For the Love of Learning since 1597

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. 

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    Darwin‘s Troubled Legacy

    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.

    The Secrets of Darwin’s Greenhouse

    Despite the controversy, evolution was widely accepted by many naturalists within a few years of the Origin’s appearance. An important reason for this rapid triumph was Darwin’s botanical works. Seen through evolutionary eyes, plants proved to be mobile, carnivorous, sensitive – even crafty.

    Making a Monkey out of Darwin

    When Darwin finally published the On the Origin of Species, he tried to avoid controversy by ignoring human origins. Yet evolution was soon being attacked as the godless ‘monkey theory’.

    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.

    Musorgsky's Boris Godunov

    Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov (1872) is set in the ‘Time of Troubles’, using Pushkin’s incisive verse tragedy on the chaotic period preceding the establishment of the Romanovs.

    Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

    The rousing finale of Mikhail Glinka's patriotic A Life for the Tsar (1836) guaranteed it a place as the traditional season opener in Russian opera houses.

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