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.
What do we mean by a hero and where does our understanding of the ‘heroic’ idiom come from? In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare’s idea of the hero was shaped by the classical tradition, going back to the ancient tale of Troy and Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid.
The lecture will explore what we know (and don’t know) about sexual violence from a global perspective. How have people in different periods of history and in a variety of countries understood and responded to assaults?
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.
'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?
When should intervention take place to safeguard a child? Areas where harm may arise include children at risk of being radicalised through parents or others promoting terrorism. Emerging law and practice in this area will be examined.
The European Court of Human Rights has been at the crossroads of two legal civilizations: the Continental Civil Law on the one hand and the British Common Law on the other. Here we have two different approaches to reality.