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The Riddle of Ancient Sparta: Unwrapping an Enigma

This lecture seeks to shed light rather than heat, by assessing just how odd (different, exceptional, peculiar) Sparta really might have been.

Media Reporting of Medical Advances: Helpful or Misleading?

The media and medicine have different perspectives. This lecture will use examples of how the public may be misled and consider the implications of such misunderstanding.

What Really Happened at the First Moving-Picture Shows

Moving pictures may not have been the innovation once claimed, but within a decade few could doubt that they had become a major force in changing the Edwardian world.

Slave Stories: Aesop and Walter Crane

The lecture asks how the ancient fables address power relations in a slave society. Were they primarily stories for and by slaves, or did they serve ruling-class interests?

The 19th Century Craze for Stereoscopic Photography

Stereoscopic photography rapidly became a worldwide craze after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cheap viewers and mass-produced stereographs brought startlingly vivid images within reach of a mass audience, making this the form in which most people first encountered photography.

The Age of Tyrants: Sappho via Gounod's Opera

This lecture uncovers what we know about the ‘real Sappho’, an aristocrat who lived between 630 and 570 BCE on the island of Lesbos and socialised in the lavish courts of upstart tyrants.

Homer's Iliad via the Movie Troy (2004)

Homer’s Iliad, the earliest Greek poem, narrates the archetypal war between ‘Europeans’ and ‘Asiatics’ divided by the Hellespont. Looking at Wolfgang Peterson’s blockbuster Troy (2004), the lecture describes the genesis of the Iliad between the Mycenaean Late Bronze Age and the 8th centu

How To Spot A Roman Emperor

Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the Univeristy of Cambridge, Fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature - who is also well-known for her media appearances - will speak on the fascinating topic of images of Roman Emperors.

Roman London's First Voices

Excavations have recently uncovered much evidence of Roman London, including fragments of 405 waxed stylus writing-tablets that can be dated to AD 50-90. Roger Tomlin explains how he deciphered the tablets and what can be learned from them.

Discovering the Port of Roman London

Roman London was founded on the banks of the Thames to take advantage of the tidal river for traffic trade and communications. But precisely where were the bridge and the harbour, and what did they look like?

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