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.
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.
Is there is a level playing field between participants at inquests? What does ‘equality of arms’ mean? Is such a concept appropriate when looking at inquests? Are inquiries better? How have they developed since the IRA Death on The Rock case?
The English Reformation – unlike many of the other Reformations convulsing sixteenth-century Europe – was at heart more about politics and law than about religion.
Is the jury system the bulwark of individual liberty? This lecture will look at the role of the so-called “perverse jury” in acquitting defendants where the law, or the charge itself, is deemed unjust.
How do we investigate violent and unexpected deaths at the inquest? Who investigates? When do deaths get referred to the Coroner? Are inquests non-adversarial and inquisitorial? When do you have a jury? What are findings, determinations and conclusions (aka verdicts)? Can you appeal?
Most English people initially saw the Reformation as an unexpected catastrophe, wrenching their religious lives out of shape, and stripping their communities of resources they had naively believed belonged to them.
Rachmaninov is considered by many to be the greatest composer-pianist in history. But his very popularity has left the complexity and subtlety of his music underappreciated.
Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) is one of the most recognisable and romanticised figures of British history. Born in Rome as a Catholic prince on 31 December 1720, he led the Jacobite Rising of 1745, which came closer than anyone expected to changing Great Britain irrevocably.
This lecture examines the centuries long presence of the African diaspora as an integral part of Britain’s history since Roman times. Unfortunately, this history is still too often ignored, its promotion limited only to October.