Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
This lecture will explore how the influence of Thomas Becket permeated city life in medieval London until Henry VIII ordered the destruction of his shrine and the removal of his name from all liturgical books.
Medieval England was proudly Catholic and ostentatiously loyal to Rome. But from the late sixteenth century until recent times – and even now – anti-Catholic prejudice has been a cornerstone of English and British identity.
Sir Richard Evans, one of the world's foremost authorities on modern German history, asks why the Republic failed in its attempt to make Germany democratic, and what lessons can be learned for the future of democracy in the 21st century.
Professor MacMillan, a specialist in British imperial history and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries, will consider if the treaty led to the outbreak of the Second World War and whether the attempt to create a new world order was a failure.
This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended, anticipating the centenary commemorations in 2018. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one.
Leading actor and Shakespeare scholar Michael Pennington discusses the direct effect on the dramatist's writing of the theatres he wrote for, so different from ours.
Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it has returned as an instrument of state policy.