The hammerblow introduction to Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony and the iconic four-note opening motif of the 5th Symphony, the unresolved start of Wagner's Tristan & Isolde, the sensuously meandering melody that begins Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and the identical fanfare that opens both Monteverdi's opera Orfeo and his 1610 Vespers. This lecture looks at how composers of all periods have risen to the challenge of how to write a memorable musical opening sentence. A lecture b...
Sep 19, 2019•51 min
Before he became King of England in 1603 James I had never set foot in an English royal palace. What he found when he did was a mixed blessing: he may have liked the grandeur and riches, but he hated the stuffy formality. His answer was to create an entirely new sort of country residence devoted to hunting, reading and relaxation with his male favourites. Architecturally incoherent these places may have been, but James's remarkable forgotten country houses tell us a huge amount about the man and...
Sep 18, 2019•43 min
THE 2019 GRAY'S INN READING Lord Kerr intends to address the recent decision in Stocker v Stocker and the challenges which confront judges when required to take on the role of a jury in applying a common-sense approach to the meaning of words. He will try to consider and reflect on the essential role of the Courts in upholding individual rights and how best this role can be performed whilst also ensuring that decisions accord with society's broader expectations of justice. A lecture by Lord Kerr...
Jun 20, 2019•42 min
THE 2019 PROVOST'S LECTURE A century has passed since the establishment of the ill-fated Weimar Republic, founded in August 1919 and superseded 14 years later by the Nazi dictatorship. Sir Richard Evans, one of the world's foremost authorities on modern German history, asks why the Republic failed in its attempt to make Germany democratic, and what lessons can be learned for the future of democracy in the 21st century. A lecture by Sir Richard Evans, Historian and Provost of Gresham College 18 J...
Jun 18, 2019•56 min
THE 2019 SIR THOMAS GRESHAM ANNUAL LECTURE A special illustrated lecture will be presented by Dr John Guy to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the birth of the College's founder and benefactor Sir Thomas Gresham. Information will be provided about a new biography. A lecture by Dr John Guy, Author of 'Gresham's Law: The Life and World of Queen Elizabeth I's Banker' 13 June 2019 The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.g...
Jun 13, 2019•57 min
Jonathan Bate will explore the life and work of the original celebrity poet - Lord Byron. He will show how Byron was simultaneously a Romantic and an anti-Romantic, and how his influence spread to almost every corner of Europe, from the Russia of Pushkin to the Greek War of Independence. A lecture by Sir Jonathan Bate, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric 11 June 2019 The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectur...
Jun 11, 2019•50 min
Over the course of her Professorship, Professor Delahunty has striven to talk openly about the way in which the Family Court deals with emotive and challenging issues such as sexual abuse, child death in infancy, child neglect and child exploitation. At what personal cost is that work undertaken? How can one delete the retinal images of abuse after the case has ended? A lecture by Jo Delahunty QC, Gresham Professor of Law 6 June 2019 The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are av...
Jun 06, 2019•50 min
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are perhaps the most important decisions that a company ever faces, yet very many deals destroy substantial value. This talk will discuss the correct and incorrect motives for M&A, using both examples and large-scale evidence. It will discuss the conflicts of interest that may lead investment banks to persuade clients to do value-destroying deals, and ways to motivate these conflicts. It will also critically analyse policy proposals to reform M&A, e.g. ...
Jun 05, 2019•50 min
A century has passed since the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919. After WWI the treaty imposed peace terms which have remained the subject of controversy ever since. It also attempted to set up a new international order to ensure that there would never again be such a destructive war as that of 1914-18. Professor MacMillan, a specialist in British imperial history and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries, will consider if the treaty led to the outbreak of the Se...
Jun 04, 2019•43 min
In the 330s BCE, the great philosopher and scientist, Aristotle of Stagira in northern Greece, returned to Athens and founded his Lyceum. The first institution in world history to encompass teaching, research and the collection of a vast library, the Lyceum immediately began to revive even Plato's Academy in international reputation. This lecture looks at the archaeological site of the Lyceum, discovered accidentally in 1996, and asks how the remains can illuminate Aristotle's life, work, and in...
May 30, 2019•49 min
THE 2019 JOINT LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY ANNUAL LECTURE This talk looks at mathematical modelling of real, complex fluids in flow situations - some with serious commercial applications, and some just for fun. Focusing on the chocolate fountain, we experience one of the key day-to-day tools of an applied mathematician, scaling analysis, to answer the question: why doesn't the chocolate fall straight down? A lecture by Helen Wilson, Professor of Applied Mathematics University College London 29 M...
May 29, 2019•34 min
Computers are often parodied as machines that kill creativity. Yet modern works of creativity usually have a digital aspect, and many are wholly digital. We will look at technology that enables creativity (not always of a good kind) and the prospects for a machine to create works of art. We will examine computer- created artefacts and ask if we can tell if the creator was human or artificial. A lecture by Richard Harvey, IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology 28 May 2019 The trans...
May 28, 2019•53 min
The very young and very elderly are particularly susceptible to many infections and for many infections, age will predict how likely someone is to die once infected. The immediate and long-term effects of an infection changes throughout our life course. Some infections which if caught as a child are usually relatively trivial are likely to be much more severe in young adults including mumps and chickenpox. Other infections present in very different ways depending on the age of the sufferer; for ...
May 22, 2019•56 min
There is much in the universe we will never know, and it is equally certain that we will never know all that we do not know. This dilemma has not stopped cosmologists, philosophers and even theologians from exploring and going beyond the limits of space and time. A lecture by Joseph Silk, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 22 May 2019 The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/limits-of-knowled...
May 22, 2019•53 min
In recent years, multiple space missions have been launched. Many have set out across our galaxy to explore other systems and planets, capturing people's imaginations and helping us to understand more about the origins of the universe. But there are also a myriad of space missions and platform that are sending data back to earth that are telling us about how earth is changing. Today the earth is opening up its secrets as never before. A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade, Frank Jackson Foundation Pro...
May 21, 2019•40 min
Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace (1953) was an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel begun during WWII. He saw it as a personal interpretation of the novel, but as soon as it went forward for production, the Soviet authorities realised that this was the perfect opportunity for creating a rousing epic wartime drama. A succession of cultural officials left their imprint on the work, requiring Prokofiev to make hundreds of changes and write new scenes. The composer did not live to see a complete performanc...
May 21, 2019•1 hr
The origin of life is one of the biggest questions in science, but until recently it was, experimentally, a question in chemistry. Now, gene sequences and a better understanding of cell growth under extreme conditions are giving insights from biology. These point to hydro-thermal vent environments as 'incubators' that could drive growth in a similar way to cells at the origin of life. Professor Lane will discuss how these ideas are being tested in the lab. A lecture by Nick Lane, Professor of Ev...
May 20, 2019•47 min
Touch is central to the performance of medicine. Traditionally, doctors depended on touch to diagnose illness. Revolutions in imaging technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence seem to reduce the need for physical examination. Yet touch is not only about gathering information but is how we express compassion and care. This lecture considers how 'gnostic' touch (identifying disease) and 'pathic' touch (conveying care) are becoming separated by technological developments, and asks wh...
May 15, 2019•53 min
The word Romanticism makes us think of mountain tops and stormy seas, but the younger generation of English Romantics (above all, John Keats) were Londoners through and through. They were even mocked as 'the Cockney School of Poetry'. Jonathan Bate will track Keats to Hampstead and tell of the extraordinary circle of writers - opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, essayist Charles Lamb, master-critic William Hazlitt - who wrote for The London Magazine, until its gifted editor was killed in a duel with ...
May 14, 2019•50 min
Professor Wilks will discuss the argument that 'superintelligent' AI may turn against us, as Hawking and Bostrom have warned. It will be argued that these worries misrepresent the achievements and potential of AI, and that the ethical dilemmas of AI will be deeper and more challenging than just managing idleness due to automation, or how to blame an automated car in a crash. They will include how to treat the artificial Companions created to curate our own lifetimes of information. A lecture by ...
May 14, 2019•54 min
It's a tough time to be a listener. Our present-day cultures of listening are radically fragmented, as our time and attention are fractalised into bits of information. What's the future of listening? What will happen to the ways we give attention to music in the future? Our conclusion might be that an expanded definition of listening - an active, participative, engaged listening! - can save our digital and musical futures from the fates they seem to be facing. A lecture by Tom Service, Gresham P...
May 13, 2019•52 min
This series has argued that the origins of modern secularism lie in the age of the Renaissance. This last lecture will track that legacy down to the present. From Tom Paine through Bakunin to modern humanism and anti-Nazism, religion has not collapsed intellectually. Instead, religious impulses - defiance of unwelcome moral authority, the quest for ever-deeper truths, a readiness to judge churches by their own standards - have given our age a profoundly secular ethic with deeply religious roots....
May 09, 2019•52 min
'Go to the Exchange, crave gold as you intend.'' (William Haughton, Englishmen for My Money, 1598). Sir Thomas Gresham's first great contribution to the life of London was the Royal Exchange, the purpose-built merchants' bourse which opened in 1567. Why did Gresham finance and build it? What did Londoners (and others) do there? And what does the Exchange tell us about Gresham's ambitions both for himself and for London? A lecture by Professor Stephen Alford, University of Leeds 8 May 2019 The tr...
May 08, 2019•36 min
There is far more to piano accompaniment than meets the ear or eye. Vocal celebrities are reliant on an accompanist's skills in indisputably great music composed for an equal partnership of voice and piano, and yet the hard-working pianist's public profile seldom matches that of the singer. Skills developed over many years are often accorded faint praise and small fees. Graham Johnson examines a problematic profession that continues to attract many gifted young pianists to its ranks and asks why...
May 07, 2019•1 hr 4 min
What happens when doctors and parents cannot agree on whether a child should be given experimental medical treatment? Why is there any question mark over a parent's right to decide if medical treatment for their child continues? From the parents of Ashya King who successfully secured proton beam therapy for their son to the despair surrounding baby Charlie Gard and his life-limiting genetic disorder: how does the court make decisions that can potentially prolong life or bring about the death of ...
May 02, 2019•55 min
The newly discovered Salvator by Leonardo, the world's most costly picture, is one of his most notable creations, in which he used his 'science of art' to transform a stock subject into a profound expression of the ineffability of the divine. We will look at the remarkable story of its discovery, its conservation and scientific examination, the research into how it works as an image and its provenance. We will also look at the scandalous events of its ownership and how it came to be where it is ...
May 01, 2019•46 min
Pollution is a much more complex problem than many realise and cannot be resolved solely through global and regional agreements. Pollution is closely connected with behavioural and technology choices, production and consumption practices, industrial processes and pricing policies, financial and business sector orientation and a culture of consumerism and irresponsibility to the environment and impacts on people's health. Only by changing behaviours can we tackle pollution. A lecture by Jacquelin...
Apr 30, 2019•59 min
Much has happened in the 500 years since the birth of Thomas Gresham, and mathematics is no exception. Most mathematicians were then in awe of the Greeks and felt little had been done since. But the start of modern mathematics soon followed, marked by the solution of the cubic equation. Mathematics has grown explosively since then and we are now in an age of great discovery. The last 500 years of progress in maths will be reviewed, to see where it is going next and ask whether we are truly livin...
Apr 30, 2019•1 hr
Recent advances in medical science have brought complex ethical dilemmas, particularly around the beginning of human lives (abortion, embryo research, IVF, gene therapy, stem cells) and its ending (switching off ventilators, persistent vegetative state (PVS) and 'dying with dignity' or assisted suicide). Although none of these topics occurs directly in the New Testament, references to 'life' abound, and healing was the centre of Jesus' earthly ministry. Can our approach enable the Biblical mater...
Apr 25, 2019•55 min
Since the financial crisis, there has been a strong view that the financial sector has little benefit for society. The stock market is not a net supplier of capital - as much money is spent on share buybacks as is raised from new issuance. Moreover, most stock market trading is speculative side-bets between investors, with no new money being raised by firms. This talk will show that stock market trading may contribute to society even if does not lead to firms raising new capital. A lecture by Al...
Apr 24, 2019•53 min
