Gresham College Lectures

This lecture reports on the findings of The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China (June 2019), which examined reports of state-sponsored murder for the harvesting and sale of organs. The very need for a People's Tribunal to deal with an issue of this gravity reflects the timidity of governments when asked to deal with the criminal behaviour of...

2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and will see the building of the first major addition to the system he created to prevent sewage entering the Thames. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is now finally making its way 16 miles beneath the course of the river from Acton to the Thames Estuary, to intercept storm water which would otherwise enter the Thames. The illustrate...

When Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal-Society of London appeared in 1667, it was less a history than a manifesto for the future, designed to convince Charles II that experimental research was a worthwhile investment. Focusing on experiment and travel, this lecture describes the aims and activities of the early Royal Society almost two centuries before the word 'scientist' was...

This lecture examines the mathematics behind computing, starting with the history of the explosive growth of computer technology, from code breaking through to all aspects of modern communication and security, as well as the simulation of physical processes as varied as the evolution of the universe to predicting the weather. It looks at the types of problems computers can solve, as well as the fu...

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) imagined a utopian island including an experimental garden, where plants could be made "greater much than their nature". These new plants were central to Bacon's dream of a better world, where hunger - and even death itself - might be conquered. Robert Sharrock's History of the improvement and propagation of vegetables (1660) attempted t...

2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a 'person' in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from which they had been barred. But women were excluded from the foreign and diplomatic service until 1946, and while they were allowed to sit on j...

Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. But these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines. This talk will explain how to focus on important long-term goals but at the same time meet urgent short-term deadlines; how to use email as an effective communicatio...

The speed of light has fundamental significance. This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of light is the upper speed limit for everything in the Universe. Interesting effects occur when particles are accelerated and achieve speeds close to that of light...

THE 2019 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTURE PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES In the years after 1945 successive British governments set out to weaponise the nation's immigration policy. To maintain historic ties to the Old Commonwealth, and shore up Britain's position as a 'world power' they encouraged and even subsidised the emigration of over a mill...

After the UN Climate Action Summit in September, our Environment Professor will be talking to three experts about whether we still have a meaningful chance of averting a climate catastrophe, and how we can get there. The Extinction Rebellion protests pushed climate up the news agenda early in 2019, but what has happened since then, and what is happening globally? Professor Vicky Pope will discuss...

Spain became a byword for cruelty in much of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether it was the brutality of American colonisation, the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition or the horrors of the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. This lecture will survey this 'black legend' and ask what made it so enduring - and why some parts of the story, such as the Inquisitio...

The great Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev didn't have the talents to become an artist or the money to become a patron. His gift was to inspire, facilitate and market artistic projects that were highly colourful and distinctive. In this lecture we follow his early years, when he published The World of Art, a provocative Russian journal, exhibited Russian visual art in Paris, and then brough...

When Alexander Korda teamed Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger in 1939, a lasting partnership between this Englishman and refugee Hungarian must have seemed unlikely. Yet they soon discovered a remarkable bond, pushing each other far beyond what they could do separately, and creating a unique body of filmmaking. This lecture explores how the partnership worked during the 1940s, drawing in coll...

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 l...

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 ma...

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 a...

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 o...

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 Ju...

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 vers...

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,...

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...

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 internation...

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...

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...

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 le...