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Humphry Davy and his Experiments with Nitrous Oxide

A question from the lecture 'The History of Local Anaesthesia'...

Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Use of Personification

'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.

Medieval Carols

Jeremy Summerly traces the early history of the world’s favourite musical genre with sung illustrations from the St Luke's Carollers of Chelsea.

Shakespeare's Astronomy

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?

The Growth of London as a Port from Roman to Medieval Times

How might the study of the first 1,500 years of London's port history (encapsulating profound changes ranging from location, infrastructure and technology to variations in river levels) help when making predictions for the future?

Anne of Cleves: Beauty and the Art of Hans Holbein

Did Holbein con Henry VIII into marrying Anne of Cleves...

Medieval Music: The Lands of the Bell Tower

This final lecture of the series, given in the church whose bells are commemorated in nursery rhyme as the ‘bells of the Old Bailey’, will explore the place of the bell tower and its inhabitants in the medieval imagination.