Gresham College Lectures
Episodes
3038 episodes
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...
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 ...
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...
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: ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
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...
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 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 ...
Joseph Haydn, Op 76 No 2 in D minor
This quartet is sometimes known as the "Quinten" or "Fifths" Quartet, because of the opening descending intervals in its first movement. This movement is tightly structured around the "fifths" motive, and shows Haydn at his most...
Trains and Boats and Planes
Simple maths can reveal how energy efficient different forms of transport are. We will look at how to drive as fuel efficiently as possible. When does buying a small car help? Does car-pooling always save energy? Simple estimates can also tell...
War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: The Wars of German Unification, 1864-1871
In three short, sharp military conflicts, the Kingdom of Prussia, led by Otto von Bismarck, defeated Denmark, Austria and France to create the new German Empire in 1871. This lecture analyses these wars, their origins and...
The London Insurance and Reinsurance Market
"Lloyd's is the McDonald's of the Insurance Industry" London is still considered as the world's insurance and reinsurance centre. But no professional reinsurance company is owned by UK shareholders - the Germans, Swiss, Americans and French domina...
Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters
In England, interpersonal rights and duties of support have traditionally only attached themselves to couples united by law, sex and children. Why should there not be family obligations to support siblings and parents?...
Joseph Haydn, Op 76 No 1 in G major
Haydn's Op. 76, the last set of six quartets he composed, are generally recognised as the pinnacle of his writing in the genre. They were completed in 1796-7 and published a couple of years later. No. 1 in G major, as befits the...
Britten and Auden: Inventive Days, inebriated nights at 7 Middagh Street, Brooklyn
In 1936, Britten and Auden established a friendship and creative partnership whilst working at the GPO film unit in Blackheath, London, producing iconic films such as "Night Mail." With war looming, Auden - a pacifist - left for America to be sho...
Confessions of a Regulatory Headhunter: How we led ourselves into financial crisis
Did the boom in the 'leadership market' (books, courses and organisational practice) help cause the global financial crisis? Is a simplistic focus on remuneration/incentives - with some attention displaced onto 'governance' and 'regulation' (secon...
In the brain of the beholder? The principles of beauty and sex appeal
What constitutes human facial beauty and bodily attractiveness? How do these traits connect with health, fertility, and parental fitness? Differences across time and culture in the attributes that are attractive will be outlined...
Wonders of the Southern Skies
Some of the most beautiful parts of the heavens are hidden from us here in the United Kingdom. The lecture will take us on a visual journey to the most beautiful and interesting objects of the southern skies including a star that could explode any...
The History of Cataract Surgery
The commonest operation in the world is responsible for restoring sight to millions of blind and visually disabled people every year. From humble beginnings in India over 2,000 years ago it was refined by French surgeons...
The New Consensus of the Governed: Re-imagining Corporate Governance
The central tenet of democratic capitalism has always been to allow the market to operate with minimal interference from elected governments. This underlying assumption is now being challenged. With the public's distrust of Government growing, wil...
Christianity and Public Life: Does God believe in Human Rights?
The movement to establish an international legal basis for human rights after World War II has been one of the great achievements of our time. But do human rights have a sound theological basis? Sometimes it seems religions give the impression tha...
Eating Disorders
A lecture to investigate the problems of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, by Professor Janet Treasure of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.This lecture includes a ...
Codebreaking in Everyday Life
Everything we buy, from books to baked beans, has a product code printed on it. More sophisticated check-digit codes exist on official documents, bank notes and air tickets. What are they for and what do they mean? We take a look at the mathematic...
Impact!
There is simple evidence that, even in recent times, the Earth has suffered major impacts from asteroids and comets. What dangers do they hold for our civilisation? Major efforts now being made to detect those that might harm us and strategies are...
Debussy and Mallarme: Symbolism and Les Mardistes
Les Mardistes was a group of intellectuals who met every Tuesday to discuss philosophy, art and literature. Instigated by the poet Stephane Mallarme, its habitués included W B Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Verlaine,...
From Servant to Master - Roots of Excess: Rebooting the servers
The market economy is a good servant and a bad master. How did finance become not a means to a end but an end in itself? The City's roots lie in serving the growth in commerce and trade. Did we put on the wrong trade to become masters? Are incenti...
Composing With Numbers
From the 12-note music of Schoenberg, via the stochastic procedures of Xenakis, to Carter's use of set theory, composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have engaged with number in fascinating ways, resulting in a rich and...
From boom to bust: The politics of heritage 1997 to 2009
The politics of heritage and preservation over the last ten years, with special reference to London.
Christianity and Public Life: What makes us think that God wants Democracy?
Democracy is usually thought of as an achievement of the secular enlightenment. But the best defence of democracy is one based on a Christian understanding of what it is to be a human being in society, well described in words of Reinhold Niebuht, ...
War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: The Crimean War, 1854-1856
The Crimean War is remembered in Britain mainly for its military incompetence and for the pioneering nursing activities of Florence Nightingale. In a wider European context, however, it was the first major international...
Refugees, economic migration and the future of the world economy
In the 1990s, the advanced economics appeared no longer self-sufficient in labour supplies. Without permanent mechanisms to recruit workers (or students) from the rest of the world, economic growth could be threatened - or the labour force would b...
The Geometry of Music
Geometers study shapes and how they transform into one other. Musicians create shapes and transform them. We illustrate with some examples that are interesting to both geometers and musicians....
400 Years of the Telescope
This lecture coincides with the 400th anniversary of the first use of a telescope to observe the heavens by Galileo Galilei in 1609.It will...
Our Changing Perceptions of National Security
How have our ideas of national security changed since 9/11 and the terrorist attacks on London? Are we doing enough to secure ourselves against national threats? How should we view the danger and how can governments help prepare...
The Maths of Sorting Things Out
What is the best way to pack? Some examples of different packing strategies will lead us to the best way of packing many things of different sizes. We look at the different strategies that can be used to board passengers on to aircraft and disco...
British Prime Ministers from Attlee to Blair
A lecture to mark the publication of Vernon Bogdanor's book based on the series of lectures delivered at Gresham College during 2006 and 2007, ...
Cohabitation and the Law
The number of couples living together has risen to a record level. Why do they avoid marriage and civil partnership? How can former cohabitants resolve their legal issues when the relationship ends? Should...
Targeted Therapies in Oncology: The Future of Ovarian Cancer
Ovarian cancer, the most lethal gynaecologic malignancy in both the US and UK, provides an excellent model of analysis for recent developments in novel therapies in oncology....
The Institutionalisation of the Arts in Early Victorian England
The Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture for the Public Understanding of HistoryDr Charles Saumarez Smith CBE Royal Academy of ArtsThis was the 2009 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture. The other joint lectures can be...
Why are pianos out of tune?
This lecture explores various ideas of tuning and temperament from the time of Pythagoras, via Isaac Newton and J.S. Bach, to the present day.This is a...
Liberty, Equality and Human Community
Since the 18th century the three great political values have been liberty, equality and human community. They are sometimes thought of only in secular terms. In fact they have deep Christian roots and there is a distinctive Christian...
War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: War and Revolution in 1848
The international settlement reached at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was built on the suppression of liberal, nationalist and popular revolutionary movements in an attempt to prevent the re-emergence of the kind of...
Green Revolution or Green Wash? Cutting through the corporate spin
Brendan May, Planet 2050Barely a day passes without a major company or brand unveiling some new ethical or green initiative...
Doing good by doing well: Re-defining moral capitalism
If the capitalist system is to be the friend of society and not its enemy it needs to recover both its moral and human spirit. This lecture will try to determine how ethics can once again be restored seamlessly to its place in commercial life. It ...
Mathematics, Motion, and Truth: The Earth goes round the Sun
The reality of the Earth's motion, as proclaimed by Copernicus, quickly proved contentious. Accepted by Kepler, disputed by theologians (Lutheran and Catholic alike), veiled in suggestions of mere convenience, adopted and explained by Newton as a ...
i-dentity
Identifying people is a fundamental skill and special areas of the brain are hard wired for recognising faces. Non-subjective artificial recognition of individuals has become increasingly important. The recent advent of...
Are Bankers Good or Bad for Society?
In previous ages bankers have sometimes pecked lower in the order of society than lepers. Jesus declared their usurous ways immoral. Amazingly, from this disadvantaged position in...
Brilliant-cut diamonds and other tricks of the light
Simple mathematics revealed how to cut diamonds so as to create the most brilliant effect through the refraction, reflection and dispersion of light. We look also at some of the unusual effects of reflection and refraction that have been used to c...
Deportation: Some Ins and Outs
Deportation in the modern context.This is a part of the Crime and Retribution Mondays at One lecture series.
The birth of heritage and the fabrication of history
This lecture will examine how heritage protection began and went on to shape out attitudes to our history and the past. Simon Thurley is Visiting Gresham Professor of the Built Environment.
The Search for Planet X
The lecture will describe the nearly 200-year-long detective story of the search for planets in the outer reaches of the Solar System. It led first to the discovery of Neptune and Pluto and, recently, to Pluto's downgrading to a 'Dwarf Planet'. We...
Braille and the history of blindness
This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille. He became blind soon after an accidental injury aged three and despite the odds went on to develop a tactile system of reading that has...
Bound for Botany Bay: The Trauma of Exile
This lecture offers an overview of the convict transportation to Australia that existed between 1787 and 1868.It offers a path through this huge topic by briefly summarising the background before moving on to explore the impact that transporta...
'Innovation in Climate Change Financial Products and Services' and 'Indices: Carbon, Biodiversity'
Christianity and Public Life: Speaking for God in a Secular Society
People say we live in a secular society, but do we? If by secular society is meant a set of political arrangements that are neutral as far as religion is concerned, is this desirable? If it is, how should Christians seek to address it?
What Makes A Successful Global Financial Centre?
Financial centres have existed since antiquity, from the legendary entrepôts of Babylon, Samarkand, Constantinople, Marrakech or Timbuktu through to London and New York City vying for today's top spot. But competition is hot. Is financial centre...
Arctic Ocean State Changes: National interests and common interests
Government solutions for the Arctic Ocean involve the integration of science diplomacy tools (notably ecosystem-based management) with recognition of international space and common interests for the lasting benefit of all...
What's a woman worth? The maintenance law
When it comes to the division of assets and income after divorce, England and Wales have sweeping laws. London is called the divorce capital of Europe, and English judges have transformed parliamentary law on maintenance to...
Newgate: London's Prototype of Hell
There have been more prisons in London than in any other European city. Of these, Newgate was the largest, most notorious and worst. Built during the twelfth century, it became a legendary place - the inspiration of more poems,...
War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser: The defeat of Napoleon, 1806-1815
In 1810 Napoleon's France ruled or controlled the greater part of Europe. Five years later, his Empire had crumbled into ruins. This lecture explores the reasons for his victories and later defeat, assesses his impact on Europe, and addresses th...
Stravinsky and Diaghilev: The Alternative Russian Revolution
From 1910-1913, Stravinsky blazed a trail with his stunning ballet scores The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Written for Diaghilev's legendary Ballet Russes, these ballets were groundbreaking events not only for their innovative, ico...
A Sense of Balance
Why do tightrope walkers always carry long poles? What is the difference between weight and inertia? We take a look at balance and stability, from gymnastics and spinning racquets to the rescue of the International Space Station set spinning by a ...
Wergeld: Crime and the compensation culture in medieval England
Wergeld is the payment demanded of a person who has killed someone. That is, until the 9th century when it was replaced by capital punishment. The history of 'compensation culture' is older than some might think....
The Faces of a King: New research on portraits of Henry VIII
The context of royal portraiture in its early evolution, and the many different portraits produced of Henry in his lifetime. This lecture will look at the context of royal portraiture in its early evolution, and the many...
The Human Eye and Vision
This introduction to the series covers the structure and function of the human eye. The historical concept of the eye as a simple image-forming device has been transformed to the modern view of the eye as a sophisticated...
Elizabethan Merchant Ships and Shipbuilding
Elizabeth's galleons and other warships have attracted much attention, but a strong and diverse shipbuilding capability and merchant fleet were the foundations of Tudor seapower. This lecture not only covers the technological, organisational, econ...
Avoiding death by computer
One of the reasons why people make mistakes is that the systems they use are badly designed, and this is perhaps nowhere more alarming than in hospital errors involving drug delivery systems. This talk reviews a well-documented, but otherwise typi...
Will Sustainable Investing Survive the Recession?
Sustainable investing has come of age, demonstrating a combination of compelling returns and the ability to anticipate new systemic risks, such as climate change. But the financial crisis has generated a flight from risk,...
Bollywood and Mental Illness
How is mental illness portrayed in Bollywood films, and what are its implications and effects on Indian society within its broader historical, cultural and social contexts?...
Divorce law - a disaster?
Divorce law was last reformed in 1969. Since that date, the UK divorce rate has climbed to one of the highest in the world. One-third of children experience their parents' divorce before they reach 16. The...
Financial Crisis: Do We Need More Regulation?
Charlie McCreevy is the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services.Charlie McCreevy is a qualified chartered accountant. In 1977 he was first elected to Dáil Eireann (Irish Parliament) for the constituency where he was born...
Shattering Myths About Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a relatively obscure subject with many myths surrounding the organization. This lecture attempts to provide some insight into the past and present background of freemasonry as a fraternal organization, highlight the main myths assoc...
Burns the European
Why was Burns so important to Robert Schumann? Why did they love him in 19th century Russia, but not in France? What is the wider musical legacy of Scotland's greatest poet....
Musical Morals and Moral Music: The artist and the environment
What can we expect from our artists, and what should we demand of them? The independence of artists from society has become an effectively archaic notion, but what stance can an artist hope to take up on issues such as the...
Sisters-in-Law: The Irresistible Rise of Women in Wigs
This was the 2009 annual Gray's Inn Reading.
Out of the Wasteland: Hope for a greener world
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.Dr Richard Chartres, Bishop of London and Emeritus Gresham Professor of Divinity, is a prominent campaigner in the fight against global warming and for conserving natural resources, and is one o...
Metamorphoses - The Terrible Beauty of Change
People change the planet in beautiful and terrifying ways, from high art to base waste. Never before have we had such power to transform our planet and ourselves. Never before have we so risked losing everything. Robust economies and environmen...
London's Lost Rivers: The Hackney Brook and other North West Passages
Iain Sinclair takes a look at the rivers of London which have either faded out of the minds of Londoners or else disappeared completely. He considers what relationship these 'lost' rivers have with the idea of 'northness' within London and beyond.
The Idea of the North
The idea of the North lies at the intersection of poetry, myth, art and the myriad ways in which artists, poets and explorers have filtered the north's stark natural splendour through their imaginations. The author, Peter...
The New British Constitution
We have, since 1997, been undergoing a process unique in the democratic world of transforming an uncodified constitution into a codified one, piecemeal, there being neither the political will nor the consensus to do more....
Our Changing Bodies: The lessons of anthropometric history
What can the study of height, health and welfare teach us about our past? Can it tell us about our cognitive development or changing lifespans?...
How we reached the Moon: Mankind's incredible achievement
Current plans by both NASA and ESA's Aurora project propose manned flights to the Moon, but this will actually be a return to the Moon, around 40 years after the last man stood on its surface. Here is a chance to see how it was done originally, wi...
The Ascent of Money: An evolutionary approach to financial history
Professor Niall Ferguson offers an evolutionary approach to financial history: he questions the impeding of 'natural selection' by keeping the financial dinosaurs alive through the life support of monetary injections: "without creative destruction...
Commercial Philosophy: Science or Religion?
There are two types of people in the world - those who believe in markets and those who don't. Debate on the role of markets in society has taken on religious attributes. Saints or crooks? Public sector versus private sector? Rawls or Nozick: libe...
The Lord Mayor of London: Reflections on a medieval role in the modern City
The position of the Lord Mayor of London has existed since 1189 and has always been one of the most important roles in maintaining London as the prime international financial capital in the world....
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
This event marks the publication of John D Barrow's latest book. 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know answers one hundred essential questions of existence. From winning the lottery, placing bets at the races and escaping from bears...
Human Rights and Welfare
Issues of British human rights and European law affecting, for example, the rights of a prisoner to artificial insemination, and the rights to treatment of single persons and same sex couples. What attention should be paid to traditional family fo...
Film Music: A certain train station
David Lean's 1945 film, Brief Encounter, is a classic example of the way film can use music to drive the emotions of the audience. The film repeatedly returns to Eileen Joyce's recording of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, each time further en...
Mathematics and Smallpox
250 years ago Daniel Bernoulli used mathematics and statistics to try to weigh the risks and benefits of inoculation against smallpox. The arguments of Bernoulli and his critics still remain relevant today.This is the 2009 joint London Mathema...
Should governments promote happiness?
Traditional economics is founded on a mistake: that income can be equated for happiness as the ultimate aim of government. It is long overdue that we start rethinking how governments and economists should work, because the aim of public policy sho...
The American Presidency: George W Bush
The Presidency of the younger Bush will be forever marked by the trauma of Iraq.The war in Iraq was, however, a product of the Bush Doctrine developed after...
How many healthy people can the earth support?
From Malthus to the Club of Rome, predictions about maximum population size have been too conservative. We now live with 6-7 billion others and the "population bomb" is yet to explode. So what really is the upper limit for healthy coexistence?
Is it all in the genes?
Part of the series of psychiatry lectures presented in association with the Mental Health Knowledge Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London (http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/).
Haydn in London: Papa Haydn or genial revolutionary?
This concert looks at Haydn's posthumous reception and his influences on the other composers. Haydn taught Beethoven briefly on his return from London in 1795 and both Mozart and Beethoven dedicated works to him....
The American Presidency: Bill Clinton
Clinton was the first Democratic president since Roosevelt to serve two full terms in the White House. He sought to modernise the Democratic party in somewhat similar fashion to Blair's 'New Labour'....
Are human beings still evolving?
Homo sapiens have been around for 250,000 years - surely long enough to have become fully evolved?It was thought that the dramatic extension of life spans during the 20th century eliminated natural selection, but new evidence shows that to be ...
The Psychology of Performing Arts: Stage fright and optimal performance
This talk gives an overview of the causes and cures of performance anxiety. Under what circumstances is it most likely to occur? When is emotional arousal beneficial to performance and when destructive? The pros and cons of various approaches to t...
From dictionary user to amateur lexicographer: Possibilities of on-line searches
From online dictionaries to Wikipedia: the World Wide Web presents a domain where words are invented, refined and defined on an immediate and ongoing basis. What is the future of printed dictionaries and professional lexicographers when the world ...
It's about time
Time is one of the most mysterious concepts in our Universe. It is easy to describe how we define its passage and how we can make exceedingly accurate clocks but questions as to what determines the arrow of time and whether time travel is possible...
The Livery Companies in Tudor London
In the Sixteenth Century London developed as a major trading centre. What role did the livery companies play in this and how powerful were they in practice? Did they ultimately help or hinder the growth of the City?This is a part of the Tu...
The Psychology of Performing Arts: The power of music
How does music exert such extraordinary effects on our emotions? To what extent does it depend upon our nature (biological rhythms, instinctive reactions to certain sound patterns) and to what extent experience (e.g. conditioned associations, nost...
After 150 years: The topicality of Roget's Thesaurus
The first thesaurus was created by Dr Peter Mark Roget in 1805.What was his story? What inspired him to create this monumental work? How did he go about classifying and assorting the synonyms and antonyms?Roget's...
Judges or Legislators: Who should rule?
How are we to allocate the power between the law makers and the law enforcers? How are we to mark the differentiation between legislators and the members of the judiciary?Professor Bogdanor (of the University of Oxford) and Professor Rodriguez...
Domain Versus Process Expertise: Audit Perspectives - Panel Discussion
This part of the symposium includes the following panel discussion:Domain versus Process Expertise: Audit Perspectives
What makes a Good Auditor? 'Trust me! I'm an auditor!' Contradictions in Auditing, Governance and Trust? - Panel Discussion
What makes a Good Auditor? Trust, Trustworthiness and Audit
This event will explore the question "What makes a good auditor?" from a number of angles including financial auditors, social and ethical auditors, environmental auditors, internal auditors and management system auditors.
Film Music: A musical interlude
Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano, with music by Michael Nyman, was one of the most acclaimed films of the early 1990s, but it quickly became controversial because of its depiction of the mute heroine Ada (played by Holly Hunter). Ada is a pianis...
Judicial control of regulation
How have judges treated the new issues and what oversight have they over the HFEA? There are issues here of general legal interest concerning regulation and discretion. The case of Diane Blood, who used gametes taken from her deceased husband, wil...
The Psychology of Performing Arts: Theatre and human expression
What benefits do we derive from theatre (including film and TV)? It is excitement, vicarious experience, education, catharsis, or all of these things? Does our enjoyment depend upon the ability of the playwright to...
The Meaning of Everything: The history of the Oxford English Dictionary
The legendary Oxford English Dictionary today contains over 600,000 words and a staggering 2,500,000 illustrative quotations. A glorious, bursting treasure-house, the OED serves as a guardian of the literary jewels of the past,...
Christianity and Literature: The paradoxes of R S Thomas
R S Thomas had a reputation for writing verse expressing a very bleak view of life, and being a dour and unsociable man. In fact some of his poems have a remarkable tender, lyrical quality and new evidence about his life reveals a man of great wit...
The economies of China, the US and Europe
Sir David Brewer CMG LL, is the Chairman of the China-Britain Business Council and is the former Lord Mayor of London.
How to be a Winner: The maths of race fixing and money laundering
How does maths shed light on the fixing of horse races? Why disabling the favourite is the best strategy to ensure a winning return. We will find the simple condition that the odds must obey in order that you can always have a winning return no ma...
Tearing up the ideological maps, and squabbling over the compass
Political ideas in Britain at the start of the twenty-first century. The deaths of socialism and conservatism? Prophecies and predictions about the end of history or a clash of civilisations? New issues in political ideology: identity, culture, re...
A history of the dictionary: Dr Johnson, I presume?
Johnson's early life was beset by ill health; his eyesight and hearing were poor throughout his life. Poverty obliged him to leave Oxford without a degree. Johnson travelled to London with his friend, the actor David Garrick, and supported himself...
Beyond price: Trust me, I'm commercial
All markets are based on trust. Confidence is everything. Yet investors must take risks, new products and services must be explored, sometimes one needs to trade with strangers. This lecture will explore the role of trust in commerce and power whi...
Mercury rising: health warnings for a hot planet
Daily news bulletins threaten devastation from climate change, with dire consequences for health. Just how inconvenient is the truth about global warming? Is this the most pressing health problem facing humanity, or are there more important things...
Mary Rose: The first Ship of our Standing Navy
2009 marks the 500th anniversary of the Mary Rose, the only 16th century warship on display anywhere in the world. She was a revolutionary build, and one of the first ships able to fire a broadside. After a long and...
The American Presidency: George H W Bush
The older Bush, like Carter, was a one-term president. Yet his presidency saw momentous changes in world politics - the end of the Cold War, a resolution of the German question and the successful outcome of the first...
Harbingers of Doom?
Though a beautiful sight in our heavens, comets were once thought to be evil vapours burning up in our atmosphere. However, we now know that they have brought organic material and water to our planet Earth so helping to lay the foundations of life...
Are Normal People Sane?
Psychiatrists have for many years regarded conditions such as anxiety or depression as being at the extreme end of a normal distribution of the characteristic. In contrast, traditional psychiatric classification considers...
Fertility and Feminism
Has IVF increased women's control over their fertility and careers? Freezing their eggs may give women the opportunity to be fertile for as long a timespan as men: is this an advantage and what should the law be where two partners disagree over th...
Film Music: Opera
What happens when opera meets film? From its earliest days, film has flirted with opera: initially (and perhaps even to the present day) in periodic attempts to gain elite prestige for a medium that has always been associated...
Light from the Orkneys: Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown
The Orkneys produced two remarkable 20th century poets, for both of whom the Christian faith became central in the course of their adult lives. This lecture looks at the special features of their faith as it is reflected in their poetry.
Misusing Darwin: The Materialist Conspiracy in Evolutionary Biology
Scientists sometimes complain about the introduction of religious ideas into science. But many scientists, especially evolutionary biologists, blatantly introduce materialism into science. In fact neither theism nor materialism are entailed by s...
Ideological weddings: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue
New rights and new lefts in Britain as both the chronological and the short twentieth centuries draw to a close. How new is new, how left is left, and how right is right? Is there genuine innovation, or just a rearrangement of old arguments?
Some Interesting Curves
Hanging chains and shapes of suspension bridges. The designs of some of the world's greatest bridges. The shapes of arches and domes. The shapes of the Eiffel Tower and the Swiss Re Tower (the 'Gherkin'). The design and efficiency of windmills. Wh...
Richard Hakluyt: London's role in navigation and history
Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) is famous for his Principal Navigations, intended both to record past maritime achievement and to inspire new endeavours. Hakluyt was supported by the Clothworkers' Company and by his cousin (also Richard), a Middle Tem...
The American Presidency: Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan saw it as his task to restore American self-confidence following the policy failures of the 1970's. Charismatic, and a master of the media, he was the first president since the 1920's to come to power...
Local or global? Network economics and the new economy
Should we prefer the brittle resilience of a very nervous central system to being nervous about robust but decentralised economic systems? From fear of a decentralised National Health Service to uncertainties over global Sovereign Wealth Funds aff...
The Search for Other Worlds
One of the hottest topics in astronomy is that of detecting other solar systems. The methods by which this has been achieved so far have yet to detect an earth-like planet, but already a miniature version of our solar system has been discovered. H...
Haydn in London - London: The place to be seen and heard
This concert will explore Haydn's visit to London and recreate the type of programme what would have been heard at the legendary Salomon Concerts in Hanover Square. Salomon was instrumental in persuading Haydn to visit...
The Christian reticence of W H Auden
Auden was arguably the most prodigiously talented of the great 20th century poets. When he recovered his Christian faith as an adult about 1940 this suffused all his later poetry. But it has been virtually ignored by critics. This lecture will exp...
Other Britains: One size doesn't fit all
Not all political thinking is about either individual liberty and as little government as possible, or a responsible, or leadership, or housekeeping style of government. Alternative forms of government, society and politics: small groups, communit...
The maths of pylon, art galleries and prisons under the spotlight
Some mathematics of straight lines. Why are electricity pylons made of triangular patterns of struts? Rigid shapes and flexible shapes. What is the smallest number of attendants you need to watch all the paintings on the wall of an art gallery of ...
Haydn in London: The Revolutionary Drawing Room
This concert looks at 18th century music making and the demand for chamber music to be performed in the home. The talk will look at the Tavern Concert and will consider the evolving musical language and the dialogue...
Regulating the above average: Luck or skill?
Considered thinkers from Mandelbrot ('fractals') or Keillor ('Lake Wobegon Days') to Taleb ('Black Swans') point out the absurdity of more than half of us being 'above average'. Yet financial service salesfolk presume that the financial world is f...
Harmonic things
The difference between series that are finite and infinite. Simple proofs by pictures. The ubiquity of the harmonic series. The Painter's Paradox. Going to infinity very slowly. How often should there be a record year of rainfall? The Problem of t...
The Fall of the Third Reich, 1944-45
The final lecture in this series asks why Germans kept on fighting when the war was so clearly lost. The worse the situation became, the more the regime used terror and coercion to impose its will. Some hoped for rescue by '...
The Stigma of Mental Illness: Inevitable or unjustifiable?
Stigma and discrimination against people with mental illness is common and severe wherever it has been studied. One surprising aspect of this is that many consumers report that they feel discriminated against by health...
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate
Why was it argued that the poor could not vote, and conversely why has it been argued that democracy cannot allow its citizens to stay poor? The debate in Britain over the distribution of property: conservative, liberal, socialist, feminist and an...
Henryk Gorecki
6 December 2008 is the 75th birthday of Polish composer Henryk Görecki. Chamber Domaine have been working with Professor Adrian Thomas and will be producing a new CD to mark the occasion....
The challenge of atheist literature: Beckett, Pullman and McEwan
Some works of literature today are written from a consciously atheistic point of view. What might a person of faith learn from them? What critique might faith offer?
Can we trust our food?
Consumers are increasingly concerned not only about the safety and quality of their food but also about its origin together with the related issues of animal welfare, organic or non-organic, fair trade and environmental impact as well as the effec...
God and the Universe
With scientific knowledge ever-progressing, is there space left for God? Is there going to be a time when science will have uncovered all the secrets of the universe and proven that there is no Divinity? As science progresses, is the belief in God...
Mathematics and the Medici: Instruments from Late Renaissance Florence and a British Connection
The 16th-century instruments in the Museum of the History of Science in Florence provide one of the most attractive records of contemporary mathematics, significant for having been formed in the period, rather than assembled later by a museum or a...
The Invisible Universe
We believe that 96% of the mass and energy content of our Universe is invisible. Some is in the form of Dark Matter whose presence we can only detect by its gravitational influence. The majority, called Dark Energy, appears to be ripping our Unive...
The Legal Quays: Sir William Paulet, First Marquis of Winchester
Sir William Paulet (c.1483-1572) is perhaps unique in his long public career at a time of great political and religious turmoil. He held positions under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, notably as one of...
Film Music: The Western
The Western is a genre closely associated with film from that medium's earliest days, and in particular during the 1950s and 1960s some of the most innovative Westerns were made newly complex by their use of music. This lecture...
The importance of being peripheral
The maths of surfaces and boundaries. Queen Dido's problem. The importance of shape. Examples from the natural world where it pays to minimise your surface and others where it pays to maximise it. Animal behaviour: the shapes and huddles of herds....
The American Presidency: Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter saw himself as the antithesis to Nixon - he wanted to be the president who would restore morality to American life. An outsider in Washington, he sought to base his policies on human rights rather than on...
How well-meaning legal and accounting principles caused the last financial crisis and how to avoid them causing the next
One of the puzzles of the 2007/8 credit crunch is how a relatively small loss of capital in a tiny market segment was transformed into a global financial crisis costing close to $1trn and sending the world economy into slowdown. Key players in thi...
Luck, Leadership and Liberty: health through cultural evolution
What processes govern whether health in populations gets better or worse on a time scale of a few decades? Have healthy populations reached that state through luck, good leadership, or because people have the freedom to respond to incentives?
Choosing your baby
How IVF and embryology have developed to enable would-be parents to use embryo diagnosis to select an embryo free of an inherited disease. We will question whether this has an adverse effect on attitudes towards the disabled. How do we draw the li...
Shall future generations eat fish or whales?
In the mid-twentieth century the Southern Ocean whaling industry was the world's biggest fishery. Since then, most whale species have been depleted to near extinction, most fisheries have declined and the ocean's living resources are in crisis. Ma...
SeaChange: Reversing the Tide
The highly-acclaimed lecture/performance combines the knowledge of science and the wisdom of poetry. Between them actress Lisa Harrow and Roger Payne have numerous honours, fellowships, lifetime awards and even a...
It's a mad, bad, wonderful world: A celebration of commercial diversity
In some countries people haggle incessantly, in others to haggle is insulting. In many cities transportation costs are based on time rather than distance. On Alderney house buyers and house sellers both put up a deposit. This lecture examines how ...
How to be Happy
What is it about happiness that makes it so elusive for most of us and yet seemingly so simple for some? Is it a matter of how we approach our lives, or is it just luck in how we find the world? Psychiatrist, Dr Raj Persaud, investigates the eleme...
Stalingrad and Beyond, 1942-1943
By December 1941 the Third Reich had reached the apogee of its success.But Germany's economic and manpower resources proved insufficient to defeat the...
History, Science, Religion: Capturing The Public Imagination
This is the 2008 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture.
Governance, Trust and Business
Sir Michael Snyder is the Senior Partner of Kingston Smith firm of accountants, the Deputy Chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee of the City of London, and a Governor of both the London Metropolitan University and the City of London Schoo...
Commercial ethics: Process or Outcome?
There are inherent paradoxes in commercial ethics. Rigid tendering processes should make it hard to corrupt procurement exercises, but often also drive out innovation and thought. Innovation, such as new technology, can help make the world a bet...
Christianity and Literature: Are happy endings real?
The enormous suffering experienced during the 20th century, combined with the insights of that master of suspicion, Sigmund Freud, has made us deeply sceptical about the possibility of happy endings, popular though they are amongst readers. This i...
Now the dust has settled: A view of Robert Hooke post-2003
The tercentenary in 2003 of Hooke's death saw a flurry of publications, media interest and discussions related to his life and work. Have those events changed our understanding of Hooke? If so, how and why? Some answers are proposed.
Building Jerusalem in England
Faced with the problem of justifying what they want to achieve or preserve, ideologists have appealed to the past and the future, to home and to abroad. The different ways of solving this problem amongst conservatives, socialists, liberals, femini...
High politics and Hellfire: William Hogarth
Infamous rake (and Chancellor of the Exchequer), Sir Francis Dashwood was the founder of the Hellfire Club whose avowed flouting of all moral and sexual decency and the deliberate offending of religion brought about...
Our 'Island Universe'
A lovely name for galaxies - if a little inaccurate. We will learn how the size and spiral structure of our own Milky Way has been determined, how it relates to others within our local group of galaxies and how the gravitational pull of groups and...
The American Presidency: Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon, tainted by Watergate, is widely seen as the villain amongst post-war presidents. But are we in danger of neglecting his positive achievements - the creation of a new Republican Majority, the development...
Protecting London - The Phoenix: Rebuilding London after the Great Fire and the origins of the London Fire Brigade
1666 saw the Medieval centre of London destroyed by the Great Fire. How did London and England survive this blow? How was it able to pick itself up and rebuilt? What lessons were learnt, and how do they show themselves in today's modern London?...
Ethics, embryos and infertility
An explanation of the ethical issues. We will examine attitudes towards the embryo, the retrieval and storage of gametes, mixed animal-human embryos, informed consent, safety, welfare and the lifesaving possibilities of embryo research. Are ethica...
For a diet of worms: too much hygiene can damage your health
Public health campaigns have dramatically reduced exposure to infection but the effects have not been uniformly beneficial; one consequence has been the rise of cancers, allergies, asthma, and other autoimmune diseases.
The American Presidential Election
A panel of acclaimed experts will discuss the issues related to the American Presidential Election, which is to take place on the 4th of November.
Protecting London: The work of the Metropolitan Police Marine Support Unit
The Marine Support Unit plays a major part in keeping London safe and secure. Dating back to 1839 with a small collection of rowing boats, it is considered the first preventative police force in England. Today it controls 35 miles of the Thames, b...
Hitler's Victories, 1939-41
The second lecture in this series describes the astonishing and crushing military victories of the first two years of the war that brought Nazi Germany to a position of supreme power in the European continent. Following Italy's...
Film Music: Hitchcock's Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece is inextricably tied up with its difficult, modernist score written by Bernard Herrmann. For example, it is almost impossible to imagine the famous 'shower scene' without Herrmann's...
How long was the twentieth century?
Political ideologies in Britain from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the 'short' Twentieth Century. With the end of this 'short' twentieth century the ideological certainties fell away, and an ideological map of clea...
Not just about numbers
An overview of different types of mathematics and its applications. What is mathematics and why does it 'work'? A look at the way mathematics can tell you things about the world that you cannot learn any other way: how computers have extended the ...
Haydn in London - The Enlightenment and Revolution
Haydn was the most famous composer of his day. By the time he visited London in 1791-95, he was a celebrity courted by the monarchy and his music was widely performed at concerts and in the home. This concert will look...
Is literature essential to religion?
The relationship between literature and religion has sometimes been one of hostility, sometimes one in which they have occupied separate worlds. Today the relationship is at once more intimate and more complex. This lecture will explore the variou...
Protecting London - Digging up old London
Part of the Protecting London, Monday's at One lecture series.
Ageing Stars
The latter days in the lives of stars are by far the most interesting; they synthesise the elements from which planets like our Earth are formed, and die in cataclysmic explosions to form Planetary Nebulae, White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars and Black Ho...
Shell Shock or Cowardice? - The case of Harry Farr
Private Harry Farr was a British soldier executed for alleged cowardice during the Battle of the Somme. His fate was particularly tragic because he had a history of "shell shock". Last year, after many years, Harry and all the others executed for...
The American Presidency: Lyndon Johnson
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and ChangeThe...
Tribes and Diatribes: race, genes, and diseases
Few human deaths are caused by inherited genetic defects, and yet all diseases have a genetic basis. How do we resolve that paradox, and what have race, ethnicity and longevity got to do with it?
Reproductive technologies and the birth of the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority
We will examine why infertility and its treatment are problematic, and why there should be regulation of this field. An explanation will be given of the technology, from 'simple' IVF to cloning. We will look at choices of treatment, and trace the ...
Asia's Rivals: The implications for the world economy of developments in China, India and Japan
For the first time in history, Asia has three great powers simultaneously, all of which are treating the continent as a single economic, strategic and diplomatic space. Such integration raises the prospect that Asian growth could help support the ...
Sir Thomas Gresham and the New Learning
Sir Thomas Gresham founded his College in 1597 in order to promote the New Learning of Elizabethan times. What was this, and what relevance does it have to training and education today?
Hitler and the origins of the war, 1919-1939
Nearly half a century ago, the historian A. J. P. Taylor brought about a startling rethinking of our understanding of the origins of World War II....
An Introduction to Film Music
Music has always been closely associated with film. From Saint-Saëns in 1908 to John Williams in the present day, the history of music and film is a long and interesting story intricately connected with the plight of art in the modern world.It...
Is the party over? Sustainable hopes
Sustainable economics implies development without depleting natural resources or harming the environment. Can economies grow forever or are there limits to growth? Can capitalism handle zero-growth, or should we expect a catastrophic explosion? Wi...
Mahler's Heavenly Retreats
The Architect, Keith James Clarke, is to deliver this pre-concert talk on the building, its surroundings and associations where Mahler created his 8th Symphony in E flat major (the Symphony of a Thousand)....
The Last Mughal
Best-selling novellist, historian and travel writer William Dalrymple will fly from India to London to deliver a lecture as part of the College's contribution to the City of London Festival programme. William Dalrymple wrote and presented the awar...
Lewis Carroll in Numberland
Robin Wilson's new book (published by Penguin) is a celebration of one of the nineteenth century's most gifted minds, whose writings have inspired and entertained generations of readers. Yet only now are the less well-known achievements of Charles...
Give and Take
A lecture on philanthropy from the point of view of the donor and of the fundraiser.Dame Stephanie Shirley arrived at Liverpool Street Station in 1939 as one of 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees saved from the Nazis. She is now an ardent phi...
This Imperious Company - The East India Company and the Modern Multinational
The East India Company and its relation to modern multinational organisations. Nick Robins is Head of the Climate Change Centre of Excellence, HSBC Bank. This lecture is a part of the City of London Festival.
Mendelssohn - Quartet in A minor, Op 13
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
The Question of Beauty in Architecture
Alain de Botton, writer, broadcaster and producer, ponders the question of beauty and its application to architecture.
Goethe the Musician and his influence on German Song
Germany's greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), seemed to have perfectly attuned artistic sensibilities, and yet it was him who utterly failed to recognise the brilliance of the songs Franz Schubert made from his poems.
Gresham and Antwerp
Professor Guido Marnef, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Antwerp, will situate the great Elizabethan merchant and founder of the Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham, within the context of the...
God meets Mammon: The Financing of the New Cathedral
Part of the Craftsman's Art and Music's Measure lecture series in commemoration of the tercentenary of the topping out ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral when the last stone was put in place.St Paul's is the masterpiece of Britain's most admired ...
Other Side of Sullivan
Sir Arthur Sullivan, the musical half of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, was buried in the crypt of St Paul's by order of Queen Victoria. The most important musician of his day, he composed a symphony, a concerto...
Trading Identites: The image of the merchant
What was a merchant in 16th Century Europe, and what position did he hold? Joanna Woodall, of the Courtauld Institute of Art, looks at three portraits by Mor, depicting English merchants in 16th Century Antwerp and asks what we can learn from them...
Early Christianity & Today: some shared questions
The Most Reverend and Right Honorable the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury discusses and dissolves the assumptions and accusations that the early Christian Church sometimes has to face. In doing so, the position of Christianity and religion in the mo...
Broadside Ballads of 17th Century England
Lucie Skeaping, Broadcaster, Performer and Director of The City WaitesAn exploration of the social context of the ballads, their appearance, language, selling methods and the origins of the tunes to which they were sung. The lecture will combi...
John F. Kennedy, President, 1961-1963
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
Making Art in Tudor Britain
An exploration of the environment in which art was produced in Tudor Britain, and an investigation of what lessons we may learn about the period through this art.Dr Tarnya Cooper, 16th Century Curator, The National Portrait Gallery.
Literary Deans
The Deans of St. Paul's include a significant number of literary figures among their ranks. Apart from famous names such as John Colet and John Donne, there is a founder member of the Royal Society, a friend of Izaak Walton and the Gloomy Dean him...
400 years of geometry at Gresham College
400 years of geometry at Gresham College given by Henry Briggs (1561 - 1631) Henry Briggs was the first Gresham Professor of Geometry. In this lecture he describes the College's early days, and surveys the history of the Geometry Chair over the su...
Giant Waves on the Open Sea: Mariners' tall tales or alarming fact?
Cinemagoers will be familiar with the thrill of giant waves. But what most people don't know is that the film The Poseidon Adventure is based on an incident involving the Queen Mary in WWII. The famous liner was hit by a giant 'wall of water' whil...
Part Two: 'Science Fiction in the Nineteenth Century' and 'Modern British Science Fiction'
Part One: 'Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture', 'The overlap between Science Fiction and other genres' and 'Horror Motifs'
News on the Roll - Seminar
The UK's two principal rolling news channels are Sky News and BBC News 24. They place a premium on reporting 'breaking news' but little news really breaks in any twenty-four hours, which encourages this kind of newscasting to 'create' the impressi...
Beethoven - Quartet No 9 in C major, Op 59 (Rasumovsky)
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
News on the Roll
The UK's two principal rolling news channels are Sky News and BBC News 24. They place a premium on reporting 'breaking news' but little news really breaks in any twenty-four hours, which encourages this kind of...
Cancer can give you Maths!
Verbal reasoning alone cannot be used to understand the outcome of the complex interactions that typically comprise biological function, so more and more researchers are turning to mathematical and computational modelling to gain insights on exper...
Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science
We live in a visual age - an age of images - iconic, instant and influential. In his remarkable new book, John Barrow traces their history and influence in order to tell the story of modern science.Certain key images have created our conceptio...
Save the world: A commercial break
There are a tremendous number of global risks ranging from energy shortages to climate change, influenza, malaria and earthquakes. We shall explore how commerce plays the key role in helping us manage these global risks. We shall also explore how ...
The Future of London's Hospitals
Part of the Safeguarding London's Health, Monday's at One lecture series.
Part One - 'The Influence of Amatino Manucci and Luca Pacioli' and 'Louis Bachelier and his Theory of Speculation'
What is a human life worth?
Choice is a marker of freedom, but also a consequence of limited resources. Because choices about health follow from evaluation, we now inhabit a world of DALYs and discounts, where the interval between birth and death is a "statistical life". Doe...
The New London and the Heavenly Jerusalem: Scientists and Craftsmen in Sir Christopher Wren's London
The decades over which St. Paul's was re-built after the Great Fire were some of the most brilliant in scientific history. The Royal Society not only had Wren within its Fellowship but also Robert Hooke and John...
London's Hospitals Today
This lecture looks at the way in which hospitals operate in modern day London. Such questions which are discussed are the conflicts between having a really good service for some conditions that are time critical, and...
Seminar: The British and American Constitutions
New York University in London jointly with Gresham CollegeAn opportunity to discuss in depth some issues raised at the public lecture on 16 Aril 2008. This event will be aimed at academics, legal practitioners and law students.Those attend...
The British and American Constitutions
Britain, as is well known, has an unwritten constitution. The United States has the world's oldest written constitution. How has this affected their constitutional development? Many in Britain are calling for a constitution.What does American ...
The Avant Garde
Prior to the performance of contemporary British avant garde music, one of Britain's leading composers, David Horne, gave a talk. This included an interview with Jane Manning, who is at the forefront of British contemporary music. Pieces performed...
The Origins of the NHS
This lecture looks at the origins of the NHS; there have been many historical debates about the NHS and its origins. Such questions which are discussed are the debate about conflict or consensus. Did the NHS come...
Whose Pictures?
The way in which the three major nightly television newscasts give a different visual look to the same story. Blending bought-in and pooled news footage and specially-shot footage, each broadcast will inevitably have...
Haydn - Quartet in F minor, Op 20, No 5
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
Whose Pictures? - Seminar
The way in which the three major nightly television newscasts give a different visual look to the same story. Blending bought-in and pooled news footage and specially-shot footage, each broadcast will inevitably have...
Medieval Hospitals of London
This lecture looks at the birth of hospitals in London in the Medieval period. Considered are such questions as how hospitals came out of - and at one point competed with - the church, what they offered, who they...
The Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence in the New Millennium
The lecture will describe our attempts to detect the presence of other advanced civilisations, explain why we should not be too disheartened by our failure so far and how a giant radio telescope, due for completion in 2020, would give us a realist...
Materialism and its Discontents
Religion and Philosophy The problem of verification and the nature of religious language. The problem of consciousness, and the unexpected revival of Platonism in mathematical physics. Is consciousness an illusion? Or is matter a myth? Is God phil...
Fame and Celebrity
The modern obsession with 'empty' celebrity and the behaviour of obsessive fans (e.g. stalking). The downside of fame will be explored, including media intrusion, the likely slide towards self-absorption, links with...
Dwight Eisenhower, President, 1953-1961
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
Why is Africa still the poorest continent?
Among 29 countries where human life expectancy is still 50 years or less, 28 are in Africa (the other one is...). An ABC of Africa's woes might begin with AIDS, biogeography and colonialism. But does Africa have peculiarly many problems, or are th...
The Triumph of Idealism
Religion and Philosophy There are some misunderstandings which are unthinkingly accepted by most who study Immanuel Kant, the great Idealist and towering figure of Western Philosophy. This lecture is a response to this, and will focus on the three...
Actors and acting
The roots of performance in ritual and shamanism, including extremes of dissociation such as 'possession syndrome'. This lecture will examine the personality and stresses of actors (issues such as exhibitionism, charisma and identity confusion). T...
Musical Talent and ability
The measurement and origins of musical expertise - the extent to which it is due to an unfolding of innate potential versus training and application. We will also look at questions such as the role of teachers, what...
Whose News? The Seminar
An exploration of current theories of news production paying particular attention to how audiences have been encouraged to believe that television news should be led by pictures. Who are the news 'gatekeepers', does broadcast news set a benign age...
Whose News?
An exploration of current theories of news production paying particular attention to how audiences have been encouraged to believe that television news should be led by pictures. Who are the news 'gatekeepers', does...
Do we need a martian invasion in order to avoid attacking each other?
Is human co-operation possible without external threats? What are the possibilities of co-existence and collaboration at the start of the twenty-first century?
From Hilbert's problems to the future
In 1900 the German mathematician David Hilbert presented the mathematical community with 23 unsolved problems. What were they, and how successful were attempts to solve them? 100 years later the mathematical world was presented with seven 'millenn...
Two Paintings and a Sceptic
A discussion of works by El Greco and Picasso, and what they can tell us about faith and the human condition.
How to get ahead in commerce: The sure-fire ways to make money
One school of thought says that markets are just casinos. Another school says that hard work and intelligent thought will pay rewards. The smartest school says don't work, just own the casino. So what are the guaranteed ways to make money, what ar...
Proving Einstein Right!
A gentle introduction to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity discussing gravitational waves and the curvature of space and how, since 1915, experiments have been undertaken to test its accuracy. Recent observations by Jodrell Bank astronomers ...
Symmetry and the Monster
On 30 May 1832 a young Frenchman named Évariste Galois lay dying in a field outside Paris, fatally wounded in a duel. The previous night, he wrote a letter he knew would be his last, summarizing his mathematical work. Galois was just twenty, but h...
London: A microcosm of global health
London: a microcosm of global health... or life and death on the Piccadilly line. While some people feel "overtasked, overstrained and overlived in this close London life", others thrive in the metropolis. From Uxbridge to Cockfosters, what makes ...
The Empiricist Turn
Religion and Philosophy Hume and the grounding of knowledge in human experience. The conflict of reason and common sense. Hume was wrong about science - was he wrong about religion too?
Pandemic! Globalization and the new plagues
Allen and Overy Lecture The earliest gains in life expectancy were made by understanding infectious diseases, first through epidemiology and then through microbiology. So what process govern the spread of infections in populations? Why do some pat...
Beauty in the Heavens
Three of the most beautiful sights that we can observe in the sky are the Aurora Borealis and eclipses of the Sun and Moon. This lecture explains how such phenomena arise, describes what we can see and gives details of upcoming eclipses.
A Millennium of Mathematical Puzzles
In the 8th century Alcuin of York described the wolf, goat and cabbage problem - so did Lewis Carroll over 1000 years later. This lecture looks at a wide variety of mathematical puzzles that entertained people of all ages over the intervening period.
Britten and Bridge
Part of the Made in Britain series of four lectures exploring British instrumental chamber music and song ranging from Bliss through to the music of today, giving a rare opportunity to experience chamber music in an intimate setting. Each concert ...
Explanations of enmity: pessimists, optimists and sceptics
Theories, explanations and justifications of enmity, from Adam Ferguson in the Eighteenth Century to Carl Schmitt in the Twentieth.
The London Accord: Sustainable Finance And Climate Change
The London Accord is the largest cooperative project in the world on the investment opportunities in avoiding climate change. With an estimated effort of some £7 million and support from Gresham College, the City of London Corporation, BP, Z/Yen ...
Debussy - Quartet in G minor, Op 10
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
Harry Truman, President, 1945-1953
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
Perfectly unpredictable: Why forecasting produces useful rubbish
At the heart of commerce is the notion that perfect markets aren't predictable, yet great efforts are expended on proving this notion wrong. This contradiction perplexes us as cyberspace's automated and not-so-virtual economies mirror our world, c...
Psychologising and Neurologising about Religion: Facts, Fallacies and the Future
The original Boyle Lectures took place annually between 1692 and 1732. Funded by a bequest in the Will of the Hon Robert Boyle, the lectures featured distinguished preachers who were asked to consider the relationship between the new natural philo...
The Case for Sustainable Business
Sustainability combines the principles of economic growth, environmental stewardship, governance and social accountability. 'Sustainable' business, commerce and finance are the buzzwords in an age of social and environmental concern. But does 'sus...
Squaring the circle and other impossibilities
WE ALL HAVE OUR PROBLEMS Mathematicians can be divided into theory-builders and problem-solvers. In these lectures, we look at some problems that have fascinated mathematicians for 2000 years, concluding with a discussion of the future. Squaring t...
Demonisation and witch hunts in religion and politics
The origins, character and life of political and religious witch hunts, and the relation between what people say, what they believe and what they do.
The Quest for Ultimate Reason
Religion and Philosophy Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. The division between mind and matter. Philosophy declares its independence. Is Cartesian dualism a dead horse?
Fads and fashions: If they are so bad, why are they so rapidly rich?
We all know that celebrities, sports stars, estate agents, banks, lawyers and airlines, along with CEO fat cats, are overpaid. Or do we? Are we paying for the price of failure or failing to price? In a world where so many people seem to be short-t...
Part One: 'Musikalishe Moderne', 'Elgar's Relation to Modernism' and 'Edward Elgar: Modern or Modernist?'
Charles Wesley in Historical Perspective: Poet, Priest and Theologian
A lecture to mark the tercentenary of the birth of Charles Wesley.
Miracles, Media and Medicine
How the media reports medical advances, and why it does scientific advance a disservice.
Do governments and societies need enemies?
The ways in which enemies are described and portrayed, and the extent to which this functions to sustain social cohesion and justify the powers of government.
50 years of the Lovell telescope
A topical lecture about an icon of British science and technology as it passes its 50th anniversary. The lecture also gives an introduction to the art of radio astronomy and how it enables us to observe parts of the universe that optical telescope...
Bartok - Quartet No 2
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
The Medieval Synthesis
Religion and Philosophy Aquinas and Aristotle. The Christain Rationalists - Anselm and Abelard. The cradle of autonomous reason and the rise of science. Was Christian faith the midwife of science? __________ WARNING: We regret to announce that the...
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President 1933-1945 - Foreign Policy
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
Costing the arms race: drugs, super-bugs and the appliance of science
Does the spread of multiply-resistant microbes signal the end of the antibiotic era? Were antibiotics a unique, chance discovery? Will investment in RandD produce new drugs to win the evolutionary arms race, or is drug science just too difficult? ...
Plato and his Legacy
Religion and Philosophy Appearance and Reality. The One and the Good. The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists. Is Christian theology a 'series of footnotes to Plato'?
Meeting the demands of a hedonistic society
Allen and Overy LectureSocietal demand for products and services that generate or enhance the pleasure of the individual are growing constantly and there are high expectations that science and the pharmaceutical, entertainment and leisure indu...
Planes and pacifism: Activities and attitudes of British mathematicians during WWI
The First World War was the first time that war was fought in the air. Aircraft technology was in its infancy and mathematicians not only helped with the development of reconnaissance, fighter and bomber planes but also dealt with problems of anti...
Colour in the Cosmos
The wonderful colour images that we now have - many from the Hubble Space telescope - of nebulae, stars and galaxies can tell us much about the Universe. The lecture will present some of the very best and show what we can learn from them._____...
War and Truth: Conflict, Security and the Media
Robert Fox, Journalist and broadcaster, Defence Correspondent for The Evening Standard and Senior Associate Fellow, Centre for Defence Studies, King's College London.This is the 2009 Peter Nailor Memorial Lecture on Defence.
Stealing the silver: How we take from the dispossessed, the poor and our own children
There are numerous cases where well-meaning people find themselves defending amoral, or perhaps even immoral, economics. Regressive taxes, the BBC licence fee, pollution, the Common Agricultural Policy, postcode lotteries and pensions appropriatio...
4000 years of numbers
How did numbers arise? How were they written down? What does it mean to say that numbers are rational, complex, or transcendental? What is a number, anyway, and why did it take thousands of years to provide an answer?
The Jazz Age
Part of the Made in Britain series of four lectures exploring British instrumental chamber music and song ranging from Bliss through to the music of today, giving a rare opportunity to experience chamber music in an intimate setting. Each concert ...
Enemies at home: from class war to the war on crime
Hostility and demonisation in party political rhetoric in Britain. The differences between opponents, enemies, and 'threats to life as we know it'. What has happened to the two major parties?
The Fabrication of Medieval History: Archaeology and artifice at the Office of Works
The Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture for the Public Understanding of Heritageby Dr Simon Thurley, Chief Executive, English HeritageThis is the 2007 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President 1933-1945 - Domestic Policy
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
A Lens on London
Part of the Visual Impressions of London lecture series at 1pm on Mondays.Malcolm Crowthers is a professional photographer.
Watchers of the skies
How our knowledge and understanding of the universe has increased over the centuries so that we now have a surprisingly accurate idea of its size, age and makeup - much of it unseen in the form of dark matter and dark energy!
Is the world flat?
A recent best-seller claims that rapid communication across the world is equalizing economic opportunities for industrialized and emerging market economies. Is it true, and what does "Globalization 3.0" mean for world health?
An Engine of Commerce? Steam Technology and Global Maritime Trade, 1860-1910: Studies in success and failure
The rapid growth in world trade in the 19th century depended heavily on advance in maritime technology, most specifically on the increasing efficiency of the steam engine. The relationship between trade and technology was a two-way process. On the...
London at War
Part of the Visual Impressions of London lecture series at 1pm on Mondays.Ulrike Smalley, Curator of the Department of Art, The Imperial War Museum.
4000 Years of Algebra
From the writers of Mesopotamian tablets, via treachery in 16th-century Italy, to a famous duel fought in Paris, the history of algebra is full of fascinating characters. Who were they, and what did they do?
London's Past: The mapping of London 1250-1900
Part of the Visual Impressions of London lecture series at 1pm on Mondays.Peter Barber is the Head of Map Collections at The British Library.
Mozart - Quartet in C major, K465 (Dissonance)
One of six lectures devoted to a major work in the string repertory. Each will end with a complete live performance of the work by the Badke Quartet. The lectures will discuss both the historical and musical background of the work in question, and...
Does investing in excellence pay?
Across Europe a number of companies have invested in the pursuit of quality and excellence as a core of their business strategy. Many more have not. Who is right? This lecture, building upon previous work in North America, explains the evidence fr...
Hogarth's London
Part of the Visual Impressions of London lecture series at 1pm on Mondays.Robin Simon is the editor of The British Art Journal.
What I Like about this country is that it has a nice level of corruption!
Allen and Overy LectureDeep economic truths from the mouths of Washington DC taxi drivers. Trust is crucial to markets, never more so than in situations where corruption rules. In some places it's so bad that 'I trust you to cheat'. Yet corr...
4000 Years of Geometry
From the Egyptian pyramids to modern sculpture, geometry has been at the heart of our culture. Central to this story has been 'Euclidean geometry' which seems to describe the world we live in. But does it? Can there be other types of geometry?
The rhetoric of enmity
"You may tell a lady by the company she keeps." But you may tell political leaders by the company they shun. Their descriptions of enemies are a way of telling stories about themselves. The use of accounts of enemies from the Reformation to the 'w...
Is wealth good for your health?
Dramatic increases in life span over the past 300 years went hand in hand with economic growth in the now-rich world. But is economic growth necessary and sufficient for good health? Or does good health provide the foundations for a strong economy...
Music from the Western Front
This concert focuses on composers who saw active service. It includes the Bliss Piano Quartet Op 5 which he wrote during the Battle of the Somme, as well an Ivor Gurney the premiere:Sir Edward Elgar - Violin Sonata in E, Op. 82 (1918)Alleg...
The Reform Club: Architecture and the birth of popular government
Professor Peter Marsh, Honorary Professor of History at the University of Birmingham, and Mr Paul Vonberg, Architect.Lecture followed by Reception.
The Nature of the American Presidency
From Roosevelt to Bush: The American Presidency: Transformation and Change...
Conquest and Disease or Colonialism and Health?
A special lecture to mark the centenary of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The mission of the Society is to promote and advance the study, control, prevention and treatment of tropical diseases, to facilitate discussion, exchan...
The Sun Kings
The true story of a phenominally powerful solar explosion that hit the Earth in 1859. Stuart Clark paints the picture of the Victorians who witnessed this awesome event.
Liquidity: Finance in motion or evaporation?
House prices stuck? Not enough liquidity. Inflation rising? Too much liquidity. Whenever global economic trends fail to flow with the theory, economists and financial observers invoke liquidity, in the same way that physicists invoke dark matt...
The Berlioz Requiem - Pre-concert talk
David Cairns is a British journalist, non-fiction writer and musician. He is a leading authority on the life of Berlioz. David Cairns' work in journalism has spanned a number of high profile newspapers and magazines. He was chief music critic of t...
Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities
Each year the City of London festival has a theme 'Trading Places' which celebrates the links between the City of London and other trading centres around the world. This year's theme is London and Paris, and this...
Bridgetower - Black Musicians and British Culture, 1807-2007
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, the son of an Abyssinian slave, was hailed as a musical prodigy in the eighteenth century. Taught by Haydn, his appearance at the court in Windsor to play in front of George III led to his subsequent 'adoption...
The Growing Significance of Elgar
Broadcaster and author of an illustrated biography of Elgar, Simon Mundy discusses the composer's life and work as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Part of the City of London Festival.
Two Cities: The buildings of London and Paris in music and film
The City's fabled 'square mile' contains many of London's oldest surviving buildings, and also many of its newest. So it is appropriate to the City of London Festival's ongoing theme of 'Trading Places' that this concert celebrates the twin cultur...
Music and Architecture: Confronting the Boundaries between Space and Sound
The architect/mathematician turned composer, Iannis Xenakis, was Gresham Professor of Music between 1975 to 1978, and died in 2001. Professor Xenakis was the 20th century's best example of a creator who linked these disciplines at the highest leve...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - John Major
Continuing last year's series of lectures, delivered by distinguished guest speakers, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the War, looking at change in Britain through the eyes of the UK's Prime Ministers.With a response by Professo...
The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke: The Rediscovery of a Musical Masterpiece from Renaissance Florence
The rediscovery of the gigantic "Mass in Forty Parts" by Alessandro Striggio, lost since 1726, sheds important light on the connections between music and politics in the sixteenth century. Dating from 1566-7, it is one of the most extravagant piec...
Puccini and New York
These lectures cover the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century.
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - James Callaghan
Continuing last year's series of lectures, delivered by distinguished guest speakers, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the War, looking at change in Britain through the eyes of the UK's Prime Ministers....
The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils (or what is to happen to 10,000 parish churches?)
This was the 2007 Special Lecture.
Our new Constitution
It is time to draw the threads together. The years since 1997 have seen massive, if largely unnoticed, constitutional change. It has been a revolution, but a quiet revolution. Has there been any pattern of change, or has it been unco-ordinated and...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Alec Douglas-Home
Continuing last year's series of lectures, delivered by...
Multiplying and dividing whole numbers: why it is more difficult than you might think
This is the 2007 joint London Mathematical Society / Gresham College lecture.
The Challenge of Human Rights
Past Gresham Professor, The Rev Jack Mahoney, will draw from his new book, The Challenge of Human Rights - Origin, Development and Significance in which he considers the charges against human rights of Western ethical imperialism and the countercl...
Nature and nurture: Mental health and illness
Professor Robert Plomin is MRC Research Professor in Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, where he is Deputy Director of the Social Genetic and Develoopment Psychiatry Centre.Professor Plomin is currently...
After Iraq - Shall we ever intervene again?
The former leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Rt Hon Lord Ashdown KBE, recently stood down as the International Communities' High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During his time there, Lord Ashdown earned the respect of all parties.
Verdi and Milan
These lectures cover the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century.Each lecture will concentrate on one operatic composer and his rela...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Anthony Eden
Continuing last year's series of lectures, delivered by distinguished guest speakers, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the War, looking at change in Britain through the eyes of the UK's Prime Ministers.With a response by Professo...
Euler - 300th anniversary lecture
Leönhard Euler (born 15 April 1707), the 'Mozart of mathematics', was probably the most prolific mathematician of all time. He contributed to many areas, both theoretical and practical, yet remains largely unknown except to mathematicians. Who was...
Getting a life: Limits to health in the 21st century
Our health and longevity are affected by a multitude of things: environment, economy, education, social status, genes, technology, public services, and the rest. Among all of these factors, what are the main barriers to better health in the world ...
Brahms the progressive; Schumann the visionary
Placing Schumann and Brahms into their historical context. The programme includes:Schumann: Five pieces "im Volkston", OP. 102Brahms: Sonata in A major for...
Seminar: Valuing British music - Jazz futures
This seminar is a continuation from the 1pm lecture investigating jazz in Britain today.
Valuing British music - Jazz futures
British Jazz has been transformed in the past 20 years - now representing a vibrant and distinctive British cultural form, presenting many opportunities for young and established artists to thrive economically and artistically.Using musica...
'Thus saith the Lord' - God's law and secular justice
Human autonomy and obedience to God. Is religious law repressive and archaic? Is there a secular basis for justice? Must religious law (Torah/Shariah) and secular rules of justice inevitably clash?
The psychology of financial participants and its implications for finance
Avinash Persaud, former Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College.
Donizetti and Paris
These lectures cover the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century.Each lecture will concentrate on one operatic composer and his rela...
Sir Robert Moray - Soldier, scientist, spy, freemason and founder of The Royal Society
Sir Robert Moray brought together members of Gresham College, rich Royalists and struggling Republicans to found the world's first scientific society. This is his swashbuckling story.Scientist and author Dr Robert Lomas has a keen interest in ...
Northern Ireland and the British-Irish relationship: The Gladstonian Settlement revisited
Why has it proved so difficult to resolve the problems of Northern Ireland? Will the current arrangements, an outcome of the Belfast or Good Friday agreement of 1998, provide a solution? This agreement seeks to revive old ideas first put forward b...
Contemporary Slavery: A Case of Mistaken Identity?
Paul Nugent, Professor of Comparative African History, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh.
Redesigning financial regulation of pensions and other retail products
Worried about your pension? Worried about the nation's poor savings habits or failing pension funds? In his next Gresham Lecture on Wednesday 21 March at 6pm, Professor Avinash Persaud will consider pensions and propose 'Redesigning Financial Regu...
Rich and Learn'd: the library of Gresham College
Irene Gilchrist, Archivist, The Guildhall LibraryThe original Library at Guildhall was founded in the 1420s under the terms of the will of Richard Whittington. Today it is a major public reference library which specialises in the history of Lo...
Liverpool and the slave trade
An investigation of the City often called the 'capital of the slave trade': What does the dubious accolade mean? How accurate is it? - By understanding the detailed operation of the trade we can also see how Liverpool became so important as a slav...
Does society risk my life through safety? The perils of too much risk-aversion
We would all like a riskless life, right? The Precautionary Principle embodies the idea that if the consequences of an action are unknown, but are judged to have potential for major or irreversible negative consequences, then it is better for soci...
Lifestyle diseases: The burden of choice?
Take exercise, wear seatbelts, eat the right food, stay off alcohol, and stop smoking. Is there a simple recipe for good health and Methuselan longevity? With luck and judgment, how many years of healthy life can we hope to enjoy? How much control...
The science of love
Glenn D Wilson is a reader in Personality at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry and one of Britain's best-known psychologists. He is the co-author of Fame - The Psychology of Stardom, The Science of Love and CQ - Learn the Secret of ...
Slavery - The US perspective: From the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement
This is a part of the Mondays at One lecture series on slavery.
Schools and politics
Schools and politics do not mix. They are, as Woody Allen would say, "at two." The sad consequences are there to see over the last half-century. Can they be disentangled? Yes!
What do rulers do when they rule?
Mark Twain commented that anyone who actively sought to become President was clearly thereby morally disqualified from holding the office. Why do people seek to govern, why do they do what they do when they govern, and how are we to explain and de...
Slavery - The Emancipation Movement in Britain
This is a part of the Mondays at One lecture series on slavery.
The story of e
What do we mean by exponential growth? How quickly does your bank balance grow? How quickly does a cup of tea cool, or radium decay? What shape is a washing line and what is the link with Gresham College?
Too unimportant to fail? Innovation and competitive selection in markets
Where are the sources of innovation? How much fat do we need in the system? What kills new businesses? Why do we have so many lawyers? How are firms evolving in the 21st century? These questions are linked. This lecture will explore innovation and...
More than a feeling: How emotion works in the brain
Following on from the public lecture on 21 February 2007, Professor Joseph E LeDoux, New York University, Professor Keith Kendrick, Head of Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge and former Gresham Professor of P...
Wired to get wound up! Why emotions are so hard to control
Professor Joseph E LeDoux, New York University, Professor Keith Kendrick, Head of Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge and former Gresham Professor of Physic and Professor Raj Persaud, Visiting Gresham Professo...
Where is everybody?
Are we alone? The universe is very big. Why do we not see evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe? We will look at a large number of possible explanations for this surprising state of affairs and ask whether we should expect things ...
Birth control, Death control and the Demographic Transition
The improving survival rates of children, and the freedom to plan family size, have dramatically changed patterns of health and disease around the world. In wealthy countries, health is better for longer than ever, and as many people now die from ...
Brahms, Joachim and Clara Schumann - Chamber Domaine
A rare opportunity to hear compositions by Joachim and Clara Schumann. This event looked at 19th century performing life, and explored the influence Joachim and Clara had on Brahms and Schumann and their reception.
Cosmology of Ultimate Concern
Delivered by Professor John D Barrow FRS, FRS, Gresham Professor of Astronomy, with response by Professor the Lord Rees, PRS, Master of Trinity College Cambridge, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society and former Gresham Professor of Ast...
Superhumans? - Interfering with nature
Should we engineer the human genome? The ethics of stem cell research. Will humans be superseded? The Christian Natural Law tradition in morals.
The story of i
What is meant by the square root of minus 1? why is it 'imaginary'? what are complex numbers, and why are they useful? how can we represent them geometrically? and can we find numbers that are 'even more imaginary'?
Caps of Liberty: The Oddity of Democracy
The oddity of democracy is that government by the people means that the same group who are the rulers are, at the same time, subjects. There is a continuing tension between democracy as workers' control, and democracy as consumer sovereignty.
The Government of London
Much has been written about devolution and the problems of Scotland and Wales. Yet, London contains a larger population than either Scotland or Wales, and it is a great international capital, a world city. In 1999, following a referendum, new arra...
The Origin of the Constellations
Who invented the constellations? The constellations that we use to group stars into visually associated groups have ancient origins and have been hugely influential throughout human history. This lecture looked at the appearance of the ancient con...
Islam and Christianity - Is a Clash of Civilisations Inevitable?
The American political scientist Samuel Huntington has warned of a future 'clash of civilisations' between Islam, the West and China. Concentrating on Europe, this lecture asked to what extent Islam and secular/Christian Europe are involved in a p...
Corporation Tax or Income Tax: Which is the greatest con?
Taxation is arguably, the greatest intervention of government in the economy. There is much tinkering, but little reform. This lecture explored how abolishing corporation tax or implementing consumption tax, along with other radical suggestions, m...
Holy war - Religion and Violence
Is religion a cause of intolerance and violence? Can there be a holy war? When, if ever, is violence justified?
Covenants without Swords; Swords without Covenants
Hobbes declared that 'covenants, without the sword, are but words'. But the reverse it true as well. Even the most oppressive regimes avoid relying on mere force, and constantly seek justification for their actions.
The Age of Dictatorship: Europe 1918-1989 - Stalin and his imitators
The most durable dictators in twentieth-century Europe were Communists dictators. The final lecture in the series shows how Stalin established the pattern of Communist dictatorship, and asks how far the 'cult of personality' survived the process o...
The afterglow of the Big Bang
Is there an 'echo' of the big bang? The story of the prediction, serendipitous discovery and interpretation of the microwave radiation left over from the hot early beginnings of the universe. This radiation contains a wealth of information about t...
Brahms and Clara Schumann - More than Friendship?
This event explored the relationship between the two artists and will include rarely performed lieder and chamber music written by Clara Schumann and Brahms: the Cello Sonata in F and Brahms' Violin Sonata in G. Guest performer: Christopher Lemmi...
The new localism: Local government and the Constitution
Many argue that Britain has become too centralized, that Whitehall has usurped the town hall. Yet few of us turn out to vote in local elections, and we complain about the 'postcode lottery' when facilities in a neighbouring area are better than th...
London can take it - psychological reactions to terrorism from the blitz to Bin Laden
Professor Simon Wessely, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College LondonThis was the first of a series of three lectures promoting public understanding of psychiatry.The other two lectures took place on Wednesday 14 March and Wednesday 16 M...
A simple solution to global imbalance that is easy to implement and is unlikely to make matters worse
Avinash Persaud, former Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College.Next lecture in the series was Redesigning financial regulation of pensions and other retail products
Humour and satire as the canary down the mine shaft of government
Laughter may not be the most obviously fearsome weapon in the hands of governments or citizens, but it is one which political leaders seem to dislike to a surprising degree. Why are public figures so sensitive to satire, and are there public figur...
The Age of Dictatorship: Europe 1918-1989 - The little dictators
The third lecture in the series asked why so many European states fell victim to dictators in the interwar years. It looked at a variety of dictators for an answer, including Metaxas in Greece, Franco in Spain, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg in Austria,...
Gravitational-Wave Astronomy
Einstein predicted that gravitational waves exist. What are they, how are they produced, and what is the evidence for their existence? We looked at ways in which colliding black holes and other violent events in the universe produce gravitational ...
The Psychology of Seduction - Is life a seduction?
Some people seem to be 'simply irresistible' - the title of Professor Persaud's new book on attraction - but is attractiveness something you are either born with or not? Can you learn how to become more attractive? Is attraction even the key ceme...
Phiz, Dickens and London
Valerie Browne Lester brought Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz') to life in an illustrated lecture which revealed his London origins. She also discussed sites that he and Dickens frequented together, and explained how artists and author reinvented them...
Mozart and Vienna
These lectures covered the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century.Each lecture concentrated on one operatic composer and his relati...
Hygeia and Panacea: Is prevention better than cure?
Better sanitation and hygiene, coupled with immunization, have dramatically reduced illness caused by exposure to microbes. For those who do fall ill, a galaxy of drugs and medical procedures have been invented to treat conditions of all kinds. Am...
The God gene - religion and altruism
Can morality survive without religion? Sociobiology and evolutionary explanations of morality. The Selfish Gene and the possibility of altruism.
Power Play - The hidden role of power in our lives and relationships
Power is wielded against us all the time. It is not just our bosses or work colleagues who seem to inveigle upon us - but politicians and the local council. We don't like to think of intimate relationships in this way but power is at play even in ...
Who hates globalisation?
The expanding third sector is trendy, but is its growth good for society? At a national level Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) try to fill the cracks in society, or so Anglo-American society believes. At a global level, NGOs have a problemati...
Mathematics in the 20th century: Chaos, codes and colouring
What is the Mandelbrot set? how can prime numbers protect your bank balance? and why is mathematics incomplete? More new mathematics arose in the 20th century than was known up to that time - including the long-awaited proofs of Fermat's last theo...
The grinning shadow that sat at the feast: In commemoration of Hector Munro, 'Saki'
Hector Munro was a journalist better known for his satire and biting wit, written under the pen name Saki. He foresaw the outbreak of war and wrote about it in 1913 with When William Came. Although over-age, he volunteered for service at the outbr...
The Early History of the Universe
What was the universe like during its early history? Described were the sequence of events that cosmologists believe unfolded during the first quarter of a million years of the universes's expansion: the lightest chemical elements were formed, the...
Dickens and the Moving Age
The age in which Dickens lived saw enormous changes in travel and transport: his writing reflects their impact on people's lives. He was a great traveller, visiting the United States twice and Europe regularly. His writing, both in fiction and jou...
From World Brain to the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web has evolved into a universe of information at our finger tips. But this was not an idea born with the Internet. This lecture recounts earlier attempts to disseminate information that influenced the Web - such as the French Encyc...
Creativity and mental illness - do you have to be mad to be creative?
Using Robert Schumann as an example - a composer thought by some authorities to have suffered from bipolar disorder or manic-depression - why psychological dysfunction appears to so frequently accompany extreme ability, particularly in the arts is...
Dickens's law makers and law breakers: Barnard's Inn and beyond
Dickens had no love for lawyers. He had been trained briefly at Gray's Inn and later worked as a law-reporter. Both experiences seem to have left him jaded as the long line of distasteful lawyers in his novels - from Dodson and Fogg onwards - clea...
The Curse of the poke bonnet: Television's version of history
The Colin Matthew lecture for the public understanding of history.This is the 2006 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture.
The plumage of the naked ape
Tom Paine criticised Edmund Burke's account of the French Revolution by saying that he pitied the plumage but forgot the dying bird. But it is often the plumage which defines the bird. The rituals and theatre of public life are a valuable indicato...
The Age of Dictatorship: Europe 1918-1989 - Hitler
The second lecture in the series turned to Germany, where the economic depression that began in 1929 destroyed the Weimar Republic and ushered Hitler and his Nazi Party to power. Hitler's dictatorship combined intensive political repression with c...
Did Einstein get it right?
How did Einstein's theory of general relativity improve on Newton's 17th century theory of gravity? We give a simple explanation of Einstein's general theory of relativity and show how well it does in explaining many unusual features where Newton'...
Mathematics in the modern age - The 19th century: Revolution or evolution?
What is a number? can you solve a quintic equation? is Euclid true? and is the calculus correct? The 19th century witnessed major breakthroughs in geometry, algebra and calculus, and a move 'back to basics'. But were these the results of continual...
The Referendum: Direct democracy and the Constitution
In 1975, we held our first, and - so far - our only nationwide referendum. It was on whether we should remain in the European Community, as it then was. Until then, the referendum was widely regarded as unconstitutional. Yet, a number of sub-natio...
London's Ecology - Future ecological planning
Carolyn Harrison, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University College London.
Pathogens and parasites; plagues and pandemics
The earliest gains in life expectancy were made by understanding infectious diseases, first through epidemiology and then through microbiology. So what processes govern the spread of infections in populations? Why do some pathogens come and go whi...
Enclosures of the Mind: Governing the Intellectual Commons
We are living in an age of remarkable intellectual property appropriation - copyright, trademarks, patents and commercial secrets grow at an unprecedented rate. However, is this right or appropriate? Do the new owners deserve these rights, what mi...
Standards Markets: The free market response to regulation
Michael Mainelli, Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce with Paul Stennett, Chief Executive, UK Accreditation Service. Many societal goals for markets can be achieved with more innovative regulation using standards markets that seem to br...
London's Ecology - How clean is the Thames?
Martin Attrill, Professor of Marine Ecology, Plymouth University.
Should we take our leaders as seriously as they take themselves?
Political leaders invest time and energy in cultivating their public images and their identity as rulers, but the cultivation is as much for themselves as for subjects and voters. What are the consequences, good and bad, of this for ordinary citiz...
London's Ecology - Managing for biodiversity in London's Royal Parks
Dr Nigel Reeve, Community Ecologist, The Royal Parks
Handel and London
These lectures covered the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century. Each lecture will concentrated on one operatic composer and his rela...
Will the US easily relinquish economic and political power to China and India in the 21st century?
Avinash Persaud, former Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College.Next lecture in the series was A simple solution to global imbalance that is easy to implement and is unlikely to make matters worse
Mathematics in the modern age - The 18th century: Crossing bridges
What shape is the Earth? how do strings vibrate? can you construct a 65,537-sided polygon? and can you cross the seven bridges of Konigsberg? While British mathematics drowned in Newtonianism, major bridges were being crossed on the Continent ...
London's Ecology - Disappearing London
Dr Justin Dillon, Chair of Council, London Wildlife Trust/King's College London
The Times of Our Lives: A history of longevity
Notwithstanding bible stories, the average human lifespan has reached "three score years and ten" only through spectacular increases in the past two centuries, and only in the richer half of the world. Among the 60 million people who die each year...
The Age of Dictatorship: Europe 1918-1989 - Mussolini
The first lecture set the scene by analysing the devastating effects of the First World War on Europe, and goes on to focus on Italy, where a recently introduced democratic political system disintegrated, giving way to the Fascist dictatorship of ...
Is the world simple or complicated?
Stop some particle physicists in the street and they will probably try to persuade you that the world is simple and governed by a single Theory of Everything. But stop a biologist, an economist or a social scientist, and they will tell you quite t...
The Civil Service and the Constitution
Professor Vernon Bogdanor and Lord Butler (formerly Sir Robin Butler, Head of the Civil Service) Over fifty years ago, the head of the Home Civil Service declared that civil servants would always remain good material for jokes, like mothers-in-law...
Why do people play the Lottery? Make up your mind!
It has often been said that greed and fear drive the markets. This lecture explored behavioural finance, including how human choices can have adverse economic effects, why bubbles grow and how the Nobel prize-winning Prospect Theory can help you m...
Productivity and Capital Markets: Globalization Meets Parish-Pump Politics
Professor Seifert intends to explore the relationship between productivity and the capital markets. He will argue that while it is essential to have an integrated perspective of all factors that determine the wealth of nations, only if its capital...
Monteverdi and Venice
These lectures covered the history of Italian opera from its beginnings in the early seventeenth century to what might be thought its climax at the end of the nineteenth century. Each lecture concentrated on one operatic composer and his relations...
Schumann and the young Brahms
An exploration of the influence of Schumann on Brahms. The programme included Brahms/Schumann Variations for Piano Op 9, the FAE Sonata for which Schumann and Brahms both wrote movements and the Brahms Piano Quartet in C Minor.
Nanotechnology - Are the promises of it being the next industrial revolution being realised?
Dr Alan Smith, Associate Director of the UK Government's Micro Nanotechnology NetworkAfter the initial hype, which heralded the prospects for nanotechnology, the excitement continues. The expenditure of many governments is at an unprecedented ...
Hidden City
Composer Judith Bingham and Photographer Malcolm Crowthers debated the unique relationship between music and architecture within the Square Mile, with particular reference to the Hidden City project.
Jiuta - an explanation of traditional Japanese music
David Hughes introduces the basic features of Japanese music - instruments, context, scales and rhythms - with particular reference to the various genres that was heard during the City of London Festival.
Japanese Women in Tanka Poetry: from the 4th to the 13th Century
Hisashi Nakamura and Ria Ulleri introduced the poetic world of Tanka - an ancient form of Japanese poetry - together with slides of pieces of art which have been designed to reflect the poetry....
The future biology of happiness: lifestyle changes or recreational drugs?
We find the achievement of an inner state of happiness elusive, yet the standard of living in the developed world improves. Politics, industry, science, art, the media and religion all attempt to make our lives happier. All seem to have diminishin...
Pascal's Fire: Scientific faith and religious understanding
An event to mark the launch of Keith Ward's new publication, in which he draws on his past lectures delivered at Gresham College.
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
In 1945, the imperial possessions of Great Britain circled the globe; in 2005, there was virtually nothing left of the Empire. Why? Was Great Britain forced out by the colonial peoples themselves, was she encouraged to leave by the United States o...
Walking the Line: Preserving liberty in times of insecurity
This was the 2006 Special Lecture.
The Judges and the Constitution
Our membership of the European Union, together with the Human Rights act and devolution, have all increased the influence of judges and, so some would argue, brought them into the political arena. Some indeed have suggested that non-elected judges...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Blair
Professor The Lord GiddensResponse by Professor Vernon Bogdanor CBE FBAThis is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World. The other lectures in this series are as follows:Winston ChurchillCle...
The fragile biology of social genes and the evolution of human societies
Work with different animal species has shown that a mutation in a single gene can convert an asocial species into a social one. With a prevalence of human developmental and psychiatric conditions whose primary symptoms are social dysfunction, depr...
Social anxiety and its treatment
Anxiety is a common experience that can be a useful motivator or even life-saver in situations that are objectively dangerous. However, when the anxiety is out of proportion to the danger inherent in a given situation, is persistent and is markedl...
How can you have too much choice?
Choice is good, right? Consumer choice or voter choice - we will see how increasing choice can, paradoxically, narrow the range of possible outcomes. We will celebrate complexity in decision-making and examine some new approaches emerging to help ...
New social benefits from an old Docklands discovery
2006 marks the sesquicentenary of William Perkin's discovery of mauveine. New research on his life and hundreds of accounts of his discovery have revealed hitherto unrecognised medical motivation for his work, together with a need for better ways ...
YEA, WHY TRY HER RAW WET HAT?
It is often said that mathematics and music go together, but what does this mean? This illustrated lecture features a small choir and instrumentalists who perform music ranging from Tallis and Bach to Bartok and Hindermith, and answers such questi...
Painting the Soul: Byzantium to El Greco
Professor Robin Cormack, The Getty Research Institute and Courtauld Institute of Art The development of icons from late antiquity to the period of El Greco. Icons flourished in Constantinople as both aesthetic and functional objects serving the wh...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Thatcher
This is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World.
Before Chopin
In the age of Handel, Haydn and Mozart, what was happening in Poland? In changing political and cultural circumstances, and in an age when composers like Bach and Telemann appropriated polonaises for their own use, how did Polish composers underst...
Representation and parody from the Baroque through to the present
This lecture and concert explored the ways in which music imitates real life - often with humorous results. The concert programme included works by Biber, Scarlatti, Debussy and Strauss - Till Eulenspiegl's Merry Pranks.
'When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child and I acted as a child...'
But are modern children growing up too fast? There is increasing pressure to grow up faster as a result of our work orientated culture, educational systems, celebrity icons, entertainment and the media. Even dietary habits contribute to accelerati...
Faith in a Post-Modern World
Is there a battle between traditional and radical interpretations of Christianity? Is Christianity about political liberation? How can Christian faith be interpreted in a scientific and pluralist age?
Front line infectious disease control at Britain's borders
John Averns, Port Health Director, London Port Health Authority. The series ended with a lecture bringing us up-to-date with the current work carried out by the Corporation of London's Port Health Authority in the prevention of disease entering th...
Can maths catch criminals and bring them to justice?
Mathematical techinques lie at the heart of modern forensic methods for investigating crime and bringing the criminal to justice. Across all fields of crime detection and analysis, we encounter a rich range of applications of mathematical, statist...
Party Finance and the Constitution
Professor Vernon Bogdanor argued that 'Too high a proportion of the money funding British political parties is tainted' that 'The finance of our great political parties should not have to depend upon the vagaries of the rich' and that 'Democracy c...
The Pathology of Discovery and Conquest
This lecture examined the spread of diseases that accompanied European expansion overseas from the fifteenth century, paying particular attention to their demographic impact in Americas.
Canzonas and Easter Masses
The High Renaissance and Early Baroque periods are regarded by Poles as among the most glorious in their country's cultural history. The range of instrumental and vocal music is astonishing. So what do works by Marcin Leopolita, Adam Jarz?bski or ...
Great Britain and the Middle East
British interest in Egypt, still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, became intense during the 1880s, with the acquisition of direct control over the Suez Canal. Late in the nineteenth century, she competed with Germany for influence in the Pers...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Edward Heath
This is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World.
Fraud, bankruptcy, suicide and transportation: The history of the London Underground railway
Dr Stephen Halliday is the author of many books based on Victorian London including "The Great Stink" which has featured in several radio and TV programmes and "Underground to Everywhere: London's Underground Railway in the life of the Capital". D...
The mapping of emotion
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Professor Mary L. Phillips was unable to give this lecture. Dr Essi Viding kindly gave this lecture on her behalf.
Liberal Christianity
What was the Enlightenment, and how did the church respond to it? Is it possible to have a rational religion? Can faith survive historical criticism and philosophical scepticism?
Take my profits, please! Volatility reduction and ethics
With increasing emphasis on the social and ethical obligations of corporations, what do companies have to gain from lower profits? We will look at how more sophisticated firms incorporate volatility reduction as a key measure and how it changes th...
Health on the ocean waves: The sea-doctor afloat and in port
A lecture by Professor Allan Chapman, University of Oxford
Harmony from Diversity
The Lokahi Foundation carries out multi-faith research in religion and outreach projects for the community, public servants and other professionals. A group of distinguished speakers, including Professor Tariq Ramadam, spoke at the event.The L...
The Dutch East Indies Company - The Second 100 Years
This second lecture will focus on the VOC's second hundred years and will explain hows it slowly lost out on almost everything it had gained, to become bankrupt by the end of the 18th century - ending a remarkable period in...
Robert Hooke: Tercentennial Studies
Professor Michael Cooper, City University and Professor Michael Hunter, Birkbeck, University of London An event to mark the publication of the papers delivered at the Robert Hooke tercentennial conference covering a wide range of aspects of Hooke'...
Why do we gamble and take needless risks?
It could be said that risk taking, combined with a capacity for being motivated by failure, has allowed the human race to advance at such speed. These characteristics have made major contributions to the success of human artistic, scientific and c...
The Dutch East Indies Company - The First 100 Years
A series of two lectures.Dr Thomas Crump moved to Amsterdam in 1972 to take up an appointment in the University's Social Sciences Faculty, which...
Laurence Sterne and Joseph Haydn
An exploration of the connections between Laurence Sterne, the 18th century novelist and Joseph Haydn. There are a lot of parallels in their work - especially towards subverting expectation through unexpected twists of form, language and style, an...
Music in the Age of Copernicus
Kraków was one of Europe 's main cultural and commercial centres during the Renaissance. Who were its major musical figures and what were their roles in society? How did composers like Wacław of Szamotuły and Jan of Lublin connect to the cultural ...
Problems with schoolgirls
Block designs are used in agriculture in connection with the planting of wheat. But earlier they arose in the so-called 'schoolgirls problem'. What are block designs, what is the schoolgirls problem, and what is their connection with geometry and ...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Harold Wilson
This is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World.
Theories of everything
What do physicists mean by a 'Theory of Everything'? And what do they mean by 'Everything'? Ever since 1982 there has been a focus of attention upon 'string theories' as possible Theories of Everything. What are these theories like and what remark...
New directions for home treatment of eating disorders
Professor Janet Treasure PhD FRCP FRCPsych, Department of Academic Psychiatry
The Reformation
Why did the Western church divide in the sixteenth century? Was this a tragedy or a new opportunity for Christian belief? Has the Reformation split the church for ever?
Reforming Auditing - Incremental change or radical action?
The auditing profession claims to have been through tremendous turmoil as a result of a spate of scandals and professionals being caught off-guard, yet a few years on the profession looks remarkably similar to what it was and...
How to grow trees
Tree diagrams arise in many contexts, from family trees to chemical molecules, electrical networks, the design of canals and the bracing of frameworks. We describe these examples and others from the allied subject of graph theory, and show you how...
Impossibility: The Limits of Science
Are there limits to science? We will look first at the questions which 19th-century commentators claimed would never be answered. Then we will explore the different types of limits - practical, computational, and fundamental - that constrain what ...
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: The true story of Gulf War Syndrome
Simon Wessely is professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and director of the King's Centre for MIlitary Health Research. He is co-author of a new book, From Shell Shock to PTSD, Psychology Press, 2005.Pro...
The Referendum: Direct Democracy and the Constitution
Professor Bogdanor interviewed Lord Falconer.
Wallpaper Patterns and Buckyballs
We are all familiar with patterned wallpaper, but how many regular patterns are there? Can you tile your bathroom floor with square, hexagonal and octagonal tiles? Footballs are made up of pentagons and hexagons, but how many pentagons are there? ...
Great Britain and the other imperial powers: Conflict over China
During the nineteenth century, Great Britain fought two wars, the Opium Wars, to force China to open her doors to trade and foreign influence. She was not the only foreign power who wished to acquire trade and influence there: Germany, Russia, Fra...
Goldilocks Government and the Market: not too little, not too much, but just right
Markets are one of the greatest tools to emerge from society, yet a host of critics ranging from the opponents of globalisation through government officials and NGOs believe that markets need stricter regulation. We will examine why governments ha...
Time: A Guide for Travellers
This year is the centenary of the birth of the great logician Kurt Gödel. One of his greatest discoveries had nothing to do with mathematical logic. It was that Einstein's theory of relativity allows universes in which time travel is possible. We ...
Music, art and the brain
Arguably, the artistic achievements of humans are the most significant single feature that distinguishes us qualitatively from other species. Even Chimpanzee art is a pale imitation of what a human child can produce without significant external mo...
The Triumph of Christendom
Is the medieval church a child of the Roman Empire? Why did sin and atonement come to play so large a part in medieval theology? How did secular power change the church?
Hunger and satiety in the 21st century
Iain Campbell, Professor of Neurochemistry and the Biology of Eating
The Dictionary Garret - Anatomy of a Room
The garret at No 17 Gough Square was the nerve centre of the house during Samuel Johnson's residence, and here the greatest work of reference of the 18th century took shape.Johnson's Dictionary (1755) gives the room its historic resonance, but...
How to be Happy
Raj Persaud suggests that sustained happiness at the personal level is not going to be achieved by many solutions proposed by social scientists, the media and politicians, instead happiness has more to do with personal adjustment and attitude - in...
The formation of Christian doctrine
How were the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity formed? Are such doctrines a takeover of the primitive faith by Greek philosophy? Or are they part of the original teachings of the church?
Curious Eyes and Steady Hands - Anatomists in Georgian London
Simon Chaplin, Senior Curator, Museums of the Royal College of Surgeons of EnglandThe late 18th century has been characterised as an age of body-...
Mazurkas and Christmas Lullabies
The tradition of the East-Central European carol is long and distinguished, if barely appreciated elsewhere. What are its characteristics, its relationships to different religious denominations, folk cultures and poetry?
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Macmillan
This is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World.
Modernising Parliament: Reform of the House of Lords
Many regard the un elected House of Lords as an anachronism, and there has been much talk of reform. In 1999, all but 92 of the hereditary peers were removed from the lords, which now consists primarily of nominated peers. Since then, it has been ...
Imperial Rivalry with the Russian Empire
During the nineteenth century, Great Britain and Russia engaged in what was termed the 'Great Game', which were confrontations in Central Asia and particularly on the north-west frontier of India. At the same time, they confronted each other over ...
The face of Charles Dickens - portraits of the great author
Charles Dickens was drawn, painted and photographed more than most of his contemporaries. Great Victorian artist's such as William Powell Frith RA and even the famous US photographers Gurney and Son captured his famous...
Depression: Reality and Myth
Professor Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS, Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine, University College London Professor Raj Persaud Chaired by Professor Frank Cox, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, past Gresham Professor of Physic
Architectural Capricci
William Palin, Assistant Curator, Sir John Soane's MuseumAn exploration of the long and fascinating tradition of...
Who invented the calculus? - and other 17th century topics
The development of the calculus brought together two seemingly unrelated problems: how do things change, and how large are they? We develop the story from the early days of logarithms in Gresham College, to Newton's work on gravitation and the cal...
The beginnings: a Jewish Messianic sect
Can we know what Jesus was really like? What did the apostles believe? What does modern historical research reveal about Jesus?
Perceptions rather than rules: the (mis)behaviour of markets
Why do we seem to face 1 in 300 year events every three years? Unlike many physical systems, markets exhibit strange, non-normal statistical distributions. We will consider the complex inter-relationships between perceived risk and society's decis...
Does attractiveness rule the world?
Babies only a few months old already spend more time looking at attractive faces compared to the unattractive, suggesting we could be genetically or biologically programmed to appreciate beauty and respond to it. But why should this be if, as many...
Irony in music from the Soviet Union
This lecture concert explored how irony was used in music as a subversive commentary about the Soviet state. This is a complex subject and can be observed on many levels in the music including ones which are purely musical. The concert programme i...
History from Below: Mathematics, Instruments and Archaeology
In recent decades, archaeologists working on sites such as the Mary Rose have recovered a range of simple mathematical instruments.Compared to typical museum artefacts, they are relatively humble wooden devices. Yet they shed important lig...
St Stanislaus and Student Revelries
Exploring the repertoire and historical context of Polish music from the establishment of Christianity in Poland in 996 up to the close of the 15th century.
Travels in Time: History and identity in today's world
THE COLIN MATTHEW LECTURE FOR THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORYThis is the 2005 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture. The other joint lectures can be accessed here: 2012 -...
The Lisbon Earthquake: Two hundred and fifty years on
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood KT FBA - Provost of Gresham College On 1 November 1755 Lisbon was devastated by a massive earthquake. The reverberations went far beyond the loss of thirty thousand lives, and the religious doubts and counter-affirmati...
The left, right and centre of male and female brain politics
The two sides of our brain are not functionally equivalent and although this has often been considered to be a human evolutionary trait associated with the development of language, it is clear that this asymmetrical nature of brain function can be...
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Attlee
The sound on this lecture is of a very low quality.We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Who invented the equals sign?
With the invention of printing, mathematical writings became widely available for the first time. What influence did this have? We discuss this question in the context of 16th-century navigation and astronomy, the solving of equations, and some br...
A Physicist looks at Sport
Whether or not Londoners will be watching the next Olympic Games on TV or in a stadium just a few Tube stops away, what is going on in sports of speed, balance, strength, and rotational movement? Why do different sports use such strange scoring sy...
The Reform of Parliament and the Crisis of Political Participation
The House of Commons is, as the popularly elected chamber, by far the stronger of the two houses of Parliament. Yet many argue that the Commons has become ineffective as a check upon government. What has been the impact of recent reforms of the Co...
Heading for Trouble: The perils of navigation
This lecture was a part of the SeaBritrain2005 series of events, which celebrated the ways in which the sea touches all of our lives.
Reflections on Secret Intelligence
Sir David Omand KCB, Former Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, The Cabinet OfficeChairman: Jack Wigglesworth, Chairman, The Gresham Society....
Our Marble Tribute
Between 1795 and 1815, the British Government spent an amazing £110,575 on thirty-three marble monuments to the heroes of the wars against Napoleonic France. These now people the aisles, crypt and walls of St Paul¹s Cathedral, and visitors pass th...
Einstein and the Universe
In 1915 Albert Einstein produced a theory of gravity that allows us to describe whole universes. What is that theory, how does it work, why do we take it seriously, and what are these universes that it predicts can exist? We will look at some of t...
The perverse and the reverse: how bad measures skew markets
Can any market be said to fail? Without clear measures for buyers, sellers or investors, markets function poorly. Markets are made to measure. Through an examination of measurement failures, we will explore the importance of defining the 'correct'...
Franklin and the North West Passage
Visit www.seabritain2005.com for information on festivities and events throughout 2005 and beyond. SeaBritrain2005 celebrates the ways in which the sea touches all of our lives.
The Mariners' Instruments
Visit www.seabritain2005.com for information on festivities and events throughout 2005 and beyond. SeaBritrain2005 celebrates the ways in which the sea touches all of our lives.
India: The Jewel in the Crown
The loss of the American colonies in 1783 deprived Great Britain of what was seen as the jewel of the Empire, and heralded the end of the First British Empire. But India soon came to replace North America as the jewel. This lecture will look at th...
How vital is motivation in our lives?
Raj Persaud uses examples of extraordinary success to discuss what forces are at work to help the apparent lucky few attain what the rest of us desire. Theories around luck, internal or external forces beyond or within our control and the relative...
Music in History
How well served is music in general and cultural histories, especially in those publications devoted to particular periods or countries? Are historians more wary of music than of other art forms? If so, what strategies can interested parties devel...
Who invented algebra?
Arabic mathematicians embraced the mathematics of Ancient Greece and India. What did they do, and how did their achievements influence Europe in the Middle Ages? We trace the story up to the establishment of universities, the development of perspe...
Atlantic Navigators: The Brendan Voyage
A first-hand account of a harrowing voyage from the south-west coast of Ireland across the North Atlantic in a small open boat skinned with ox hides. Tim Severin and his companions set out to test whether the legendary voyage of...
The Susskind Interviews: Legal experts in changing times
A special event marking the launch of a book containing Professor Susskind's interviews at Gresham College with eminent legal figures, including the Lord Chief Justice, three Lord Chancellors and the Senior Law Lord.
Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World - Winston Churchill
This is a part of the series Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World.
Globalisation, Investments and International Accounting Standards
Professor Sir David TweedieChairman, International Accounting Standards BoardIntroduction by Lord Sutherland of Houndwood KT FBAProvost of...
Playing with the language of music
The pre-concert talk provides an overview to the series and show what the different parameters of music are - pitch, rhythm, structure, texture, harmony, dynamics and how they can be used in a humorous way. The concert programme includes pieces by...
Alternative Electoral Systems
In 1918, one commentator claimed that there were over 300 alternative electoral systems in existence. Human ingenuity being what it is, there are probably many more today. What are the main types? What would be the likely consequences of changing ...
Danish Fairy Tales? From Andersen and the Copenhagen consensus towards a theory of commerce
What are markets and why do they matter? What would a grand unified theory of markets look like? Given intense criticism of liberal capitalism, we will consider how to frame a theory of commerce and ask, "who is wearing the Emperor's new clothes?"
Philosophy of Religion
This event celebrated the publication of Professor Griffith-Dickson's new book, 'Philosophy of Religion'
The Planets
Dava Sobel is the author of 'Longitude', a prize-winning international bestseller, and 'Galileo's Daughter', which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize....
Regulatory capture
As societies shift from government ownership of major services, such as transport and health, to government regulation, they can swap one failure for another. Regulators, for example, risk being captured by those they are supposed to be regulating...
History of Sport in London
The idea for a lecture about the history of sport in London came about with the news that London was making a bid to hold the Olympic Games in 2012. It has always been believed that the only city in this country to have a chance of hosting the gam...
Should We Trust The Scientists?
The 2005 Gresham Special Lecture was given at The Great Hall, Guildhall, delivered by Professor The Lord Winston.Introduced by: Lord Sutherland of Houndwood KT, Provost, Gresham College
The Enhanced Analytics Initiative
Research units of investment banks could be forgiven for thinking the world is an unfriendly place! First there was Elliot Spitzer, the reputational crisis and legal fines. Now there is an inexorable drift to unbundling. Even the SEC Chairman, Wil...
So just how does a brain work and can we design machines the same way?
Understanding how the brain functions may well qualify as the most difficult single problem that mankind will ever encounter. Some would consider that it is a logical impossibility for a brain to understand its own workings.However, the huge t...
Mozart, Gluck and the Reform of 18th Century Opera
Roderick Swanston, Writer and Broadcaster An introduction to the furious world of opera reform in the 18th century. Were Mozart and Gluck on the same side?
Why learn a language?
With English emerging as the main world language, studying foreign languages might seem to be less important today. However, 60% of trade is with non-English speaking countries and other languages, such as Spanish, are catching up on the Internet....
Micro-credit
Micro-credit - the commercial lending of small amounts of money to those who would otherwise not have access to credit - seems such a worthy idea and the oft-cited example of the Grameen Bank excites many. However, there are precious few other exa...
Britain and Germany: from ally to enemy
As France was the traditional enemy, Germany was the traditional ally, a relationship tightened by royal links. Then, in the late nineteenth century, Germany demanded 'a place in the sun'?, which required colonies and a navy larger than Britain's....
Cultural change and consumerism: contemporary churchgoing in perspective
The means and modes, by which religion can reflect culture, and culture religion, are myriad and multifarious. It is never easy to say at what point culture has appropriated religion, and at what point religion has consumed culture, and then begun...
'Gods of Commerce and Theives': Perceptions of Jews, Crime and Business in London
Some of the most nefarious anti-Semitic stereotypes are deeply embedded in English culture with Shakespeare's Shylock and Dickens' Fagin two of the best known. There exists, however, a wide spectrum of "Jewish types" associated with business in L...
Science and the human person
Has modern science rendered body/mind dualism obsolete? Is there any place for speaking of the soul? How do modern views of the brain impinge on the religious beliefs about the unique dignity of human persons and the religious hope for immortality?
Islam and acceptable trading
Ali Kazimi is the Head of Investment Tax Services, Barclays Global InvestorsThe next lecture in the series is 'Gods of Commerce and...
Creating new species: the future of man and his dominion over other animals
My lectures have shown that while most human behaviours are similar to those of other species our superior capacities for consciousness and self awareness have given us the intellect and power to exert dominion over them.For many humans, relat...
The Grand Tour of Europe
The British relationship with Europe was not solely about war: it was also about culture, and social polish. In the period before the invention of the railways, travel for pleasure was largely the province of the wealthy. Most people travelled to ...
Religion in the City: Christian Philanthropy and the City 1830-1850
Religion in the City: Christian Philanthropy and the City 1830-1850 Revd Dr Stephen Orchard, Principal, Westminster College, Cambridge Next lecture in the series is Islam and Acceptable Trading
The influence of Schoenberg
The influence of Schoenberg * Strauss - Schatzwalzer "Zigeunerbaron" arr. Webern * Strauss - Wein, Weib und Gesang arr. Berg * Strauss - Rosen aus dem Suden arr. Schoenberg * Strauss - Lagunenwalzer arr. Schoenberg
Lutoslawski
Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society and premiered in London by Rostropovich in 1970. This lecture explores the compositional process and performance history through the sketches, concepts of musical dram...
How to stay sane despite your teachers and parents
Psychology is becoming increasingly popular as a course of study for A-level. Raj Persaud, a practising psychologist and psychiatrist, as well as a well-known journalist and radio and TV broadcaster, examined some of the facts.
At war with the French: Louis XIV and Napoleon
Both Louis XIV in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and Napoleon in the nineteenth made France the most powerful country on the Continent. Indeed, Napoleon can be considered the first man since Charlemagne in the ninth century to have...
How hard is a hard problem?
How can we distinguish between 'easy problems' and 'hard problems'? In this lecture I shall explain what is meant by an 'algorithm', and present some celebrated algorithms that can be used to solve a range of practical problems. I then investigate...
Religion and the quantum world
Does quantum physics offer confirmation of some religious or spiritual views? Or is this a misuse of quantum theory?
Infinity and beyond
* We look at the different conceptions of 'infinity' that exist in mathematics, science and philosophy. * We ask whether it is possible for physical infinities to arise in the universe and whether a machine could ever complete an infinite number o...
Public services, private finance: good or bad?
What are the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) that governments all over the world are parading as solutions to the troubles of financing public services? * Is PPP a solution to the London Underground? * Are t...
How does a new opera take flight?
Edward Hughes and artists from The Opera Group and I Fagiolini The creative team behind The Birds gave an entertaining introduction to developing an opera for the City London Festival - from the initial draft to the singers' struggle to learn the ...
Some London heroes of science and technology
GRESHAM IN THE CITY' LECTURE London has been a magnet for scientists and inventors since the seventeenth century. Adam Hart-Davis tells the tales of a few of his favourites, both famous and forgotten, with the help of lantern slides and perhaps a ...
Book Launch: The Infinite Book
A short guide to the boundless, timeless and endlessby John D Barrow FRS...
Janacek
A discussion with the Janácek scholar Professor John Tyrrell (Cardiff University).In the last eight years of his life, Janácek wrote four operas and other major works in a seemingly effortless manner. This fecundity, however, disguises many st...
Religion, ethics and evolutionary psychology
Does evolutionary psychology (socio-biology) explain the basis of morality, or undermine it? This lecture considered altruism and the 'selfish gene', and looked at competing theories of natural selection and of 'directionality' in evolution.
Modern music and performance practice
* Modern music and performance practice * Berg - Lyric Suite (Perle) with Soprano * Schoenberg - Second String Quartet with Soprano
Addicted to love, beauty or sex?
On Valentine's Day it is appropriate to consider whether humans, and perhaps at least some other species, are so addicted to love that they cannot exist without it. * Is love really like an addictive drug? * What are the features that define perce...
The celestial geometry of John Flamsteed: Mapping the heavens from 17th century Greenwich
During his 46 years as Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed elevated the mapping of the heavens to an entirely new level. His practical geometry, and his development of mathematical instruments that worked to a new standard of accuracy, meant that his...
At war with the French: the Hundred Years
At the outset, the English Crown ruled over tracts of territory in what is now France. By means of the Hundred Years' War from 1337 to 1453, the French essentially expelled Britain from the Continent.Two of the most famous battles were Crécy i...
Prime-time mathematics
Prime numbers form the building blocks of arithmetic. But if we make a list of them, many questions arise. Pairs of primes differing by 2 (such as 5 and 7, or 101 and 103) seem to occur 'all the way up', but there can also be huge gaps between suc...
Astronomy - Much ado about nothing
The conception of 'nothing' has played a crucial role in the development of logic, mathematics, physics, philosophy and theology. This lecture looked at how these currents have led to the modern picture of the 'vacuum' in quantum physics and how i...
The Human Rights Act: Cornerstone of a New Constitution
The Human Rights Act of 1998 gives us, in effect, a Bill of Rights. * But what is a Bill of Rights and how is it likely to operate in practice? * Is it likely to lead to a conflict between the judges interpreting our rights and Parli...
Ethics in finance
At the heart of the recent spate of financial scandals from Enron to Parmalat lies a yawning deficit in the ethical behaviour of bankers - so say some. Others argue that there is no role for ethics in finance beyond the requirements of the law. * ...
Life and the universe
An exploration of the ways in which the Universe's structure is connected to the evolution of life within it. * We will look at the unusual properties of the Earth and the solar system that have been important factors in the evolution of terrestri...
Aggression: the biology of war and peace
Aggression lies at the heart of biological competition but its consequence in both human and animal societies can be self-destructive and a threat to social stability.Do other social species declare war on each other and can we learn anything ...
In the beginning: the Roman, the Viking and the Norman Conquests
As an island people, the inhabitants of Britain were repeatedly subject to invasions from the Continent, at least until they had a powerful navy of their own. Although most historians consider that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was also a succes...
The Limits of Science
Are there any limits to scientific explanation? Are there irreducibly different forms of explanation?
The Artful Universe
A look at art and science in which we explore the aesthetics of fractals, the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock, musical appreciation, the biological basis of landscape appreciation and some contrasts between art and science.
Beagle 2 and Beyond
One year on from the launch of Beagle 2, former Gresham Professor Colin Pillinger talks about the developments that have taken place.
Can a country take out financial insurance against macro-risks like currency instability or global terrorism?
Many countries are vulnerable to external shocks such as a spike in oil prices, a drop in a competitor's currency or a collapse in world-wide tourism following a terrorist attack somewhere else. * Can governments hedge their economies against thes...
Europe and the old Constitution
* How has our membership of the European Union affected our constitution? * The European Union has been drawing up its own constitution and the Prime Minister has promised to call a referendum on it before ratifying it. * What is the relationship ...
Is suicide sane? To be or not to be, that is the question
To be or not to be, that is the question. The world's number one suicide spot is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco where, since its building, debate has raged as to whether an anti-suicide fence should be put up to restrain jumpers. The deba...
What is the future of mutuals now?
Daniel Hodson, former Gresham Professor of Commerce with Anthony Hilton, Financial Editor, London Evening Standard and Philip Williamson, Chief Executive, Nationwide Building Society. Why did mutuals occur and what purposes did/do they serve? Some...
The Composer Virtuoso - Liszt's Transcendental Studies
A discussion with Professor Jim Samson (Royal Holloway, University of London), author of the award-winning Virtuosity and the Musical Work. Why did Liszt compose three different versions of this monumental piano work, and what can we learn about 1...
Much ado about zero
The concept of zero developed in many cultures over thousands of years. Why did such a 'natural' idea take so long? This lecture illustrated the wide-ranging mathematical achievements of China, India and Central America over a thousand-year period...
Cosmology and creation
Has quantum cosmology made God redundant? Does religion have anything to add to scientific cosmology?
Maths, risk and careers in the City
This talk gave an insight into how the mathematics we learn at school and college is applied in a practical way in careers, especially in the world of finance, and looked at some of the opportunities open to mathematics students.
Diet and obesity: manna from the Gods or the food of destruction?
Obesity has shifted from being a rare symbol of decadence and riches to a widespread problem of ignorance, poverty and economic exploitation. New prospective wonder diets are today's front-page news. How much of the problem is down to genetic pred...
Two thousand years of London Bridge
The fascinating story of all the bridges that have been London Bridge through the last two thousand years, from the Roman Bridge, and Peter de Colechurch's famous bridge with the houses, through Sir John Rennie's nineteenth century bridge, now in ...
Presenting Unwanted Histories: The project to establish the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum
Dr Gareth Griffiths, Director of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol.This is the 2004 Joint Royal Historical Society/Gresham College Annual Lecture.
The once and future universe
* What is the long-term future of the universe? * Will it continue for ever or come to an end? * What is the fate of all the planets and stars that it contains? * Will the universe undergo a 'heat death' that nothing can survive? * And what is the...
Chopin in the hands of others
Composers and their compositions are prey to all manner of treatment once they have become public property. Taking Chopin as a particular example, this lecture explores the role of published editions and performance practice from Godowsky to the J...
Here's looking at Euclid
It is often argued that mathematics as we know it today originated in Greece, and names such as Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes are certainly part of our culture. But Archimedes did much more than run naked through the streets shouting Eureka! S...
The old Constitution under strain
The years since 1997 have seen very radical constitutional reforms - for exampledevolution freedom of information legislationthe Human Rights Act. Why has this been so and what are likely to be the effects of the reforms?
Coffee Shop Society in 17th century London
Dr Stephen Inwood lectures at New York University in London. His books include A History of London and The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Inventive Life of Robert Hooke 1635 - 1703.Coffee shops were the intellectual hub of Stuart and Hanoveria...
What the universe is made of
Three simple principles enable us to understand the whole range of structures that we see in the universe. 1. We will consider the importance of 'size' in determining what can happen to a piece of matter in the universe and whether it can come ali...
Are we all deluded now?
The nature of belief and how we lost contact with reality Modern psychiatry has defined delusion as the insistent belief in the palpably untrue - this definition is essential to the whole mental health industry as it underpins our notion of what i...
Religion and the scientific world view
Is there a 'scientific world view'? At what points might such a thing have implications for religious believing?
The Musical and Cultural Background to the Second Viennese School
The musical and cultural background to the Second Viennese School: * Berg - Piano Sonata Op 1 * Webern - Two Pieces for Cello and Piano * Berg - Seven Early Songs * Webern- Four Pieces Op 7 for Violin and Piano * Schoenberg- Verklaerte Nacht for P...
Disease and Death in Late Stuart London
A specialist in British and European History, Maureen Waller's books includeUngrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown and1700: Scenes from London Life.
The History of the Big Bang
What is the Big Bang, who came up with idea and why do we believe in it? Simon Singh told the story of the Big Bang theory, from its birth in the 1920s to the observational evidence that backed it and then clinched it. As well as discovering the d...
The Jacobean Space Programme - Wings, springs and gunpowder: flying to the moon from 17th century England
An expert in the history of science, Allan Chapman is a past Visiting Gresham Professor and has appeared in numerous television programmes. His books include Gods in the Sky: Astronomy from the Ancients to the Enlightenment and The Victorian Amate...
When currency empires fall
Throughout financial history, there has been a tendency for one currency standard to dominate the world. * What will bring about the end of the dollar's current hegemony in finance? * What will the consequences be for the US and the rest of the wo...
Stress, anxiety and depression (SAD)
These are powerful forces for promoting positive adaptive behavioural changes which have important survival benefits and cannot be ignored. However, when change is not an option they become self-destructive, reducing quality of life and social coh...
Keep taking the tablets
Many thousands of surviving mathematical clay tablets provide much information about Mesopotamian mathematics - but what mathematics did they do, and why is it relevant to us today? In contrast, although the Egyptian pyramids provide us with an im...
London 1616: a snapshot of London early in James 1's reign
This talk was given by Dr Ann Saunders, a leading London historian. Publications include John Bacon RA and Regent's Park. Dr Saunders is Honorary Editor to the London Topographical Society.
Confronting the terrorist mind: explaining the repeated failure of intelligence
Modern police forces and governments frequently claim victories in the war against terrorism when a bomb plot is supposedly averted. But this belies a mistaken belief that terrorism is aimed at killing or mutilating indiscriminately. Actually the ...
How should International Financial Service Companies be Regulated?
The Sir Thomas Gresham City LectureIntroduction by Lord Sutherland of Houndwood KT FBA PRSE, Provost of Gresham CollegeChairman: Professor Avinash PersaudLecture delivered by Callum McCarthy, Chairman, The Financial Services Author...
Hawaiian Religion and Dance
Chinky Mahoe is one of Hawaii's leading 'Kumu' or 'sources' (teacher, leader) in dance, music and culture. Discussions on his perspectives on religious faith and Hawaiian culture, with particular reference to relations between Christianity and Haw...
Deconstructing Figaro
Ian Page takes us through the opening act of Pierre Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro and explores the character of 'Figaro'.
Better programming
This series of Geometry Lectures looked at all aspects of computer science, from how it works, how we can teach it better, what the exciting issues are, and what the future research questions should be. We've explored some very exciting areas, and...
Beyond difference
Indian philosopher Professor Arindam Chakrabarti and Gwen Griffith-Dickson in creative dialogue, jumping across differences in religion, culture, philosophical upbringing, race, gender...
A Conversation with Professor Vernon Bogdanor
Richard Suskind continues his conversations with some of the greatest legak minds in the country. This lecture he meets his successor as Greshma Professor of Law, and they talk about recent developments in law like the Freedom of Information Act, ...
A Conversation with Lord Falconer
Gresham Professor of law, Richard Susskind welcomes some of the finest legal minds to Barnards Inn Hall for an intimate discussionon a wide variety of topics. Each lecture is a unique insight into the mechanincs and philosophy that run underneath...
Turning back the hands of time: ageing gracefully!
In this lecture I will outline some of the explanations of why we age, what effects the ageing process has on our mental and physical functions and where we might find some solutions to either ageing less perceptibly or with increased grace!
The Pope's divisions
Gresham Professor of Music Adrian Thomas explores the relationship between music and religion in Eastern Europe between the late 1940's and today.
Biological clocks: Human and animal concepts of time
Professor Keith Kendrick dicusses the relationship between human and animal biological clocks.
What is a black hole?
The history of the black hole from the eighteenth century onwards. What is a black hole? Is it a solid body? Why black holes are the simplest objects in the universe. Black holes are black bodies: they obey the laws of aerodynamics. Do black holes...
The cultural politics of war, peace and sacrifice
Professor Adrian Thomas looks into how the culture of a society can influence its politics.
Medicine in London, 1600 to 1900 - Dr William Harvey and the seventeenth-century medical revolution
To sleep, perchance to dream: Why do we and other animals sleep?
Sleep seems to be a universal imperative for all animal species, a fact that has been accepted by mankind for two and a half thousand years!
Can we understand one another?
Whether in academic writing or broadsheet journalism, we tend to see two different stances taken on the question of multicultural or multifaith understanding. One is the universalist tendency, that says that people are the same all over the world,...
Mathematics in the Metropolis: A survey of Victorian London
The Victorian period was a time of massive change for London, not least in the development and availability for university-level mathematics. This talk investigates the changes that took place, highlighting some of the famous mathematicians involv...
The American Revolution 1763 - 1783: Separation and Divorce
How, in the few years from 1763 to 1775, did many American colonists go from feeling themselves to be free-born Englishmen to declaring independence? Why did the Americans win?
The Nature of Financial Risk
Innovations in the financial world have led to the slicing up, repackaging and selling of risks. Does this spread risks better, or just move then around? When companies go bust, it is not the bankers who suffer, but the pensioners. Is this a bette...
Is everything that happens God
A panel discussion of representatives from different faiths will tease out the implications of tragic events for God's goodness and God's power.
Seadogs, Religion and Wars
An overview of the early history of colonial North America: from French Canada to Spanish Florida, and everything in between.
'The Poor are always with you': A sideways view of London
Part of the Mondays at One lecture series, 'London: A Nation not a City' - Four Contemporary Views of London.
The forgotten Englishman in Carmen
A re-evaluation of a pantomine scene printed in the first vocal score but later dropped. New material has revealed its subject: a comic scene which parodies various characteristics typical of an ageing Englishman. A recording of the scene will be ...
Docklands: The extension of London's financial centre
Part of the Mondays at One lecture series, 'London: A Nation not a City' - Four Contemporary Views of London.
The Life and Times of Wilfred Owen
The Great War' shaped the 20th century, led directly to the Second World War, and continues to fascinate and intrigue successive generations.But why did so much poetry derive from it, unlike successive conflicts? This talk, aimed at students o...
The Square Mile: The City's historic position within London government and its influence on the modern state of the capital
Part of the Mondays at One lecture series, 'London: A Nation not a City' - Four Contemporary Views of London.
The Multidisiplinary Nature of Creativity
Professor Dimitrios A Sotiropoulis, University of Texas
Greater London is...
Part of the Mondays at One lecture series, 'London: A Nation not a City' - Four Contemporary Views of London.
Magic Pictures
Professor Harold Thimbleby looks at the way images can be distorted or altered by the way our brain interprets them.
Why is the Universe so big?
Professor John D Barrow asks the age-old question: "Why is the universe so big?"
Math Circle: Tiling a Patio
The infinite shows up everywhere: not just in the counting numbers and the riddle of the primes, but in plane and geometric shapes not to mention figures in higher dimensions. Robert and Ellen Kaplan unlock the daunting mysteries of maths, showing...
Talking with Beasts: Human and animal languages
The development of language could be conveniently postulated as being responsible for driving both our significant increase in brain size (three times larger than that of our nearest current relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos) and with it all t...
Finishing the Unfinished: Completing Mozart
In November 2003, at the newly restored Hackney Empire, the Classical Opera Company presented the world premiere of its new completed version of Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide.In this seminar, the company's conductor and artistic director, Ia...
Did the universe have a beginning?
If not, how has it gone through one infinity of years and another of days? What prevented it from beginning sooner? If it had a sufficient cause, how could that cause delay its effect?
Your questions answered... and your answers questioned! Part 2
Professor Frank Close attempts to answer your questions on everything cosmic from whether time travel is possible in the future? to simply asking what is time itself?
Your questions answered... and your answers questioned! Part 1
Professor Frank Close attempts to answer your questions on everything cosmic from whether time travel is possible in the future? to simply asking what is time itself?
Design by Symmetry
Symmetric things are often more attractive. Symmetry is also a geometric idea: things may have reflection symmetry or rotational symmetry, and so on. What better way to end this series of Geometry lectures on design than by showing how the design ...
Socially Responsible Investment
Will the growth of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) support capital flows to emerging markets or hinder them?
"Knowing you, knowing me": can other animals have an identity crisis?
Success in achieving a true sense of identity of self in relation to the world might engender feelings of individual worth and purpose in humans but is this true of other species? Establishing that other species have self-awareness has proved a di...
Essential Skills for the workplace
Mr Chris Humphries CBE is the Director General of the City and Guilds Institute.This lecture is a part of the 'Job changes in the 21st century' series. This series of lectures will look at major changes likely to take place in the workplace in...
Designing Anything: From Lego to Maths
Inside every complex gadget is a programming language. How are programming languages designed, and how should they be designed? What are the common design problems? A look at a range of programming languages: the language of Lego, the extraordinar...
Managing a 21st Century Career
Julie Hope is from the Career Resource Centre at City University Business School.This lecture is a part of the 'Job changes for the 21st century' series. This series of lectures will look at major changes likely to take place in the workplace ...
Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom
Not only are the conceptions of divine knowledge and wisdom diverse; they have a wide ranging impact on how we view humanity, especially human freedom in relation to our future. If God knows in advance what I will do, does that mean that I am no l...
How far can technology go in the workplace?
John C Carrington is the Deputy Master of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. This lecture is a part of the 'Job changes in the 21st century' series. This series of lectures will look at major changes likely to take place in the w...
A single global financial market
In the end, will there be a single global financial market? Where will it be, who will regulate it and what will be the wider consequences for investment, capital flows and economic growth?
"Getting to know you": how do animals recognise each other and us?
For social animals one of the major skills that must be learned is how to recognise important individuals in their social environment. An examination of the capacities for different species to recognise each other by scent, sound or sight, with fo...
Designing for Humans
Previous lectures looked at the inside of gadgets, but this is less than half the story. When we use complex systems we often fall into traps; we acquire beliefs about what is achievable and act on them. Often we don't know we have these beliefs...
Divine Power
If a divine being exists, is it all-powerful? Does this mean it can do everything? We will explore differing conceptions of power within as well as across religions.
A Conversation with Lady Justice Elizabeth Butler-Sloss
Richard Susskind welcomes Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. She was the first female Lord Justice of Appeal and, until 2004, was the highest-ranking female judge in the United Kingdom. Until June 2007, she chaired the inquests into the deaths of D...
What about the children?
A look at initiatives to develop the art music and performance of the next generation. A discussion on the work of the Society for the Promotion of New Music (spnm) will be followed by live performance by school groups participating in CHAMBER MUS...
Concert: The Schubert Ensemble of London
The Schubert Ensemble is known for classic piano/string and modern British works, the latter a repertoire that the Ensemble has done much to create through commission-ing in its distinguished history. The Ensemble pioneered the unique project CHAM...
The Concert of the Future
In his book Art Matters, John Tusa has outlined a go-ahead vision of the future concert, enlivened by video and other attributes of the entertainment world. This session will explore this and other models of our concert-hall future if it has a fut...
Animal senses: how do they perceive the world and what important things can they sense that we cannot?
The way the world is perceived by any species is dependent upon how sense organs and the nervous system interpret cues. The same world can appear very differently to other species. We will consider how the world is experienced by other animal spec...
Does God 'Act'?
Does God act in our world or is that too anthropo-morphic and simplistic an idea? Is the deepest reality something that acts and intervenes in human affairs?
Re-engineering EMU
The Maastricht convergence criteria and the Growth and Stability Pack were designed to win the support of Germany for European Monetary Union. Now EMU has arrived, these institutions are an obstacle to its success. How should they be reformed and ...
Science Fiction or Science Fact?
Some of the ideas coming from modern science sound more like science fiction than science fact. This talk will present some examples and discuss which are more or less likely to be true.
The First Three Minutes
How did the matter in the universe first emerge? And why does it have the form that it does? This talk will describe some of the fortunate circumstances that have enabled life to emerge.
'Creator' (or not?)
The three great Semitic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all maintain that God created the universe. The great Indic religions, which hold a more ambivalent view of the material world, take a different stance on the relationship betwe...
Is having a good parent more important than having good genes?
Is having a good parent more important than having good genes? Raising offspring is normally far more demanding than producing them. We will examine factors that control parental behaviours in animals and how parents can have profound influences o...
The folly of Value-at-Risk
The spread of the Value-At-Risk approach to risk management to banks, fund managers and insurance companies is creating financial risk.
Designing Mobile Phones
Pressing buttons on a mobile phone chooses various functions, as if the phone's functions are controlled by a code. Mobile phones are difficult to use almost entirely because their code is difficult to use. We can design a new code systematically,...
Is there a continuous self? Buddhism and its Indian opponents
Are the Indian views incomparable with Western ones? Can we aspire to recognise that the only true self is very different from anything we supposed?Professor Sorabji will discuss these issues with Dr Ram Prasad, University of Lancaster.
Attitudes to Ageing: Prevention
This event was a part of the Attitudes to Ageing lecture series.
A Conversation with Lord Goldsmith
Professor Richard Susskind, Gresham Professor of Law, welcomes Britain's top lawyers, judges and politicians into Barnards Inn Hall. Together they examine the current legal climate, the future of the legal profession and the unique insights they h...
Thomas Hirst (1887): Ah, why was Newton ever born?
Thomas Hirst (1830-1892) recounts the period of mathematical history through which he lived.
Edmond Halley (1727): On the Shoulders of Giants
Edmond Halley presents a lecture about his friend, Sir Isaac Newton.This is a part of the 1,000 Years of Mathematics Study day. Other lectures include...
Attitudes to Ageing: Housing
This event was a part of the Attitudes to Ageing lecture series.
1302 and All That: Papal Bulldozers through Seven Centuries
The Bull Unam Sanctam, issued on 18 November 1302 by Boniface VIII, subjected temporal to spiritual power and declared the Pope's authority over the world. Leo XIII, who died one hundred years ago, issued the Bull Apostolicae Curae (13 September 1...
Where have all the financial risks gone?
Banks have repackaged and sold on their risks - who has them now? Who will be the victims of the next financial crisis?
Just War: Ancient influence on Islam and on the Spanish Conquistadors
The study of justice in war is ancient in India, Judaism, Greece, Rome, Christianity and Islam, and it is important to bear those traditions in mind at the present time. Tracing the influence of Genesis, of Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero and the Ro...
The Concert of the Present
Today's festival director has gone from administrator to creator; impresarii are as involved as their artistes in developing individual events. A leading festival director will discuss what is wrong, and what is right, with the modern concert prem...
Attitudes to Ageing: Health
This event was a part of the Attitudes to Ageing lecture series.
Sexual conflict and the emergence of sexual equality and monogamy
In many species that have adopted promiscuous repro-ductive strategies, competition between male and female to promote specific genes has led to remarkable adaptive processes with each sex battling to gain ascendancy. To what extent have such conf...
Supreme Being or Beyond Being?
The second most crucial - and divisive - question across faiths is whether divinity is a personal entity or an impersonal reality. Is God a personal reality with whom we can form a relationship? Or is ultimate reality something which transcends th...
The Concert of the Past
This talk addresses the related question of what constitutes a work's identity. Does music reside within score or performance - in its body or its soul? If in the score, as modern 'authenticity' traditions suggest, is interpretation defunct? It is...
Music or The Vocabulary of Music
This year's keynote talk explores the distinction between music itself and its surface vocabulary. Is there such a thing as music? Are some musical styles more, and some less, substantial? If so, is contemporary music any more than an amalgam of s...
Designing Microwave Cookers
Children can use gadgets faster than adults. What does this say about the design of gadgets? This lecture looks at microwave cookers. Instead of children helping us design better gadgets, we could use animal testings, perhaps monkeys pressing butt...
Four Colours Suffice?
How many colours are needed to colour a map so that neighbouring countries are coloured differently? At first it seems that for very complicated maps, many colours are needed, but surprisingly four colours suffice for all maps - a fact that took o...
Maps, Maidens and Molecules
How many colours are needed to colour a map? What was the 15 schoolgirl's problem? How many alcohols and paraffins are there? This talk visits the fascinating world of Victorian mathematics and the contributions to it by eccentric lawyers, academi...
The Computer Science of Everyday Things
Moore's Law predicts substantial, sustained improvement in computing power. Yet while the technology gets better and better, the usability of 'everyday things' is low (video recorders being a notorious example). Obsolescence, a symptom of Moore's ...
HERA - Queen of the Electron Microscopes
Are quarks the ultimate seeds of matter or is there a deeper layer of the Cosmic Onion? If there is, HERA, the most powerful electron microscope in the world, may be the first to know.
Hormones, sex and animal passion: making pleasure out of necessity?
This lecture will consider different patterns of male and female sexual behaviours, how hormones act to control them, and how and why the rigid link between sex and reproduction has been relaxed during evolution to include maintenance of social re...
Neutrinos in the Snow
Neutrinos from the sun and the galaxy are being detected under the ice of Antartica and at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada. For the first time we know how the sun shines.
The Particle Odyssey: Visions of the subatomic world
This talk will show some of the visual beauty revealed by particles - a world remote from our immediate senses but one that is real and visible.
'In All Things' or 'Beyond All Things'
This lecture will explore the diversity of traditions about God or ultimate reality. Is the Deity one with, or present in, the universe - or beyond all, transcendent, 'Wholly Other'?
Music of Today: Looking Under The Bonnet
This illustrated lecture extends a theme of last year's series, that the severity of European modernism is just one strand in modern music, a diversity of which audiences tend to be unaware. This talk strips off the surface labels and seeks less s...
Bright Sparks of the Universe
Bryson Gore has made the demonstrations for the Royal Institution Christmas lectures for many years. This talk makes electrons visible, recreating the events that led to their discovery and showing some of the bizarre things that they can do.
Designing gadgets
Why were video recorders so difficult to use? Is there any hope for new gadgets like DVD players? What can we do about gadget complexity, and what can be learnt by approaching the design of gadgets mathematically? This lecture will show how video ...
When was the idea of human rights invented, and do we need it?
Were the inventors the ancient Stoics, the Roman lawyers, the 17th century Dutch, the authors of the American Revolution? Can there be universal justice without such an idea, and what does it add?
Inside Story
In this lecture Professor Hellawell introduces his own work Inside Story, premiered at the 1999 Proms to wide acclaim. The composer gives a background talk to the shape of the work, which pairs violin and viola solists with orchestra in the manner...
Antihydrogen - First Element of the Antiuniverse
We continue the anitmatter theme: Antimatter would be a wonder fuel, but for the fact that the universe appears to be lacking in antimatter reserves. The first steps are being taken this year at CERN to make thousands of atoms of antihydrogen ever...
Hooke as Speculative Philosopher
The four lectures (Hooke as Speculative Philosopher, Hooke's Life, Diary and Medicine Taking; Hooke as Employee; Hooke as a Designer, Maker and User of Intruments) will be expanded and published by Oxford University Press early in 2003 as "London'...
Hooke as Designer, Maker and User of Instruments
Dr Jim Bennett, Director of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.
Hooke as Employee
Michael Cooper, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Surveying, City University.
Why do we live in three dimensions - or do we?
We are aware of 3D space and the fourth dimension of time. But why is it like this? Why would one or two not have been enough? Why not more? Experiments at CERN will seriously be looking for evidence of a fifth dimension. Science fiction or scienc...
Computer Viruses
Every so often there is a panic when computers succumb to viruses. The theory behind viruses is rather fun, and shows how bugs can disappear and become impossible to find. In principle it's possible to construct viruses that cannot be detected; eq...
Governance and management in the not-for-profit sector
The stakeholders are clearly different and require different prioritisation, but is governance any different in the not-for-profit sector? How can boards and their individual members (or their equivalent) in the not-for-profit sector better discha...
Could we destroy the Universe?
It is 70 years since the birth of particle accelerators. This talk shows how they have been used and become ever more powerful. As we step into unknown territory with the new accelerators in the USA and at CERN, some media have suggested that the ...
Neutrinos - Ghost Particles of the Universe
As you read this, millions of neutrinos are passing through you, unseen (and harmless!). Produced in the Sun and stars, they corkscrew through space at hear to the speed of light. They may hold the answer to some of the mysteries of Creation and t...
The Forces of Nature
Four fundamental forces rule the universe: gravity, the electromagnetic force and then two that act in and around the atomic nucleus, known as strong and weak. The latter pair act over distances smaller than atoms and so are less familiar to our m...
Euler
Euler, 'the Mozart of mathematics', was probably the most prolific mathematician of all time, having contributed to many areas, both theoretical and practical, both serious and recreational - yet he remains largely unknown except to mathematicians...
Modern Crytography
Computers need not just automate what is already being done, but can do completely new things. In the 1970s a new form of cryptography was invented, which is usually presented as an esoteric application of number theory. This new cryptography is a...
A Conversation with The Rt Hon Lord Justice Auld, Lord Justice of Appeal and Chairman of Criminal Courts Review
Professor Susskind and The Rt Hon Lord Justice Auld discuss reform of the criminal courts and the criminal justice system (including the role of juries and magistrates) and outline the work of the Court of Appeal. They draw comparisons between the...
Conventional Cryptography
Keeping secrets is one of the earliest inventions of civilisation, and has become the science of cryptography. The World War II Enigma machine was just lots of scrambling, done in ways that could be understood in principle by a school child though...
Technology, treasurers and financial markets in the 21st century
Technology is changing everything. How will it affect financial markets, exchange and over the counter banking and other financial services in the future? Will exchanges be no more than cheap, commoditised high volume transaction engines? How will...
Regulating human genetics
The Human Genetics Commission was set up in order to advise the government on how current and prospective developments in human genetics should be regulated in the broader social and political interest. For instance, should insurance companies or ...
From 'Self' and 'Other' to 'We'
One of the deepest questions hidden in the question of inter-faith study and inter-faith dialogue is the notion of the Self and of the Other. Different pictures of selfhood are given in different philosophical and religious systems. But arguably t...
Newton
Most people know the story of Newton and the apple, but why was it so important? What sort of person was Newton? What was his major work Principia Mathematica about, what difficulties did it raise, and how were they resolved? Was Newton really the...
Future Computers
Today's computers don't understand us. In the future we will wear them and they will be inside us, as implants - so we had better get them sorted out while we have a chance. This lecture looks at how common problems with today's computers may be s...
Business communications in the age of spin
How have business communications, internal and external, changed over the years and how will they change in the 21st century? What has been the impact of technology? How important are effective staff communications? Does concern and activity on th...
Euclid
Euclid's Elements has been the best-selling mathematics book of all time, being used continuously for over 2000 years. Who was Euclid, and why did his writings have such influence? What does the Elements contain, and why did it create so much cont...
A Conversation with David Pannick QC
Professor Richard Susskind and David Pannick QC discuss the impact of human rights legislation in the UK, offering a unique look behind the scenes of specific cases. Their conversation covers freedom of expression, fair hearings, privacy, rights o...
21st Century: Tuberculosis
Dr John Watson, Director of the Public Health Laboratory's TB Programme for the UK
The truth is in between
How do we know that what we believe is true? This question is made more difficult whenever we find someone of good faith who disagrees with us. Can all religions be telling the truth? One of the most important issues in inter-faith reflection is t...
Business relationships - do they count anymore?
What duty do companies owe to their employees and vice versa? Is the current mobility of City executives, alone or in teams, good for the City or an unfortunate consequence of today's professional employment markets? What sort of relationship shou...
19th Century: Cholera
Professor Bohumil Drassar, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Author of Cholera in the Wellcome History of Tropical Diseases.
A Conversation with The Rt Hon the Lord Woolf of Barnes, The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
Professor Richard Susskind and The Rt Hon Lord Woolf of Barnes discuss the Access to Justice Inquiry and reforms to the civil justice system; the structure of the court system; the process of judging; modernisation of the Judiciary; major challeng...
17th Century: Plague
Stephen Porter, Assistant Editor, Survey of London Section, English Heritage. Author of The Great Plague.
City and business ethics - declining or improving?
Is the City a more honest place than it was forty years ago? Is my word still my bond? Has prescriptive regulation improved matters? Are victimless business offences really reprehensible? Have professional bodies made any contribution? How have bu...
Thou shalt not kill - not even animals?
Animals are different from humans, but there is no one difference and only some differences are morally relevant. Too many moral theories say "only one thing is relevant to how we treat others" and affirm that animals meet, or fail to meet, the re...
Abdullah Ibrahim in conversation with Peter Conway
Professor Abdullah Ibrahim, Visiting Gresham Professor of Music, talks to Peter Conway, arts administrator and journalist, about his return to South Africa and his role in establishing a new music academy for young black students.
Recent Law Reforms and IT
Professor Richard Susskind explains how the UK courts and the process of law has been influenced by the emergence of Information Technology. How has it been used to reform the current system of law in the UK?
The Heart of the Matter
We take a voyage into matter and back to the start of time to see how the basic pieces were created, how they have been cooked in stars to make elements of life and how critical their separate identities have been to enavble is to be here some 12 ...
The Finance Director and the Treasurer
What is the true role of the Finance Director/Chief Financial Officer - chief beancounter, chief administrative officer, corporate financier, conscience of the organisation, head of regulation and compliance, main contact with investors and the Ci...
Its Done with Mirrors
Why do mirros reverse left and right and not up and down (or do they!)? Why is mirror Asymmetry so important for life? Any why do some atomic processes seem to distinguish left from right? In this lecture Professor Close explores symmetry and asym...
Financial Institutions, Regulation and Compliance
Do financial institutions require special forms of governance, having regard to their risk, complexity, and regulatory and compliance structures? How well has existing governance worked, and what governance lessons have been learned from recent co...
The Non Executive Director
What is the proper function of a NED? Is there a distinction between an 'independent' and 'non-independent' NED? How can an appointee of a major shareholder or special interest remain independent, and should he/she? How much should a NED get invol...
Governance: The Board
By what measure should a Board judge its own performance, and what should it do if found wanting? Is there an optimum size and balance, and is there a size beyond which it is very difficult or impossible to manage? What is the responsibility of of...
A Giant Leap
A time machine has been at work at CERN Geneva for the last ten years. This month it made its final experiments. In this lecture, we travel to the first split second after the Big Bang at the start of the universe and see how matter was born.
Governance and the City
Is City governance effective and how ought it to be reformed? Does it represent a competative advantage or a competative burden? The relevant importance and future roles of the Lord Mayor, the City Corporation, the Financial Services Authority, th...
Banking Today
There is a pervasive idea in the world outside banks that banking and financial services should really be a riskless business, providing riskless products. In this lecture, Sir Peter Middleton explores how modern banks promote themselves as 'safe ...
Livery Companies: A Retrospective
Speaking as part of a series on 'City Institutions', George Webber looks back on the rich and colourful history of London's livery companies.
Thomas Gresham's Archbishop: Archbishop
The Reverend Professor Richard Chartres concludes his history of Archbishop Matthew Parker.The other lectures in this series are:Early Life and Education...
Thomas Gresham's Archbishop: Crisis
Archbishop Matthew Parker lived through the most tumultuous decades of the sixteenth century for the Anglican Church, beset by forces that gave the modern Church much of its recognisable shape.
Thomas Gresham's Archbishop: Early Life and Education
Matthew Parker (1504-1575) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be chosen by Queen Elizabeth I and was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Gresham. The Reverend Professor Chartres considers the early life of a man who spanned a vital and seminal per...
Science and Theology: Traffic Across the Frontier
Both science and theology explore aspects of one world: they complement rather than contradict each other. The Revd Dr John Polkinghorne explores the possibility of fruitful relationships between the two.This is the 1991 Gresham Special Lecture.
Personal Responsibility and Health
What can we do as individuals to be better custodians of our own health? Professor Stuart locates preventative action in four main modifications to our lifestyles: smoking, alcohol, diet and exercise.
The Social Challenge of Medical Advance
Professor Stuart argues for a harmonious relationship between medical advance and its integration into the daily practices of everyday life. The health of a society and of science itself must ultimately depend on non-scientific values. This can on...
Health Perspectives for the Nineties
Over the course of the twentieth century, international thrusts towards better healthcare have tended towards adaptations rather than revisions of existing models. As a result, the same inequalities in distribution and access persist. Looking ahea...
Medical Advance: Its Global Challenge
The relationship between the universal nature of medical problems and the infinite variety of social groups offering solutions to them creates one of the most persistent legal and ethical dilemmas facing medicine today. How can we better facilitat...
Better Late Than Never: Late Development in Education
In some ways, Britain is very much like a 'developing' country in the way its education system wastes a lot of its talent at age 16, by not providing adequate opportunities for development past this point. Professor Rae considers the effects of th...
The Community and Medical Advance
The human impact of any given medical advance must be fully integrated with relevant social conditions. How might this be achieved?
What is the role of the independent schools in British education?
In the wake of the Education Reform Act the private sector has a golden opportunity to play a positive part in the overall future of education in this country. Or does it? Private schools know about financial management and are equally well versed...
Healing and the Spirit: Medicine and the Church
As Rector of St Marylebone, The Reverend Christopher Hamel Cooke established the innovative Healing and Counselling Centre in the church's crypt. In this lecture he reviews the important work of the Centre and considers possibilities for collabora...
Healing and the Spirit: Holistic Biology
Dr Roger Taylor explains how, as a scientist, he walks a tightrope between reductionism and holism. What is the place of complementary or homeopathic healing in medical science?
Business, Ethics and the Law
This series of lectures included the following talks:Is it enough to be legal?7th March 1990Business and the Role of the Law14th March 1990...
Healing and the Spirit: Ancient Medicine
Do we suffer because of a 'compartmental' way of living? In this lecture, The Revd Professor Richard Chartres advocates a broader and multi-disciplinary approach to healing, based on the complementary healing styles of the Ancient World.
Part Two: 'A British view of Pan-European Banking and Currency' and 'The Philosophy of Regulation'
Part One: 'A New Financial Europe', 'Challenges for the International Stock Exchange' and 'Using Security Markets for International Investments'
The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: Ravages of Fanaticism
The Reverend Professor Richard Chartres continues to outline the history of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, in light of recent archaeological evidence and the Gresham Jerusalem photogrammetic survey. What impact did the arrival of Isl...
The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: Imperial Archaeology
In the fourth century AD, the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, gave his consent for excavation beneath the Temple of Aphrodite in Jerusalem. They were looking for the Tomb of Christ - but what did they find?The Reverend Professor Richard ...
The Turin Shroud - An Update
In October 1988, the Cardinal Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Balestero announced the results of scientific tests done to date the Turin Shroud: it was almost certainly created between 1260 and 1390.But is this use of science the end of the ...
Who is responsible for bringing up our children: home or school?
A hundred years ago it was almost unanimously accepted that parents should be the ones to 'bring up' their children, but this reposnsibility has been transferred in recent times to the school. Teachers are now required to cover certain 'cross-curr...
The Place of Competitions in the Personal and Musical Development of Young People
Do musical competitions necessarily have to be damaging? Can they be used in a responsible way, thereby presenting a creative challenge to young musicians? In this lecture, Professor Renshaw critically compares two competition models: the 'marketi...
How do we create good schools?
The best laid plans of a government come to nothing if the schools themselves are not 'good' enough to deliver their policies. But what constitutes the difference between a good and a bad school?This lecture is part of Professor Rae's series, ...
London Churches under the First Elizabeth
Richard Chartres considers the most important religious figures and dilemmas to gain prominence during the reign of Elizabeth I.
The Religious Life of Sir Thomas Gresham
While not known or celebrated as a religious thinker, Thomas Gresham lived through a turbulent period in the history of the Church of England. How does his career reflect or illuminate the religious contradictions and difficulties of that time?
The Decline of Socialism
The worldwide decline of socialism has been more total and pervasive than that of liberalism. A dominant system of politics and economics has been abandoned - because it has failed. What are the repercussions of this decline, on the first world an...
How should we organise the school system?
The aim of the British school system should be to produce a well-educated population and not a well-educated elite. How might the Education Reform Act of 1988 impact on our ability to realise this objective?
Introduction to Catastrophe Theory and its Application to Physics and Sociology
Professor Zeeman is one of the foremost scholars in the field of 'catastrophe theory'. In this introduction to the subject, he considers how the theory might relate to matters as diverse as electromagnetism, the 'fight or flight' mechanism and ani...
What should we teach the children?
The National Curriculum is the single most important reform to British education. In this lecture, Professor Rae explains why the central government should be deciding what is taught in schools and outlines his own ideal curriculum.This lectur...
The Armenians: Church and Culture
Professor Chartres offers an overview of the history and culture of the Armenian nation, including the genocide of 1915.
The Russian Millennium: The Morning After
In June 1988, the Russian Orthdox Church celebrated the millennium of the Christianisation of Russia and the baptism of St Vladimir. In this lecture, Richard Chartres explores the significance of St Vladimir, a figure considered equal to the apost...
Gyroscopes and Boomerangs
Professor Zeeman guides us through the geometry and the mechanics of spinning objects.
Do the British know what education is for?
What should the aims of education be? Does Britain have a clear idea of what its education system is trying to do?This lecture is part of Professor Rae's series, 'The Education Reform Act 1988 in its Historical and International Context'. The ...
Does a high-tech building have to look like a carbuncle?
In 1984, Prince Charles described Richard Rogers' proposed extension to London's National Gallery as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend". The term has since been used by many critics to condemn the perceived "ugl...