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.
Were the Crusades an early example of European colonialism? What value did the crusading frontier hold for the knights who fought to defend it? What was the relationship between the Crusades and the knightly culture of chivalry?
Serial murderer Myra Hindley is often portrayed as an “evil icon”. Her crimes of sadistic murder against children continue to shock. There are few artistic sights so terrifying as the giant portrait of Hindley composed of the handprints of children.
Darwin’s Descent of Man was dominated by the theory of sexual selection, which Darwin used to explain peacock’s tails, but also to argue that white people were as superior to black ones as men were to women.
Nurse Ratched is the evil nurse in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). She is the Evil Woman as autocratic, the absolute power in a psychiatric ward, which is the ultimate “total institution”.
Mata Hari was an erotic dancer who, in 1917, was executed by the French army for treason. She has been portrayed as the ultimate femme fatale, extracting information from hapless men through exploiting her sensual charms.
Amelia Dyer was one of the most prolific murderers in Victorian Britain. She made a living as a “baby farmer”, or someone paid to care for unwanted or abandoned infants – except she killed around 400 of them. How could a mother and nurse murder so many defenceless babies?
The Brothers Grimm’s tale of Snow White has been retold dozens of times in print and the cinema over the past two centuries. A central character is the Evil Queen, Snow White’s malevolent stepmother, who tries to kill her with the help of the occult.
London in the 1950s and 60s was a crucible in which West Indian writers, artists, thinkers and scholars imagined new futures for the Caribbean, Britain and the world.
Eve was the original Evil Woman. She was tempted by Satan, introducing sin into the world. In turn, she seduced Adam, bringing the wrath of the Creator upon humanity for all eternity.
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