Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
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?
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.
In 1920, Nellie Melba’s singing was transmitted to Europe and Newfoundland via the wireless. In 1922 the BBC began broadcasting, and from the outset sponsored new music and relayed outside broadcasts to the nation (and from 1932, to the world).
Stories about islands punctuate the careers of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, from Powell’s breakthrough with Edge of the World (1936) to the Hebridean journey of I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), and the final act of their Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
World War Two set British filmmakers a challenge: to be relevant and entertaining and to inspire without patronising. Powell and Pressburger brought wit and imagination to their task, questioning what Britain stood for, warts and all.
This lecture explores how the partnership worked during the 1940s, drawing in collaborators from many backgrounds who also excelled, and benefiting from the extraordinary conditions of wartime Britain.
In the 1960s, British filmmakers broke out of the studio to find new subjects among the young, fashionable and disadvantaged, seen in their natural habitats – not only in the North and Midlands, but in unfamiliar parts of London.
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’.
Britain’s pioneer filmmaker, born 150 years ago in North London, vividly portrayed the variety of life in ‘the imperial metropolis’ at the end of the 19th century, conscious of its historic appeal but also emphasising the modernity of which he was a part.
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