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.
Medieval England was proudly Catholic and ostentatiously loyal to Rome. But from the late sixteenth century until recent times – and even now – anti-Catholic prejudice has been a cornerstone of English and British identity.
In 431 BCE the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time, his Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The occasion was at the funeral of the first Athenian soldiers to lose their lives in the Peloponnesian War.
Leading actor and Shakespeare scholar Michael Pennington discusses the direct effect on the dramatist's writing of the theatres he wrote for, so different from ours.
Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it has returned as an instrument of state policy.
Simon Lancaster believes that the successful speechwriter is less of a puppeteer and more of an impressionist. In his talk, he will share a number of stories and anecdotes from his time as speechwriter.
This final lecture will show how Shakespeare helped to immortalize the famous figures of ancient Greece and Rome, and how he in turn became famous after his death.
Login
