virtuosity to good taste and fireworks to fine craftsmanship is a permanent challenge for the composer. Purely technical show will ha...

Engine House, 1760 to 1830

England's take off as the first industrial nation created a whole new language of building underpinned by technology and by an emerging view of the rest of the world.This is a part of the lecture series From Architectural Periphery to the Worl...

Olympism: Ethics and Politics

The first of a series of three lectures, in the run-up to the London Olympic Games 2012, that will consider the ethical and political values of the Olympic Movement, and their significance for education in schools and universities.Other lectur...

Rotation in Space

Rotation is a fundamental physical process throughout the Universe. So much is spinning, from planets and stars revolving on their axes, to whole spiral galaxies rotating around their centre. We shall start by looking at the fundamentals of rotati...

Christ and Evolution: A Drama of Wisdom?

Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity compared with other religious traditions is belief in God incarnate in Christ, the Word made flesh. But what might this mean in the context of modern evolutionary understanding of the human...

Apprenticeship in early modern London: The economic origins and destinations of City apprentices in the 16th and 17th centuries

The prospect of an apprenticeship attracted thousands of youths to the guild masters of early modern London. Where did apprentices come from, what became of them in the city, and how did this system impact shape the development of Europe's largest...

From Conquest to Control

From the 1880s through to the First World War, European empires slowly imposed their control on the territories that in many cases existed merely on paper. This lecture asks how and why European powers embarked on this trajectory. Often, occupatio...

Unweaving the Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing System: Complexity, Simplicity and Paradox

Despite the onslaught of legislative initiatives surrounding AML/CTF, it is difficult to make any conclusive remarks on the effectiveness of the broader system that attempts to control money laundering and terrorist financing. Based on his new boo...

Post World War II Optimism

After World War II, without forgetting the terrible suffering earlier in the century, there was a new confidence expressed in the artistic commissions of the time. Older artists who had been active before World War I such as Epstein and Matisse re...

Mad, bad or sad?

Personality disorders are a contentious issue in psychiatry. How many are there and how reliable is their diagnosis? Are we just medicalising bad behaviour and social inadequacy. How should medical and criminal justice sectors divide responsibility?

Citius, Altius, Fortius: Records, Medals and Drug Taking

We examine the striking patterns between world record performances in different sports and ask what events an ambitious nation should target as the 'easiest' in which to win Olympic medals. How does Olympic success correlate with a nation's GNP? H...

Catholic Elegance and Joy

In the period under consideration a fair number of the artists considered have been Roman Catholics, but at one time there was a particular symbiosis between two of them, Eric Gill and David Jones, who will be discussed along with others who share...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Conservative Reaction, 1951-1965

The Conservatives recovered remarkably rapidly from the debacle of 1945. Their narrow election victory in 1951 led to 13 years of Conservative rule. How was the party able to reassert itself so quickly and what did it do with its period in power? ...

David and Goliath: Strength and Power in Sport

Top athletes seem to get bigger and bigger. How does size affect performance? Why do some sports have weight categories while others don't? What types of lever are employed in sports events like gymnastics and wrestling and how much force does a k...

Remember Me

Memorability is sometimes achieved by the simple technique of repetition, in addition to more high-flown inspiration. Some of the simplest sustaining devices of great music are ground bass, ostinato or chaconne; this lecture shows that a canon can...

The City Livery Companies

Trade and craft associations have flourished all over Europe for many centuries, but the City of London companies, now collectively known as the Livery, are unique in their survival, number and diversity. The social and economic conditions which g...

The Psychology of Politics

Political affiliations reflect social class and upbringing but personality factors also contribute, including genetically determined traits like fear of uncertainty and novelty-seeking. Extreme positions may stem from dogmatism, hostility and into...

Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration

Evolution has provided a new understanding of reality, with revolutionary consequences for traditional Christian beliefs. This will be explored in this lecture to mark Jack Mahoney's new book.

St Paul's at 300 (Part 2)

A continuation of the story of St Paul's...2011 is the 300th anniversary of the completion of Christopher Wren's Cathedral. This coincides with the completion of an historic £40 million programme of cleaning and repair, in which the building h...

How do we deal with rewards for failure while supporting growth?

Professor Kenneth Costa is joined by Matthew Hancock MP to discuss vision and values in a volatile world.Matthew Hancock is the author of Masters of Nothing: The Crash and how it will happen again unless we understand human nature. The book ad...

Queer Presences and Absences: Citizenship, Community, Diversity - or Death

This lecture considers moments of US and UK sexual citizenship situating these in terms of LGBT campaigning groups' actions, institutional reactions and broader public relations evident in the course of claiming and lamenting citizenship, communit...

St Paul's at 300

2011 is the 300th anniversary of the completion of Christopher Wren's Cathedral. This coincides with the completion of an historic £40 million programme of cleaning and repair, in which the building has been comprehensively restored inside and out...

The Sounds of the Universe

In space no-one can hear you scream... but it is still a noisy Universe. We are familiar with the many stunning images of space, but these are only part of the whole human experience. This lecture takes a new approach to appreciating the Universe,...

The Scramble for Africa

In the early 1880s, informal imperial expansion gave way to formal imperial acquisitions. Between this point and the outbreak of the First World War, more colonial territory was acquired by European states than in the previous three-quarters of a ...

The Future of the EU and Global Markets

After the largest financial crisis in the history of the capital markets, what changes do we need to promote liquidity recovery? As authorities world-wide seek a safe framework within which we can behave as entrepreneurs, what insights can Equitie...

The Price of Fish: Making sense of the way the world really works

The Price of Fish addresses issues related to 'real' (as opposed to 'transactional') commerce: the complex ways in which people, organisations and societies communicate and deal with each other. The book argues that real commerce drives society, p...

A Lark Arising: The Rural Past and Urban Histories, 1881 - 2011

The Census of April 1881 revealed an England which was a firmly urban and industrial nation. Although the number of 'urban' dwellers had exceeded the rural for the first time thirty years earlier it was not until the 1870s and 1880s that the popul...

Distinctive Individual Visions

As at the end of the 18th century William Blake developed a highly individual style that did not fit easily into the categories of the age, so in our time artists like Marc Chagall, Stanley Spencer and Cecil Collins, in their very different ways, ...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Attempt to Construct a Socialist Commonwealth, 1945-1951

To the surprise of many, the 1945 general election led to the return of Britain's first Labour majority government. Labour's 1945 election manifesto declared that it was a socialist party and proud of it. The Attlee government created the modern w...

How Fast Can Usain Bolt Run?

How can Usain Bolt improve his world 100 metres sprint record significantly without improving his speed? How fast should he be able to run? We will also examine the mechanics of sprinting and the effects of wind assistance, timing accuracy, and al...

The Sir Thomas Gresham Docklands Lecture: Get Shorty

Patience is a virtue. But does it have value? Andrew Haldane will discuss the importance of patience to growth and stability, its recent evolution and its implications for financial markets and systems. There is evidence that capital market myopia...

The History and Music of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Congregation in the City of London

Bevis Marks Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in the UK (consecrated 1701), and is the 'cathedral synagogue' of a community which arrived in England in 1656 with the blessing of Oliver Cromwell, thus ending over three-and-a-half centuries of Jewis...

Sheep Across London Bridge - The Freedom of the City of London

One of the oldest surviving traditional ceremonies still in existence today is the granting of the Freedom of the City of London. It is believed that the first Freedom was presented in 1237. The medieval term 'freeman' meant someone who was not ...

The Joy of Six

Strauss: Sextet from CapriccioBrahms: String Sextet Op.18With players from the Royal AcademyThe choice of instrumental grouping can make or break a composition; the string sextet, a notoriously difficult combination, takes on a forward...

Part Three: Beyond Bubbles - Riding the Waves of Change

Part Two: Panel Discussion - Bubbling Forth, or Fifth?

Part One: Does Bursting One Bubble Lead To Another?

The Memoirs and Legacy of Évariste Galois

Évariste Galois was born 200 years ago and died aged 20, shot in a mysterious early-morning duel in 1832. He left contributions to the theory of equations that changed the direction of mathematics and led directly to what is now broadly described ...

The Rise of Consensus, 1650 to 1760

Opened up to the world once more England drank in influences and ideas from abroad which were to infuse? English building with widely held ideas and values.This is a part of the lecture series From Architectural Periphery to the World's Engine...

A voyage round Saturn, its rings and moons

Saturn is the most beautiful planet in our Solar System. Famous for its bright yet ethereal rings, the gas giant has over sixty natural satellites in orbit around it - and one artificial satellite: NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which provides many of...

The Pursuit of Happiness

What makes us happy? Is it a genetic trait that we are stuck with, or a product of events unfolding in our living? Does it help to be rich? What can be done to overcome set-backs and improve our sense of well being?This is part of Professor Wi...

The Cold Rules for National Security: History and the Defence of the Realm

Notions of national security past and present. How Whitehall has dealt with it. How we might do it better in the future.This is the 2011 Peter Nailor Memorial Lecture on Defence. Other Peter Nailor Memorial...

Modern Day Slavery

Thousands of people are estimated to be working as slaves within the UK, in highly exploitative conditions, with no rights, and under threat of violence. This lecture will discuss some of the issues.This lecture was sponsored by the Joseph Row...

Slavery, Ships and Sickness

The full-rigged ship was the essential technology that enabled the trans-Atlantic slave trade to flourish. Between 1698 and 1807 around 11,000 ships were fitted out in England for the slave trade, transporting around three million Africans. But th...

The Great Mathematicians

A lecture to mark the publication of Robin Wilson and Raymond Flood's new book. Mathematics pervades our daily lives. Our credit cards and the nation's defence are kept secure largely due to the properties of prime numbers, and mathematics is in...

The Explosion of Modernism

The period before World War 1 saw an extraordinary burst of creativity in all the arts which has decisively effected all subsequent developments. This lecture will look at the emergence of expressionism and amongst other artists will consider in d...

Formal and Informal Empire in the Nineteenth Century

From the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the 1880s, British industrial might and British command of the oceans underpinned the 'imperialism of free trade', in which economic interests of various kinds were paramount. In the industrial era, the major...

Keep it Short

J S Bach MagnificatThe art of being succinct is not one always associated with the works of Bach; in his compact setting of the Magnificat he employs economy and symbolism to illustrate each verse in a few minutes of music which challenge the ...

The Historical Function of Town Halls

The history behind the great Victorian Town Halls of Northern England, created on the back of new Industrial wealth and great civic aspirations.A lecture to mark the 600th anniversary of the City of London's Guildhall.

Why conserve the Cutty Sark?

One of the main advantages of talking about Cutty Sark is being able to say this is a ship which needs no introduction. Richard Doughty, Chief Executive of Cutty Sark Trust, considers why this merchant sailing ship is so highly regarded around the...

Literature and Politics in Seventeenth Century London

The contrasting, but interconnected, experiences of two writers: Sir Walter Raleigh and John Milton.Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower of London between 1603 and 1616, where he wrote a number of works including the monumental (and unfinish...

The History of the Lord Mayor's Show

The Lord Mayor's Show is one of the longest established and best known annual events in the City of London, dating back to 1215. This lecture will reveal the fascinating history of the show.This is part of the Square Mile series. The other...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Character of the Post-war Period

The post war years, by contrast with the first 45 years of the 20th century, were marked by peace and stability. For much of the period, ideological conflict gave way to consensus and the convergence of political creeds. Yet, by the end of the cen...

The End of the Old World Order, 1530 to 1650

The Reformation and the Civil War, two events a century apart, created an astonishing originality and independence in English Building.This is a part of the lecture series From Architectural Periphery to the World's Engine House: English Build...

'They live by Trade': Britain's global trade in the Great Days of Sail

Britain's history has been shaped by its relationship with the sea. The possibilities and profits offered by maritime trade were particularly important in defining the country's development as a global power in the Age of Sail. Richly illustrated ...

The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake

Often described as the ultimate Renaissance Man, Mervyn Peake was just eight when his father, a medical doctor, arranged for a Mandarin expert in calligraphy, to teach him the art. Soon he was able to form many of the six hundred plus characters t...

Soothing the Savage Breast

Can music heal? For centuries its therapeutic virtues have been extolled. The various uses to which it is put are described and the scientific studies that evaluate its benefits. The possibility of music having socially damaging effects is also co...

The Greenlanders - Arctic whaleships and whalers

From 1750 to the early 20th century, fleets of Greenlanders specially strengthened sailing ships headed north each spring from Britain to the ice-filled Arctic seas between Canada, Greenland and Spitsbergen. Their business was whaling, their purpo...

From Jenner to Wakefield: The long shadow of the anti-vaccination movement

In 1998 a medical furore broke out when The Lancet published an article by Andrew Wakefield questioning the benefits of the MMR vaccination which was being given unquestioningly to children throughout the UK.Coming 202 years after the first va...

Vision and Values in a Volatile World: Lecture One

We live in volatile times, as the Arab Spring and August riots have demonstrated. Professor Costa outlines an ethics of business best suited to dealing with this situation, an approach based on a morality of visions and values. This lecture was ...

Part Three: Ancient and Modern - Ongoing Translations of the Bible

Part Two: Dumbing Down or Sharpening Up? The Church's abandonment of the King James Version

Part One: Introduction to The Language of the King James Bible

Part Five - Concert

Part Four - Working with Young Artists

Part Three - Concert with Amanda Pitt

Part Two - The Lost Chord and other songs

Part One - Sullivan's Song-Writing Technique

The life and legacy of Dr Edward Jenner FRS, pioneer of vaccination

Known to many as "the father of immunology", Edward Jenner changed the path of world history on the 14th of May 1796 when he inoculated his gardener's 8-year-old son with cow pox, subsequently demonstrating that this induced immunity to smallpox b...

Empire in the Pre-Industrial World

The first lecture in the series looks at the initial expansion of Europe, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It explores the great empires established by the British, Dutch, French, Ottomans, Portuguese, Russians and Spanish, and looks ...

Spitalfields: Opportunity Through Regeneration

The Lord Mayor's Annual Gresham LectureThe Lord Mayor of London, Michael Bear, speaks about the regeneration and development of Spitalfields Market and Bishop's Square. This project illustrates the means of connecting communities and crea...

Voices of the Land: Nga Reo o te Whenua

In his solo presentation of traditional instruments (taonga puoro), Richard Nunns introduces his audience to the ancient sound world of the Mäori of Aotearoa New Zealand. For each presentation he chooses from among fifty different instruments - ma...

Percy Grainger: Australia's greatest composer?

We can think of world-leading Australians in sport (Don Bradman), media ownership (Rupert Murdoch) and film (Nicole Kidman). In music, some great performers come to mind, especially female singers (Nellie Melba, Joan Sutherland). But how many peop...

Emerging Markets and Climate Change

This lecture considers the economic impact of climate change on and by the largest "emerging markets" of the G20, such as China, India and Brazil. Simply stabilising emissions in these countries would make a greater contribution to reducing warmin...

Birdsong and Music

Many composers have been influenced by birdsong. Mozart treasured the songs of his pet starling, even giving the bird a ceremonial funeral. David Matthews, one of Britain's leading composers, has always been interested in the incorporation of the ...

The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition and Development in the Western World since 1700

BOOK LAUNCHAt the end of the eighteenth century, the average British man was around 168cm tall by the time he reached maturity. By the end of the twentieth century, the average height of mature British...

Culture and Resistance: Indigenous Responses to a Globalised World

This lecture looks at the place occupied by indigenous cultures in today's globalised world.At a time when the world is confronted with economic insecurity, ecological instability and endemic cultural dilution, Michael Walling points towards a...

Part Five: Panel Discussion

Part Four: The Politics of Health Reform from a Medieval Perspective

Part Three: Medical and Surgical Therapeutics - Scientific Advances in the Tudor Era

Part Two: The Form and Function of Medieval Hospitals

Part One: Introduction to Tudor Health Reform

Beanstalk or living instrument? How tall can the European Convention on Human Rights grow?

The pervasive scope of the European Convention of Human Rights has been demonstrated by the furore over the voting rights of prisoners. Is the ECHR a vital cornerstone necessary to protect individual liberties against an encroaching state and the ...

Part Four - Language Documentation and Revitalisation: Where are we now?

Part Three - Collect, Protect, Connect: Documenting the Voices of Vanishing Worlds

Part Two - 'Why should we protect endangered languages?'

An Introduction to Rare and Endangered Languages

A is for Autism

Half a million people in the UK are on the autistic spectrum, all finding it hard to make sense of the world around them. The disorder impacts both the highly intelligent (some employed in the City) and the profoundly learning disabled (like my l...

From Trocadero to Troxy: A tradition returns

Eighty years ago, three enterprising sons of Russian immigrants realised their ambition, to build a palace of dreams on the Old Kent Road. Three years later they followed their dream with another magnificent picture palace, the...

Reinventing the Wheel: The cost of neglecting international history

There is an ever increasing tendency to imagine ourselves living somehow 'beyond history', to bask in what Francis Fukuyama termed 'the end of history'. In this lecture, Sir Adam Roberts presents a compelling case for the reintroduction of history...

Mahler: ''My time will come''

Mahler's legacy, vision and philosophy, and his influence on subsequent composers.Concert: Mahler arr. Klaus Simon, Symphony No.4 - Bedächtig, nicht eilen and Ruhevoll; Mark Anthony Turnage, Grazioso! for Piccolo, Bass Clarinet, Piano, Viola a...

Mahler's London

Architect Keith James Clarke describes Mahler's one and only visit to this great city during the summer of 1892. This lecture outlines Mahler's impressions of London, where he lived and worked and the impact he had on the music-loving public of th...

Financing Retirement - History and Policy Changes

This lecture looks at how 'retirement' has developed across the planet as a concept, how it is funded currently, and how it might be supported in future. Malcolm Small examines increases in longevity together with the policy conundrums thrown up i...

Undecidable and Decidable Problems in Mathematics: A survey and some reflections, for the centenary of Turing's birth

What are the limits of proof, and what follows? - A timely look at the life and mathematical work of Alan Turing. As we approach the centenary of his birth, this lecture offers a chance to learn more about perhaps Britain's most famous modern math...

The Hidden Face of British Gardening

Among the thousands of books and periodicals on gardening, none considers gardening as an economic activity - the labour and time it consumes, the trades that provide for it, the output of flowers and vegetables. Gardening has been big business s...

Science's First Mistake: Delusions In Pursuit of Theory?

Science is a perpetual search for new ideas, but this says nothing of how correct it is. Professor Angell argues that no matter how elaborate, sophisticated or subtle a scientific description may appear, it always generates paradox. Science, the f...

Part One: An Introduction to Early Mathematics

Lovesickness

Is love a kind of obsession? Is it a positive or an unhealthy phenomenon? How can we recover from the loss of a partner or deal with the pain of separation and divorce? Healthy and unhealthy modes of conflict resolution will be discussed as wel...

From Printed Page to Performance

When so much in music education is formulated on the principle of imitation, and the passing down of received 'traditions' from teacher to pupil, it is important to readdress the significance of original and informed opinion in performance.Dam...

The Coalition and the Constitution

Professor Bogdanor analyses the significance of coalition government for Britain and of the momentous constitutional reforms which the coalition is proposing, penetrating the cloud of polemic and partisanship to provide an objective analysis. The ...

How the Middle Ages were Built: Coming of Age, 1408-1530

Against a background of political instability architectural initiative was captured by a new class of patrons who built in a style that expressed confidence in their worldly position and fear of the afterlife. On the very...

To Infinity and Beyond

An overview of the development of cosmology over the last 100 years from the Big Bang models of the Universe to the astounding revelation of recent years in that we have no real understanding of 96% of its content! Or even that our Universe could ...

The Victorians: Empire and Race

Science and religion came together to help shape the attitudes of the British and Europeans towards the rest of the world, whose inhabitants were increasingly regarded as socially inferior and spiritually ignorant. This lecture looks at how these...

Mahler, The Prodigy and Hollywood

Both Mahler and Strauss proclaimed the thirteen year old Korngold a genius. This lecture will explore how Mahler influenced a generation of émigrés who wrote for films. Concert: Korngold, Cello Concereto, Op.37; Mahler, Urlicht, Korngold, Piano ...

Celebrating the Past: Treasures from the RCM Collections

Founded in 1882, the Royal College of Music holds research collections of international significance, early printed music, manuscripts and more modern repertoire and literature. Dr Pearson uses some of the rich holdings of the RCM to shed light on...

Leadership at a Time of Transition and Turbulence - Lecture Three

"Where is the moral basis of leadership, where is its moral spirit, in the age of globalisation and the digital revolution?"The final part in a series of lectures and discussions to examine the challenges of leadership at a time of financial a...

Colour

Evolving in a silent, dark world, organisms developed receptors that could detect and differentiate components of the electromagnetic spectrum from the sun. Computation of the proportions of different wavelengths emitted from objects is used to fo...

What is this thing called "love"?

How hormones, phermones and bonding chemicals connect with the experiences of sexual arousal and romantic love. To what extent are we victims of our brain chemistry and neural processes? What are the evolutionary origins and adaptive values of "...

London at Night: Spirituality and the Dark Side

The Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields explains the work of, and the challenges for, a central London church at night.This is a part of the Mondays at One series of lectures on 'London After Dark'. The other lectures in this series are: ...

Part Three - 'Finance, Biodiversity and Managed Ecosystems'

Part Two - 'Prosperity and Resource Scarcity - What Role Should Finance Play?'

How the Middle Ages were Built: Exuberance to Crisis, 1300-1408

England's economic success peaked in 1300 amidst a riot of architectural excess and was followed by a series of disasters which lasted much of the fourteenth century. Yet against a catastrophic background English...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Road to War

After the seeming success of the Munich Conference of 1938 it was hoped that war could be avoided. However, it gradually became clear that the territorial ambitions of Hitler could not be sated as he invaded Czechoslovakia and...

From Composer to Printed Page

Musical notation is both inexact and changeable; the assumptions of one period may be lost on following generations, and the greater part of written music still remains unpublished at the present day. The challenges of editing and presenting a tex...

At the End of the Line: Students helping students

Every year thousands of people across London phone up a student-run listening service in order to talk about the problems and issues that they are facing, or simply to just have someone to talk to....

Future Brain

Just how near are we to using our brains routinely to control machines for work or leisure purposes? Will we be able to improve the performance of our existing brains? Have advances in neuroscience, neural network modelling and the physical scien...

Christian Themes in Art: Understanding faith through the eyes of Stanley Spencer

The reputation of Stanley Spencer continues to grow. All his life he painted Christian themes with his fresh and distinctive vision. For him art was the product not so much of talent as love, and this love enables us...

The Victorians: Religion and Science

If there was any single belief that characterized the Victorian era it was Christian belief. Religion pervaded social and political life to an extent almost unimaginable today. Yet this was also an age of major scientific progress and discovery. R...

The Importance of Proving Things

Proofs are important not just for developing critical reasoning, and not simply for avoiding errors, but for progress in mathematics itself. This talk will explain why, and Mark Ronan will present a fascinating array of mathematical examples. Th...

The Making of Modern Celebrity: Famous for fifteen minutes - and longer

This lecture will explore the 'celebrification' of contemporary popular culture. In particular how the idea of celebrity is intrinsic to the making and marketing of popular newspapers. We will also examine how the so...

Leadership at a Time of Transition and Turbulence - A conversation with Peter Sutherland KCMG

Professor Costa conducts a conversation/discussion with Peter Sutherland, Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to examine the challenges of leadership at a time of financial and geo-political dislocation.

London After Dark - Saving Londoners' Lives

The Ambulance Service has been the first point of emergency medical care in London for over 100 years. Formed over 50 years before the NHS, the 5,000 staff of the London Ambulance Service touches the lives of over seven million Londoners across th...

The Tragedy of Easy Problems

These are those challenges, particularly in development and global health, for which we have identified proven solutions but have failed to act on them sufficiently. This lecture will discuss the phenomenon, why it exists, and suggests some examp...

The Book of Universes

A special event to mark the publication of Professor Barrow's new book, 'The Book of Universes', available from The Bodley Head publishers: http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=1847920985 This is a book about universes, a story that revolves a...

Doing Business in Interstellar Space

Imagine that interstellar trade is possible at speeds close to the speed of light. It must incorporate the insights of Einstein's special theory of relativity, which teaches us that clocks on board a spaceship moving at high velocity will ensure t...

Hubble's Heritage

The lecture will consider the legacy of both Edwin Hubble and the Space Telescope that bears his name - from Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe to the observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope that have, over the last two decades, ...

Sex Wars

How the "selfish genes" of men and women sometimes create conflict. How monogamy, polygamy and infidelity stack up in terms of adaptive value. Is sex addiction a real disease or just an excuse for bad behaviour? The distinction between explanat...

Why we see what we do

The visual system has developed to allow us to navigate in a complex and dangerous world in order to find food and to avoid danger. This survival system works by building a complex three-dimensional model based on two-...

Christian Themes in Art: The Resurrection in Art

This is the most difficult of all Christian themes to convey in visible form and the early church approached it with proper reticence. Whilst the Western Church developed an over-literalistic image, the Orthodox Church gave it a powerful symbolic...

Britain in the 20th Century: "Appeasement"

The Conservative-dominated 'National' Government failed to discover a viable foreign policy or to avoid war. The failure will be for ever symbolised by the image of Neville Chamberlain and his umbrella. Critics accused the government of weakness a...

The Authenticity of Genius

Although Mozart is the usual example of genius that springs to mind (a combination of youth and perfection), in this lecture Felix Mendelssohn is proposed as a more precocious example of the same qualities, with an even greater range of abilities ...

The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality

Victorian' came in the twentieth century to stand for sexual repression and social convention. Personal life was governed by complex and rigid rules of behaviour. Like other aspects of Victorian culture this began to break down in the fin-de-sié...

The Making of Modern Celebrity: Famous for fifteen minutes - and longer

The historian Daniel Boorstin famously defined a celebrity as "a person who is well-known for his well-knownness."A person who is famous for...

Long Commerce: Transactions across time

Taking off from a 2007 Gresham lecture "Stealing the Silver: How We Take From The Dispossessed, The Poor and Our Own Children", Michael intends to further explore equitable inter-generational economics. Starting with...

Mahler and Strauss

Mahler and Strauss were two of the greatest conductors of their day. This lecture will look at their influence and legacy as performing musicians and will explore the origins of their stylistic development - expanding the ideas of Wagner and movi...

The impact of parental mental health on children

This lecture will examine the impact of parental mental illness on children. There are 175,000 young carers of parents with mental illness in the UK but maybe as many as 1,000,000 children affected by an adult's mental illness. They worry about th...

Leadership at a Time of Transition and Turbulence: A conversation with General Sir Richard Dannatt

Professor Costa conducts a conversation/discussion with General Sir Richard Dannatt, Former Chief of the General Staff, to examine the challenges of leadership at a time of financial and geo-political dislocation.General Sir Richard Dannat...

Benford's Very Strange Law

The first digits of randomly chosen numbers arising naturally or in human affairs display surprising statistical regularities. We will see why this distribution of digits, first found by Simon Newcomb and Frank Benford, is so ubiquitous and how it...

Part Four: Re-Thinking Social Care

Part Three: Enabling innovation and improved performance in healthcare

Part Two: Can the English National Health Service learn from the Dutch reforms?

Part One: Choice of Providers and Mutual Healthcare Purchasers - The Dutch Reforms

Repairing and treating damaged or dysfunctional brains

Loss of sensory or behavioural functions as a result of brain damage or dysfunction can clearly have a significant negative impact on quality of life. What progress are we making towards repairing damaged brains and sense organs and treating ment...

Fakes, Completions and the Art of Borrowing

Although Mozart's unfinished Requiem is the most publicised composition requiring a helping-hand, there are many similar incomplete may-be masterpieces which have been assisted in some way, plus a number of well-loved classics which have very litt...

The Violent Universe

A look at the most violent events that occur in our Universe, from supernovae and hypernovae to the cause of gamma ray bursts and what was the biggest explosion of all - the Big Bang origin of the Universe itself.

Britain in the 20th Century: The Economic Crisis and its Consequences

Fears about the fiscal deficit and the possibility of a run on sterling caused MacDonald and Snowdon to take drastic action in the economic crisis of 1931. However, they could not win the support of the trade unions and the cabinet, so headed up a...

Charles Chaplin: Bridging Three Centuries

The phenomenon of Chaplin's mythical status not only in film, but in world cultural history. This lecture will trace the creation of the myth to Chaplin's British origins; as a child of the poorest streets of Victorian London and as an alumnus of...

Blindness in Children: The Global Perspective

Professor Clare Gilbert, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.It is not only a personal tragedy to be born or to acquire...

Christian Themes in Art: The Passion in Art

There are no surviving depictions of Jesus on the cross in the catacombs, but by the middle ages it had become the definitive and defining image of Christianity. Yet there have been, and continue to be, major shifts in what this...

Leadership at a Time of Transition and Turbulence - Lecture Two

The second part in a series of conversations/discussions with distinguished leaders who will examine the challenges of leadership at a time of financial and geo-political dislocation.

The Uses of Irrationality: Paper Sizes and the Golden Ratio

Is there anything mathematically interesting about the paper sizes we use? We will see that their range of sizes has special features that facilitates their use in Xerox machines. The standard US Letter system of sizes is different and creates pro...

Mahler and Schoenberg

Mahler was a huge inspiration for Schoenberg and an early champion of his music. We will explore the influence Mahler had on Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, and the arrangements of Mahler for the Private Music Society, at the cutting ed...

Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe

There are many things that we do not understand about our Universe. This lecture will discuss some of the most perplexing of these and survey the instruments that are now being built and planned to help us fathom its mysteries.

Press Coverage of Mental Health and Suicide

A reflection on press coverage of mental health issues and suicide in the US and UK over a 25-year period and, in some cases, much earlier - as far back as 1900. International journalist and Fulbright Scholar Mary O'Hara's...

The Victorians: Life and Death

The nineteenth century, above all in Europe, was the age of the 'demographic transition', from high birth and death-rates to low ones; people's health improved, they lived longer, the devastating visitations of epidemics like...

Diabetes, Hypertension and Vascular Diseases of the Eye

The transparent tissues of the eye allow light to reach the retina. This highly metabolic tissue requires oxygen delivered by the blood vessels, which are damaged by disease. Diabetic retinopathy is the commonest cause of blindness in the workin...

Christian Themes in Art: The Nativity in Art

This is one of the richest themes in art, showing an amazing development of associated ideas and images right up to the 21st century.

The Bounce of the Superball

The commercially available 'Superball' of hard rough rubber displays many counterintuitive properties which seem to violate Newton's laws of motion. We will see that the Superball can be understood but its behaviour is completely different to a bi...

Britain in the 20th Century: The Great War and its Consequences

The war saw a transformation of politics at both elite and popular level. This led to the Liberals being replaced by Labour as the main party of the Left. The last purely Liberal government came to an end in 1915. The inter-war leaders, Stanley...

Part Two: Self and Consciousness

Part One: The Dialogical Self in Hinduism and Buddhism

A New Jerusalem: Reaching for Heaven, 1130-1300

During the thirteenth century Jerusalem surplanted Rome as the inspiration for English architecture. Huge national wealth led to an outburst of building of great creativity and individuality. The new gothic style which emerged by the 1220s was a...

A New Economic Model for Europe: Building sustainable growth

Dr Gibson-Smith will assess the challenges that Europe faces in competing with the New Economies, and identifies four key areas in which the European economy must be strengthened to meet the challenges of the post-crisis world...

Part Eight: Early Mathematical Instruments

Part Seven: Wadham and Wren

Part Six: Being Economical With The Truth

Part Four: The Setting up of The Royal Society

Part Three: Wadham College

Part Two: The Early Days of Gresham College

Part One: Welcome and Introduction

Voyages to the Outer Solar System

The Voyager spacecraft that toured through the giant planets of the Solar System, Jupiter's Galileo orbiter and the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan have given us wonderful views of these most beautiful planets and...

Leadership at a Time of Transition and Turbulence - Lecture One

The first part in a series of conversations/discussions with distinguished leaders who will examine the challenges of leadership at a time of financial and geo-political dislocation. For the other parts in this series, please follow this link.

Understanding the brain: a work in progress

How billions of interconnected cells in the brain can interpret and regulate all our bodily functions as well as mediate our experiences of interactions with and responses to the world around us is a huge and fascinating...

St Cecilia and Music: True or false?

Why does music require a 'patron saint'? What are the qualifications of such a person, and how has the praise of a non-musical heroine contributed so much to our poetic and musical heritage: music ranging from Purcell and Handel to Benjamin Britte...

Mahler and the World of Yesterday

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig is perhaps the finest account of Mahler's Vienna. Written as an autobiography and ending with his suicide note from 1942, this eyewitness account details the unique cultural life of Vienna before the First W...

Correction of Optical Defects: From Spectacles to Lasers

Despite sophisticated techniques; Laser, intraocular surgery and contact lenses; spectacles remain the most popular method for correcting optical defects of the eye. Roger Bacon (1266) proposed that convex lenses could be...

Christian Themes in Art: Jesus in Art

Early Christian carvings depict Jesus as a beardless Roman youth. Yet the image with which we are familiar is very different. This lecture will explore the dominant imagery...

Continued Fractions

What are continued fractions? How can they tell us what is the most irrational number? What are they good for and what unexpected properties do they possess? How did Ramanujan make good use of their odd features to make striking discoveries? W...

Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You

In a world where technologies enable our communities to be at once local and global, the very essence of money is changing. We are living longer, yet our financial infrastructures are inherently short term. Young people seeking responsibly to plan...

How mental health law discriminates unfairly against people with mental illness

Mental health legislation in most jurisdictions (including England and Wales) discriminates against people with a mental illness. When it comes to involuntary treatment, it fails to respect - without adequate justification - the...

What did eighteenth-century men want?

Such is the gloom that surrounds settling down today and the glamour that attaches to mature bachelor freedom, it is hard to imagine that there was a time when marriage represented the summit of a young man's hopes. Forty years after the sexua...

Part Two - 'Fundamentalism and The Way'

Part One - 'Introduction to A Swift Survey of Fundamentalism'

The Past is a Foreign Country

In its passage from manuscript composition to audible performance, a musical work passes through the hands of editors, teachers, interpreters, recording engineers and many others, all of whom make decisions, often based on personal choices, and ha...

Britain in the 20th Century: Responses to Decline, 1895-1914

It was during these years that British statesmen first came to appreciate that her international and economic position was under threat. The growth of German and American economic power exposed the fragility of Britain...

Triangular Relationships

And first, the fair PARABOLA behold, Her timid arms with virgin blush unfold!...Mathematical poetry may seem an unlikely form of satire, but 'The Loves of the Triangles' (1798) was not only a clever parody of Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfath...

Making England: The Shadow of Rome, 410-1130

When the English nation rose out of the ruins of the Roman Province of Britannia, people remained obsessed with their Roman past. Seismic social and political change in 1066 barely upset the vision of patrons and architects and Rome remained Engl...

Extinction or Evolution: The Future for Offshore Centres

The 2010 Sir Thomas Gresham Docklands LectureFrom the unique position as Europe's oldest continuous democracy, Anne Craine, Treasury Minister of the Isle of Man, will explore what the future holds for offshore centres; how they can survive, ev...

Black Holes - No need to be afraid!

Black Holes seem to have a bad press that is largely undeserved. The lecture will explain what Black Holes are, how we can discover them even through they cannot be seen and how Stephen Hawking has shown that they...

Words and Pictures: Mixed Encounters

This beautifully illustrated lecture explores the connections and interactions between British writers and artists.As children, learning to read, we...

Part Two - 'From Bowlby to Balls: Changes in the compatibility of motherhood and employment' and 'Youth Transitions: From Predictable to Precarious Pathways'

Christian Themes in Art: The First Christian Art and its Early Developments

The earliest surviving Christian art is in the catacombs in Rome. This lecture will look at how this developed, survived two centuries of iconoclasm and established itself with a distinctive rationale. This is a part of the 2010/2011 series of Div...

Why do we hate? Why do we help? Asylum seekers and ambivalence in contemporary Britain

Psychoanalytic theory illuminates the polarised nature of the asylum debate and the powerful feelings for and against refugees. Historic, literary and clinical examples reveal migration as part of human nature and the unconscious forces revolving...

The Art of Illustration: Millais, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Idyllic School

The final and 'most indispensable' founding principle of the Pre-Raphaelites was: "to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues". Derided by the establishment (including Charles Dickens) for producing art which was ugly and backward, the work o...

Fun with Visual Illusions

Visual illusions entertain and astonish us. How and why they occur is due to the way our visual system processes information. The study of visual illusions leads to many surprising and counterintuitive conclusions...

Part Two: The Challenges of Constructing a Sustainable Fund and The Value of Green Intellectual Property Panel Discussion

Part One: Water - What's the Data? with Panel Discussion

Satire, print shops and comic illustration in late eighteenth and nineteenth century London

This lecture tells the story of visual satire in London, a city in which caricature flourished like no other. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the people of London have been both amused and outraged by the thousands...

The German revolution in English organ technology

Pedalling ahead with Mendelssohn: The German revolution in English organ technologyRobert Quinney, Sub-Organist, Westminster...

Maths with Pictures

How pictures have been used in mathematics. The use of illustrations in ancient mathematics books, the invention of the first graphs and the representation of probabilities, sets and formulae by pictures. We look at the role played by computers ...

The Victorians: Art and Culture

The Victorian age began as an age of realism, in literature and art, and of nationalism and romanticism in music and culture. By the end of the century, however, the high noon of Victorian culture was starting to give way to more disturbing devel...

The History of British Cartoons and Caricature

Political, satirical, comic and incendiary: from Hogarth's images of London life, through the Golden Age of Punch Magazine, to the present day; the eclectic and vibrant tradition of representing ones life and times in cartoons...

Royal Society Anniversary Lecture: An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson discusses the history of science and its importance in our world today. This lecture was delivered in the Great Hall at the Guildhall in the City of London in honour of the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, founded in Gresham Col...

Beyond Crisis: The world's next decade and the implications for organisations

Assumptions of a return to the normality of the last decades are unfounded - this lecture considers the global economic and social evidence and draws out some scenarios for the next decade. It then goes on to review the...

The Role of the Media in Post-Conflict Societies: A Contemporary Look at Northern Ireland

Since Northern Ireland's sectarian politics turned to power-sharing in 1998, the country has struggled to define itself within its "peace process". The media serves as a barometer of this progress as it re-defines its own purpose within the newly...

A "Sing In" with Gilbert and Sullivan

What is it about Gilbert and Sullivan that has made their works so enormously popular for so many generations? It is, among other things, their perfect marriage between words and music that gives endless pleasure to singers and audiences alike. Gi...

Britain in the 20th Century - Progress and Decline: The Character of Twentieth Century Britain

During the 20th century, Britain underwent a major transformation. A country in which a law-abiding individual would hardly notice the existence of the state had become one in which, from the cradle to the grave, no one...

Democracy or Markets: Who Can Take The Longer View?

The Long Finance initiative to establish a World Centre of Thinking on Long-Term Finance began in 2007 with a question, "When would we know our financial system is working?" which challenges a system that can't provide today's 20 year olds with a ...

Deep Pasts and Deep Futures: What Is The Immediate Relevance Of The Long-Term To Finance?

The Long Finance initiative to establish a World Centre of Thinking on Long-Term Finance began in 2007 with a question, "When would we know our financial system is working?" which challenges a system that can't provide today's 20 year olds with a ...

Sustainability - The Problem of Time

The Long Finance initiative to establish a World Centre of Thinking on Long-Term Finance began in 2007 with a question, "When would we know our financial system is working?" which challenges a system that can't provide today's 20 year olds with a ...

Catholics versus Protestants: How liturgy affected the development of the organ

When Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt the church of St Margaret in Lothbury after the Great Fire, it had no organ. The George Pike organ was completed in 1801 and its pipe work, standing in its original case, forms the basis...

Part Two - 'The Shipman Inquiry: Was it worth it?' and 'My experience of inquiries as inquisitor and victim'

Part One - 'An outline of issues that need to be addressed' and 'Minimise the hazards by securing the basics'

The Victorians: Time and Space

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, communication was slow, even relatively short journeys were uncertain and time-consuming, and people were dependant on the forces of nature for energy; this lecture charts the...

The City: Past Historic / Future Perfect (The Lord Mayor's Annual Gresham Lecture)

THE LORD MAYOR'S ANNUAL GRESHAM LECTUREThe Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London, Nicholas Anstee, President of Gresham College Generously sponsored by the City of London Corporation.The other Lord Mayor's Annual Gresham Lectures are as follows:...

A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey

A contribution to the City of London Festival and its celebration of the International Year of Biodiversity. The Promised Land in the book of Exodus is described as 'flowing with milk and honey'. After a brief reflection on the ancient c...

Portugal and England, 1386-2010

Portugal and England, 1386-2010: A complex web of political, economic and intellectual relations.____________________...

The Poetry of Bees

A programme of specially commissioned new poetry about bees, featuring new work from the distinguished poets David Harsent, Luke Heeley, Fiona Sampson, Jo Shapcott and Matthew Welton. Poems commissioned by the Festival,...

Ludwig van Beethoven Op 95 in F minor

This quartet, which was composed in 1810 or 1811 and is his last before the so-called "late" quartets that crowned his final years. It is sometime nicknamed the "Serioso" (a strange, invented word which makes up part of the...

Sir Hans Sloane: 350 years of preserving history

An overview of the history of botanical collecting: the characters and their stories; the motivations and disagreements; the current situation and what the future might hold. Dr Robert Huxley is Head of Collections in Botany at the Natural History...

Adventures of Portuguese 'Ancient Music' in Eighteenth-Century London

Ancient music' enjoyed a vogue in eighteenth-century London, with professional and amateur music societies, including the Academy of Ancient Music and the Madrigal Society, meeting regularly to perform sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphony....

The creation of the Supreme Court - was it worth it?

This is the 2010 annual Gray's Inn Reading.

The Songs of Summer

Throughout May and June the British Isles resonate to some of the strangest and most beautiful sounds on earth; the voices; rhythms and music of our wildlife. In an acoustic journey from the vast seabird cliffs in the far...

Opening Doors: The Untold Story of Cornelia Sorabji - Reformer, Lawyer and Champion of Women's Rights in India

Richard Sorabji throws new light on the life of the extraordinary woman who was his aunt as well as India's first woman lawyer. With the special insight and knowledge he possesses as Cornelia's nephew, and through scrupulous research in her unpub...

Part Two: Corruption A Necessary Evil? and Corruption A Prosecutor's View

Part One: Critiquing Corruption and Corruption in Britain

How would Adam Smith fix the financial crisis?

Lessons from the history of English banking and the evolution of the industry.What bearing do they have on the present?This lecture was...

The Challenges of the New Supreme Court

The Rt Hon the Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, President of the Supreme CourtThis is the 2010 Gresham Special Lecture.Other...

High Financier: Sir Siegmund Warburg and the Art of Relationship Banking

Professor Kenneth Costa, Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce, withProfessor Niall Ferguson...

Part Four: Implications of the General Election on London

Part Three: Continuous Revolution - The struggle to reform London's government

Part Two: The Mayor and the London Boroughs

Part One: London's Government - 150 years in the making

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, K 499 in D major

Franz Anton Hoffmeister was in Vienna during Mozart's time in the city, and was a personal friend of the composer; hence the attachment of his name to this quartet, which comes directly after the six "Haydn" quartets and was composed in 1786. Moza...

Part Two - 'The News on the Street' and 'Enterprise and the Developing World'

Part One - 'The Role of Enterprise and Wealth Creation in the Global Economy'

Part Two: Regional Cleantech Investment, Linking up

Part One: Securitisation in Renewable Energy - Hercules or Hydra with Panel Discussion on Carbon Monitoring, Reporting and Investment

Schizophrenia, Imaging and Therapeutics

How antipsychotics work - from receptors to response.Using brain imaging and animal models can help us to understand more about the biology of psychosis and how antipsychotic medication acts on the brain. In this way we can combine psychologic...

Indra's Pearls: Geometry and Symmetry

Felix Klein, one of the great nineteenth-century geometers, discovered in mathematics an idea prefigured in a Buddhist myth: the heaven of Indra contained a net of pearls, each of which was reflected in its neighbour, so that the whole Universe wa...

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, K 421 in D minor

This is one of Mozart's six so-called "Haydn" quartets, dedicated to his famous predecessor and, as Mozart admitted in the dedication, the fruit of "langer und mühsamer Arbeit" (long and arduous work). The D minor quartet was probably completed in...

War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: From Balkan War to World War, 1908-1918

This lecture explores in broad terms the origins, of the First World War, both in terms of the aims and purposes of the main combatants, and by examining the influence of Social Darwinism and militarism, which led to a growing willingness of Europ...

The Shock of the New: Re-balancing the knowledge long and wisdom short society

We live in exponential times. The availability of and speed of access to financial information is daunting. The intellectual terms of trade have been skewed in favour of the knowledge economy which though it has brought huge benefits to global c...

Born Gay? The origins of sexual orientation

Are our sexual preferences acquired through social learning or are some people literally born gay? What are the genetic and prenatal hormone contributions of sexual orientation? How do 'gay genes' survive extermination by non-...

Erik Satie: Part Two - Composers' Forum, Satie in performance and 'The only musician with eyes' Erik Satie and Visual Art

TUDY DAY IN COLLABORATION WITH THE INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL RESEARCH, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AND KINGSTON UNIVERSITYIn addition to his music, Satie left a remarkable set of writings, including Le Piégede Méduse (1913) f...

Erik Satie: Part One - Satie's musical and personal logic and Satie as poet, playwright and composer

TUDY DAY IN COLLABORATION WITH THE INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL RESEARCH, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AND KINGSTON UNIVERSITYRobert Orledge, Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool and a panel of expertsIn addi...

The Afterglow of Creation

Astronomers have learnt about the early universe from the discovery in 1965 and subsequent observations of the radiation left over from the Big Bang. Jodrell Bank receivers are aboard the Planck spacecraft now observing this afterglow with unequal...

Mahler and Freud: Understanding Mahler

In the Spring of 1910, Mahler went for a consultation with Sigmund Freud giving him an account of his strange states of mind and his anxieties. Mahlers complex life and family background and the extraordinary creative environment in Vienna in the...

Inflammatory Eye Disease

Inflammatory eye disease is the commonest cause of acquired visual disability in the young working age population. From infection to autoimmunity the consequences of inflammation blind eyes and ruin lives. The adoption of steroid therapy in the 19...

Cousin Marriage

Prohibited in some states, but very common in the Middle East and Asian communities, cousin marriages result in a small increase in the number of babies with genetic problems. How serious is the problem, and how should it...

Feliks Topolski: Eye witness to the 20th Century

Between 1975 and 1989, the Polish-born expressionist artist, Feliks Topolski, worked on a 600ft mural in the railway arches in Waterloo. This masterpiece came to depict the 20th Century as he saw it, featuring the important events and people that ...

Joseph Haydn, Op 76 No 5 in D major

Haydn was always an experimenter, and this quartet is one of his most unusual, in that the customary balance between the first two movements is reversed. The first movement is light and undemanding in character (a theme and...

Civil Partnerships

Since 2004 two men or two women may enter a legally recognised union that carries many, but not all, of the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage. This is a trend throughout the Western World. How has civil partnership become established...

Monet: The River of Dreams

Claude Monet visited London numerous times between 1870 and 1901, painting some of his most important works in the city.Why was he repeatedly attracted back to the foggy and overpopulated urban capital when his impressionist work was otherwise...

Town and Crown: Why London never became an imperial capital

How London developed differently from the other great capitals of Europe, thanks to our constitutional monarchy.

Christianity and Public Life: Who do we think we are? Religious and national identities

In a multi-cultural, multi-religious world identity has become a key issue, one with the potential for tension and conflict. Christians find their identity 'In Christ'. How does this affect and shape the modern debate?

Maths and Sport

Maths can tell us unexpected things about sporting movement and performance. We look at some of the things that we can learn about running, jumping, throwing, swimming and systems of point-scoring by using simple maths and mechanics. Whether you ...

Canaletto: Grand Designs

In 1746 the great Venetian artist, Canaletto, moved to London following the market and wealth for his work. Nine years later, he left the city attacked by the critics as repetitive and a fake.What was 18th Century London like to be the centre of s...

War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: The Russo-Turkish War, 1875-1878

This is the least-known of the wars discussed in this series of lectures, yet it was of crucial importance for Europe. The decay of the Ottoman Empire was accelerated by the conflict and proved a major factor behind the outbreak of war in 1914. T...

Child Psychiatry

Our understanding of child mental health has changed over the years as attitudes towards children changed. Children are not solely immature adults who need protection and care; they have increasingly been seen as active, responsive agents who can...

Foreign Artists in 16th Century London

The 16th Century was a great period for foreign artists in London. The capital saw such great artists as the German, Hans Holbein, and Netherlandish artists such as Hans Eworth and William Scrouts.

The Ethics of Reproduction

From cloning and embryo research, to multiple births and the taking of sperm from dead husbands - the field of reproductive technologies is always going to be notoriously difficult. When controversial scientific advances and...

Haves, Have Nots, Have Beens and Wannabes: Re-aligning globalisation to promote commerce

This is the first truly global financial crisis. We will try to find the parameters for a debate, which would recognise the extraordinary achievements of globlisation for example in the fight against poverty and, on the other hand, the view that ...

For better or worse? How we pick our partners

What are men and women looking for in a partner? What accounts for the different 'shopping lists' of men and women? Genetic similarity theory vs the quest for 'hybrid vigour'. The games and strategies adopted in securing a...

Life on Mars?

We know that some 3 to 4 thousand million years ago conditions on Mars could have supported life. We will chart our exploration of the red planet and how we have learnt of its past climate. Could simple life forms have evolved there and, if so, mi...

Visual Perception

The eye, although a critical component of sight, is not where vision occurs. The ability to interpret the signals generated in the eye by the brain allows for the perception of vision. Sight is a complex sense requiring co-ordinated interaction a...

The Boyle Lecture: The Legacy of Robert Boyle - then and now

The revival of the Boyle Lectures in recent years has focused attention, as Boyle would have wished, on the relations between a culture of science and the plausibility of religious claims. Much of course has changed since Boyle in his Will endowed...

The Politics of Architecture in Tudor and Stuart London

How the Tudor and Stuart monarchs used the buildings of London to boost their power and influence.

Christianity and Public Life: Law and Morality

The middle ages had a wonderful vision of law originating in the wisdom of God and being expressed both in nature and human society. Law as understood in modern society has had this foundation undermined, and is now understood in very functional ...