Gene editing technology gives us the ability to change our DNA – removing, adding and replacing parts of our genetic code. These technologies have been emerging and improving for some decades, but since the development of CRISPR-based editing technologies, our capacity to edit our DNA has become both more accessible, more accurate and consequently, more powerful. Gene editing could be used to prevent genetic diseases but also alter traits like height and intelligence, presenting both legal and e...
Apr 24, 2023•56 min
More than anything else, the end matters to the novel reader. Novelists, including Austen and Dickens, sometimes changed their minds about their endings, using these changes of mind to explore how an ending satisfies, or fails to satisfy, our expectations. The lecture will explore the rise of the indeterminate ending, from Henry James on. And it will suggest how an ending can, for worse as well as for better, retrospectively change our experience of a novel. A lecture by John Mullan recorded on ...
Apr 20, 2023•2 hr 9 min
Saint Paul’s letters show women playing leading roles in the earliest Christian communities. Yet, by the fourth century, women’s ministry was very limited. Why? In the Roman Empire, women’s roles were limited by the expectation that their speech was domestic. If it was inappropriate for women to speak in public, they could not be priests or bishops. However, this lecture will reveal how some Christian women subverted these conventions to become preachers and teachers. A lecture by Morwenna Ludlo...
Apr 18, 2023•59 min
In this lecture, we shall explore a colourful collection of chords that have all acquired their own special, non-technical names. We will consider the Neapolitan Chord, that mainstay of Spanish (!) music, the Tristan Chord, The Petrushka Chord, The Mystic Chord and several others, with names that are sometimes helpful, and sometimes misleading or downright silly, looking at how such a thing as a chord could acquire a kind of fame, and how each entered popular culture. This lecture will feature t...
Apr 17, 2023•2 hr 18 min
In partnership with the Fulbright Commission. In 1819, Thomas Telford and Robert Southey went on a six-week tour of the Scottish Highlands to inspect the region’s newly built roads, bridges and canals. What compelled this unlikely duo, the “Colossus of Roads” and Britain’s Poet Laureate, to undertake one of the greatest road trips of the Picturesque era? Landscape historian and Fulbright scholar Paul Daniel Marriott explores the legacy of their extraordinary journey, meticulously chronicled by S...
Apr 14, 2023•59 min
Who benefited from the British Empire? In the metropole, did it benefit wealthy landed aristocrats and financiers of the City of London, or did the Empire create employment and cheap goods for British workers? What was the impact on different parts of the empire, and different social groups, as they were drawn into a global economy? A lecture by Martin Daunton recorded on 4 April 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gr...
Apr 13, 2023•2 hr
Astronomically speaking, there are a number of ways in which life on Earth could be wiped out. For example, a giant asteroid could hit Earth with such energy that the oceans are boiled off. This lecture will assess which astronomical events are likely and which are not. [It will not consider anthropogenic means by which life on Earth might end]. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE recorded on 29 March 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are...
Apr 11, 2023•1 hr
From 1600 – 1850, artists in England and, later, in North America depicted distinguished Native American tribal leaders, diplomats and warriors to commemorate their significance. Examples include Pocahontas (1617), and nineteenth century Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. For many years, these portraits were not properly understood, reducing many of the sitters to simple exemplars of the ‘noble savage’ cliché. In fact, these works are far more interesting once the sitters’ historical sit...
Apr 11, 2023•57 min
We interface with our environment via the air we breathe, the food and water we eat and drink, and through physical contact via our skin. This lecture explores how these biological barriers act to protect us against toxins and toxicants, through an exploration of dose, detoxification and elimination mechanisms, antioxidant defences and innate immune mechanisms. A lecture by Dr Ian Mudway recorded on 27 March 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lect...
Apr 05, 2023•2 hr 3 min
Every animal on the planet carries with it an astonishingly diverse microbial zoo – millions of invisible organisms that thrive on the skin and in the gut. They play an important role in health and disease and may also shape human emotions and behaviour. Viruses may stimulate aggression, parasites can trigger suicide and bacteria can block fear responses. The evidence for our interaction with microbes may even make us want to re-evaluate the concept of free-will. A lecture by Robin May recorded ...
Apr 03, 2023•57 min
This talk will explore the potential for harnessing the public health framework for addressing online safety and security. Throughout the COVID pandemic, citizens have washed their hands, covered their faces, and maintained a physical distance. If members of the public can protect themselves and others from offline viruses, why not digital ones? A lecture by Victoria Baines recorded on 21 March 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are availa...
Mar 31, 2023•58 min
In recent years, the links between sleep and mental health have been slowly unravelled. We are beginning to understand that not only does mental health impact sleep, but also that poor sleep has important consequences on our psychology. This lecture explores this complex relationship, and highlights the importance of sleep as a major factor in our mental wellbeing. The lecture covers strategies to manage disturbed sleep, and touches on other disorders such as nightmares and night eating syndrome...
Mar 28, 2023•59 min
During the medieval ‘agricultural revolution’, new forms of cereal farming fuelled the exceptionally rapid growth of towns, markets and populations across much of Europe. The use of the mouldboard plough and systematic crop rotation were key developments and led to open-field farming, one of the transformative changes of the Middle Ages. Using new evidence from plant and animal remains from archaeological excavations in England, this lecture links these to wider developments in medieval society,...
Mar 27, 2023•58 min
We used to think Roman Britain was a largely untamed natural landscape of woodland with occasional opulent villas representing the houses of an alien elite, set side by side with scattered peasant settlements. Archaeological work since the 1940s has radically altered this understanding through a combination of large-scale excavation and a revolution in remote sensing techniques, revealing a more varied picture of housing, farming, settlement and industry. This lecture will explore our current kn...
Mar 17, 2023•59 min
What is the adversarial tradition in English criminal and civil procedure, and how does it compare with the inquisitorial systems found in some civil law jurisdictions? What are the strengths and weaknesses of adversarial and inquisitorial jurisdictions? Does our adversarial system truly deliver equality of arms between the powerful and the powerless? Have modern fair trial standards, such as those required by the European Court of Human Rights, -and other developments - brought the two families...
Mar 16, 2023•2 hr 1 min
What happens to carbon dioxide after we emit it? Half is absorbed within a year or two by plants and the oceans, the rest, in effect, stays in the atmosphere. So, does that mean we have to halve emissions to stop concentrations rising? Unfortunately, no. Despite the vast reserves of carbon dissolved in the oceans, carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels does not get diluted away, but makes an indelible mark on climate for hundreds of thousands of years. A lecture by Myles Allen recorded ...
Mar 14, 2023•2 hr 1 min
The Norse and Danish invaders - commonly called Vikings - who occupied Britain in the ninth and tenth centuries, brought with them their own pagan gods. Odin, Thor, Tyr, Loki and Freya left their trace on the British landscape, in the form of scenes from their mythology carved on stone slabs, and Viking paganism has a further considerable legacy of material evidence in richly furnished graves, especially on the Isle of Man. A lecture by Ronald Hutton recorded on 8 March 2023 at David Game Colleg...
Mar 14, 2023•57 min
Christopher Wren, who died 300 years ago this year, is famed as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. But he was also Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of a society “for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimental Learning” which became the Royal Society. This lecture explores some of Wren’s mathematical work on curves including spirals and ellipses and the mathematics behind his most impressive architectural achievement – the dome of St Paul’s. A lecture by Sarah H...
Mar 09, 2023•59 min
Scores of painters and photographers over the last seventy years have grappled with the formal portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II from life. These range from the celluloid fantasies of Cecil Beaton to the directness of Lucian Freud; the Renaissance-inspired divinity of Pietro Annigoni to the naturalism of Annie Leibovitz. Underlying all her official portrayals is an artistic conflict: the requirements of royal iconography and the demands of the usually conservative institutional commissioner, versu...
Mar 08, 2023•51 min
Until the 1970s, historical fiction was a scorned genre that belonged to Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy. Over recent decades, literary fiction has turned back to History, from Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy to Helen Dunmore, Francis Spufford and Eleanor Catton. In the nineteenth century the historical novel had been more respected, with examples (sometimes impressive, sometimes absurd) from Scott, Dickens, and George Eliot. This lecture will examine the genre’s vicissitudes (while noti...
Mar 06, 2023•2 hr 3 min
Big data has really taken off over the past decade because of the presence of ubiquitous sensor technology everywhere. For example, we are all constantly monitored by our phones, smart doorbells, heating systems, televisions, watches and jewellery. These devices generate a constant flow of information about us. But this data is pretty much meaningless without context. This lecture talks about how data needs to be processed to make it useful to business. A lecture by Raghavendra Rau recorded on 2...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr
Our bodies depend on our hearts maintaining a steady beat, and increasing it appropriately in response to exercise. If the heart goes too fast, or too slowly, we have effects ranging from tiredness to unexpectedly passing out to death. This lecture will consider the normal heartbeat, the causes of the heart going too fast or slowly and how it is treated when it does. A lecture by Sir Chris Whitty recorded on 21 February 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. The transcript and downloadable versions...
Mar 03, 2023•52 min
Our contemporary ideas about Stonehenge and British antiquity were shaped in times of empire and war. They dominate popular histories and inform national identity. Focusing on how Stonehenge was built, and drawing on a wealth of evidence which includes new archaeology and science, this lecture describes an alternative narrative of ancient communities, and presents a more positive and inclusive story – a Stonehenge re-imagined for modern Britain. A lecture by Mike Pitts recorded on 23 February 20...
Mar 01, 2023•58 min
Sir Christopher Wren was one of the most remarkable Gresham Professors of Astronomy. Though best known today as the architectural mastermind behind the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, Wren’s appointment to the Gresham chair in 1657 stemmed from his enthusiasm for turning his gaze well above London’s skyline and focussing his attention on the heavens above. This lecture will consider Wren’s contributions to astronomy and how Wren’s appreciation of and contributions to art and design, a...
Mar 01, 2023•58 min
This lecture will examine the images of power and empire projected by Queen Victoria over the course of her reign. Beginning with her coronation, it surveys her depictions as a young queen. It looks at the transformation of her image after Albert’s death from devoted wife to grief-stricken widow. It examines portrayals of Victoria as grandmother of Europe and as Empress of India, and it concludes that the strongest image is that of the black-dressed Queen alone. A lecture by Jane Ridley recorded...
Feb 23, 2023•58 min
In this lecture, we will delve into the history of opera because that is where the diminished seventh-chord gradually accumulated its expressive power as a chord for dramatic climaxes, demonic intrusions and generally for shock and horror of any kind. The augmented triad came to be used for the mysterious and supernatural. The symmetrical structure of these two chords allowed composers to veer off into unexpected keys or create new scales which have not shed their strangeness, even today. With P...
Feb 22, 2023•2 hr 21 min
End-to-end encryption secures messages before they leave a device, preventing them from being read in transit. Increasingly the default protocol for messaging apps, neither governments nor the platforms on which it operates can access unscrambled communications and message content. Some governments have demanded ‘back doors’ for criminal investigations, while others have exploited workarounds to access the encrypted messages of political dissidents. This talk considers the current public discour...
Feb 20, 2023•56 min
Numeracy skills, good financial education and financial inclusion are essential ingredients for a thriving, fair economy. The cost-of-living crisis exposes how we need to go further and faster to ensure people have the skills they need to manage their money and improve their prospects in life, and can access useful, affordable financial services. This event and panel discussion brings together speakers with wide-ranging experience across these areas. And the Lord Mayor of London, Nicholas Lyons,...
Feb 17, 2023•2 hr 5 min
Microbes hold astonishing speed records: the remarkable Thiovulum majus races along at 60 body lengths per second – the equivalent of Usain Bolt completing the 100m sprint in just over 0.8 seconds. Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 replicate so rapidly that a single infection can produce 100 bn virus particles within a couple of days. And some bacteria lie dormant for millions of years. This lecture looks at the biology behind these record-breakers, and what they can teach us about creating new materia...
Feb 16, 2023•59 min
During debates over the abolition of slavery, supporters of the system claimed that it was vital to the British economy and that abolition would be disastrous. The abolitionists argued that slavery was immoral and that the economy would prosper in its absence. Just how important was slavery to British economic success? This question continues to resonate in modern debates over the historic role of slavery’s profits in the building of country estates or the endowments of charities. Please note, t...
Feb 15, 2023•2 hr 6 min
