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.
'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.
George V’s reign coincided with the fall from power of five emperors, eight kings and eighteen other dynasties. But in Britain the monarchy gained in popular esteem and this helped to preserve parliamentary government in the difficult years between the wars.
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.
Edward VII had an instinctive understanding of the human side of monarchy. At home he faced a constitutional crisis when the House of Lords rejected the budget in 1909. The crisis remained unresolved at Edward’s death in 1910.
A discussion of the rise and fall of the British Empire through the history of ten cities, exploring how their architectural, planning, and commercial history elucidates their place within the imperial story.