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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.
London is home to two of the oldest working theatres in the world both founded by Charles II’s patents. Professor Thurley looks at the significance and impact of these great institutions on the development of London.
Based on new research into the origins of St. James’s, Simon Thurley looks into the ingredients that went into making a court quarter there and the way it formed a blueprint for the new West End of London.
It is well known that Shakespeare lived in an age of monarchy and wrote powerfully in his English history plays about the duties of the sovereign. In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will tell another, forgotten story: of how Shakespeare was also fascinated by Roman political models.
Simon Thurley, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment unearths the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and shows how influential they were.
Catherine Roach uncovers what we learn from the romance story about today’s changing norms for gender and sexuality and about the nature of happiness and love.
In the first of two lectures with the theme ‘Merchants, Money and Megalomania’, Simon Thurley will unearth the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and show how influential they were.
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.
Jonathan Bate tells the story of how and why Shakespeare was steeped in the classics, from his earliest plays such as Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors to his dramatisations of the stories of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
This opening lecture of the series, with musical illustrations, will use documents, poetry and images to bring the instrument to life, with a particular focus on the autobiography of the beguiling Tudor musician Thomas Whythorne.