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An integral part of the tumultuous political events of the century was the cultural ambition of the principal players who form the subject of this lecture.
The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 gave Chinese artists a government that had explicit policies for the arts, seeing them as an essential part of the creation of ‘new China’.
Starting with literary examples from Dickens, this lecture will untangle the complexity of shadow-meaning by exploring how artists have used shadows since ancient times.
Nick Lane will explore the importance of energy flow in shaping life from its very origins to the flamboyant complexity around us, and ask whether energy flow would direct evolution down a similar path on other planets.
Professor Steve Jones will consider sunshine and its effects on health, on sleep, on memory and more: and why today’s twilight world of tablets and smart-phones is taking us back to the middle ages.
Samuel Palmer, in his Shoreham period in the 1820s and 30s, seized on the long tradition of classical pastoral landscapes, and wrested it into an English idiom.
Constable's Stour landscapes of the Regency period, during and just after the War with France, and his publication English Landscape Scenery, champion local and low-key rural England.