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Powell and Pressburger: The Matter of Britain

World War Two set British filmmakers a challenge: to be relevant and entertaining and to inspire without patronising. Powell and Pressburger brought wit and imagination to their task, questioning what Britain stood for, warts and all.

Archers Assemble: Creating The Powell-Pressburger Partnership

This lecture explores how the partnership worked during the 1940s, drawing in collaborators from many backgrounds who also excelled, and benefiting from the extraordinary conditions of wartime Britain.

Byron and the Age of Sensation

Jonathan Bate will explore the life and work of the original celebrity poet - Lord Byron.

Prokofiev's War and Peace

Sergei Prokofiev’s War and Peace (1953) was an adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel begun during WWII. He saw it as a personal interpretation of the novel.

The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and his Friends

Jonathan Bate will track Keats to Hampstead and tell of the extraordinary circle of writers – opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, essayist Charles Lamb, master-critic William Hazlitt – who wrote for The London Magazine, until its gifted editor was killed in a duel with a rival critic.

London Belongs to Us: Street-Life and New Wave British Cinema of the 1960s

In the 1960s, British filmmakers broke out of the studio to find new subjects among the young, fashionable and disadvantaged, seen in their natural habitats – not only in the North and Midlands, but in unfamiliar parts of London.

The Greatest Speech of all Time: Pericles' Funeral Oration

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.

Gender, Marriage, Divorce and Human Sexuality

This lecture examines the relevant references in the New Testament (which are surprisingly fewer than references to money or violence) particularly in the context of ancient Jewish and Roman assumptions. Can a ‘biblical’ view of sexuality and gender assist today’s ethical debates?

Ruskin at 200: The Art Critic as Word-Painter

Ruskin’s Bicentenary on 8 February 2019 will be marked by an assessment of his achievement as an art critic.

How to be a Shakespearean Atheist

This lecture will explore how the sixteenth century found ways of distancing itself from religion.

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