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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.
This series has argued that the origins of modern secularism lie in the age of the Renaissance. This last lecture will track that legacy down to the present.
The newly discovered Salvator by Leonardo, the world’s most costly picture, is one of his most notable creations, in which he used his ‘science of art’ to transform a stock subject into a profound expression of the ineffability of the divine. We will look at the remarkable story of its discove
The Protestant Reformation set out to purge Christianity of error. But once you have started, how do you know when to stop? Some radicals tore up layer upon layer of tradition in the tireless search for deeper truths, proving their faith by their refusal to believe.
This lecture will look at how and why Christians in the seventeenth century first began seriously to wrestle with unbelief, whether troubled by feelings that God was absent, worries about religious variety or fear of damnation.
This lecture examines the relevant references in the New Testament (which are surprisingly fewer than references to money or violence) particularly in the context of ancient Jewish and Roman assumptions. Can a ‘biblical’ view of sexuality and gender assist today’s ethical debates?