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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.
Excavations have recently uncovered much evidence of Roman London, including fragments of 405 waxed stylus writing-tablets that can be dated to AD 50-90. Roger Tomlin explains how he deciphered the tablets and what can be learned from them.
Roman London was founded on the banks of the Thames to take advantage of the tidal river for traffic trade and communications. But precisely where were the bridge and the harbour, and what did they look like?
'When well-appareled April on the heel / Of limping winter treads'. A calendar month cannot dress, nor can a season walk. This lecture will explore the magic of personification in Shakespeare's poetry.
Amongst all his astronomical allusions, Shakespeare demonstrates a deep knowledge of the night sky and its movements, including the new Copernican world-view. What can we learn of Elizabethan astronomy and Shakespeare's knowledge of it from the plays?
This lecture will explore Utopia’s links both with London and with the civic culture of Renaissance Europe more generally. It will focus on the significance of Utopia at the time when it was written, with some reflections on its remarkably varied legacy.
With London already Europe’s biggest metropolitan consumer market and continuing to grow, and the move to ever larger container ships in the Port, what is the future for the River Thames?