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In the first of a series of lectures on English Romanticism, Jonathan Bate will go on a journey from the Scottish Highlands to a teenage suicide in London to the Geneva of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in search of the origins of Romanticism.
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.
The Rape of Lucrece set the mould for Shakespeare’s exploration of the tragic consequences of sexual desire turning to violence. Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare developed these themes from his reading of the great Roman poet Ovid.
Simon Thurley, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment unearths the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and shows how influential they were.
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.
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.