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Loving Animals: Historical Reflections on Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love

What is meant by ‘love’ between human and nonhuman animals? Why is sex with animals such a taboo? It is only in very recent years that some people have begun to undermine the absolute prohibition on zoosexuality. Are their arguments dangerous, perverted, or simply wrongheaded?

Darwin, Breeding and Barnacles

Following the Beagle voyage, Darwin settled down to a quiet married life, relying on correspondence to gather facts. He wrote thousands of letters as he gathered facts to support his still-secret theory.

George IV: Radical or Reactionary?

On the 200th anniversary of George IV's accession to the throne, this lecture considers whether or not he had any real impact on the fast-industrialising world around him, and the turbulent political times he lived through.

The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and his Friends

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 a rival critic.

Cruelty to Animals

This lecture starts by looking at early-modern understandings of the nature of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ life, before turning to the rise of ‘rights of animals’.

Wordsworth, Coleridge and the Poetic Revolution

Jonathan Bate will explain what Hazlitt meant and why Lyrical Ballads, the product of Wordsworth's intimate friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is one of the greatest and most influential volumes of poetry ever written.

English Landscape: Constable and Clare

Constable's Stour landscapes of the Regency period, during and just after the War with France, and his publication English Landscape Scenery, champion local and low-key rural England.

Bach's 'Orgelbüchlein' (Little Organ Book)

A musical journey into The Orgelbüchlein - the jewel in Bach's organ music - a collection of magnificent miniatures which encompass all the musical emotions and which allow the organist to show all the colours and sonorities of the instrument at his disposal.

Cheats, Liars and Fornicators: The Hidden Face of Mother Nature

Professor Steve Jones will talk about the crafty ways of living creatures, from orchids to ourselves, and about how, beneath every beauty, lies a beast.

Sir Walter Scott's Involvement In King George IV Visiting Scotland

A question from the lecture 'Did Sir Walter Scott Invent...

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