Behind the sublime precision and expressive power of Bach’s music lies a mischievous spirit. From puzzle canons (where the performer must solve a riddle to reach the score), melodies that run upside-down and backwards against themselves, hidden symbols, endless loops, to the embedding of numbers and names into the music, this lecture explores Bach’…

This lecture was recorded by Martin Daunton on 22nd October 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Martin is Visiting Professor of Economic History. Martin was also Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, between 2004 and 2014, and he is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge. The transcript of the lecture is available from t…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gtCsGQ14nU0 This lecture examines ‘Send in the Clowns’, probably the most commercially successful song written by the revered Stephen Sondheim. Yet it confounds the expectations of a showstopper by being written for an actress of limited singing ability, the late Glynis Johns. This lecture reflects on ho…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/wiAFxEnq8t4 Gresham College has been delivering public lectures since 1597 through times of great social, political and technological change. Its commitment to deliver lectures for free to the general public has led to intermittent financial challenges to its generous sponsors. The arrival of the interne…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/YltPv0VUFgQ With the ongoing war in Ukraine, long-term planning for security in Europe is essential. What will be the role of NATO, EU enlargement, and the support of the UK to ensure a Europe of peace and prosperity? Against the backdrop of Russian aggression, potential changes in US policy and rising p…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRNuI4Vwmk We often think of immunity as being a human, or at least mammalian, phenomenon. But in fact almost all living organisms have some form of immune system. In this lecture we’ll lift the lid on the astonishingly diverse immune mechanisms used by bacteria, amoebae, nematodes and ma…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaTcobzidk In a year of elections, climate change is emerging as a divisive political issue, and in many countries for the first time. This may be partly a consequence of past efforts to keep it apolitical through over-reliance on stealth policies and technocratic institutions. This lectu…

While Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens are now the best-known lawgivers of Greek antiquity, there were many others, from king Minos in Crete to Zaleucus and Charondas in southern Italy. This lecture explores the specific roles attributed to Greek lawgivers in fact and legend, revealing how and why they captured later political imaginations – …

This first lecture looks at the power that is given to advocates in a country that has a constitutional structure like the US. I have brought The American Constitution powers an American lawyer in ways unavailable to the British. I will illustrate this difference from my own experience of bringing 88 cases against the President of the US. I have th…

What is modern Paganism, and how does it relate to witchcraft, Druidry and other phenomena? This lecture is designed to answer that question, and in doing so to provide an overview of the different traditions that make up Paganism today. It will show what they have in common, and what makes each one unique. It will suggest the ways in which Paganis…

Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCDvsq6N5g For centuries scientists have tried to identify what is special about the human brain. How do we approach this problem from a mathematical standpoint? The first hypothesis is that bigger is better, in some sense. In this introductory lecture, scaling laws and simple ideas from …

The first lecture in the series considers the most famous telescope of all, the Hubble space telescope. A project more than forty years in the making, Hubble overcame an initial disaster with a misshapen mirror to drive a revolution in every part of astronomy, providing iconic views of everything from a comet crashing into Jupiter to a surprisingly…

Many decades ago, as a young graduate from drama school, I was presented with a stark choice – either to shape my story myself, through writing, or to feel aggrieved at the detrimental narratives circulating about people like me in Britain at that time. I chose the latter, and in this talk I will talk about how story-making is a conscious act of sp…

The Gray's Inn Reading 2024 Does the UK’s constitution provide too much freedom for those that wish to abuse it? Specific examples of this might include Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking during COVID, the selection of Liz Truss as Prime Minister, the ability of the Government to force controversial policies (such as the Rwanda Bill) and th…

In The Republic, Plato explores the predicament of the Cave: a passive citizen body, a conniving and self-interested set of sophistic opinion-formers and demagogic political leaders, a systematically misleading and damaging order of political structures and common beliefs and appetites. Does this have lessons for tackling climate change? In clingin…

This lecture will explore the world of the second Bloomsbury generation, delving into the intricacies of being young and queer in the 1920s, and how their open way of living and loving is still relevant to our present day. Lesser known than their predecessors, they continued the celebration of freedom of expression and creativity. The lecture will …

One of the crucial ideas in finance is that markets are efficient – that they fully reflect all available information. If so, what about market bubbles? Over the last year, people have been willing to pay exorbitant amounts for extremely odd assets such as Non-Fungible Tokens, meme stocks etc. Why do they do this? This lecture will explore some inv…

This lecture confronts the worldwide phenomenon of the persecution of suspected witches, now a serious, contemporary problem condemned by the UN in 2021. It will show what has been unusual about Europe in this global pattern, and why the notorious early modern witch hunts there commenced and ended. This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on 5th …

The idea of proof is fundamental to mathematics. We could argue that science consists of testable theories, and therefore that it is about what can be disproved, not what can be proved. In law, the test is “beyond reasonable doubt”. Famous conjectures in mathematics have been tested by computers for trillions of numbers – but we still call them con…

Socrates sought to test the expertise of everyone around him: the bombastic know-it-alls, the bashful youths, the confident generals, those (including the enslaved) with unsuspected mathematical competence, the workaday artisans. Aristotle later explored the ways in which expert claims can be made credible to popular judgement. This lecture conside…

The final lecture in the series returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, considering the cosmic microwave background. This oldest light in the Universe, emitted just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, contains the seeds of the structures we see around us, and tells us about conditions at the Universe's beginning. It will als…

This lecture traces the history of race and disability law in the English education system. It examines the impact of discriminatory policies on Black children, children of colour, and disabled children, and how narratives around race and disability have changed. The lecture questions why inequality persists and explores possible solutions. This le…

Logarithms were perhaps once thought of as just an old-fashioned way to do sums on slide rules. But they underpin much of modern life, from modelling the COVID pandemic to Claude Shannon’s mathematical theory of information (which makes mobile phones a reality) and making sense of Cristiano Ronaldo’s crazy Instagram follower numbers. This lecture w…

Eventually, net zero needs to include everyone: for emissions to continue in half the world while the other half mops them up is both unsustainable and unfair. But this does not mean every country should reach net zero at the same time. Historical emitters like the UK should aim for net zero before the world as a whole, but a “staggered net zero” a…

In every financial transaction, one side has more information than the other. For example, when someone buys a used car, the seller will know better than the buyer whether the car is a plum or a lemon. Does more information leave you better off? One of the fascinating ideas behind the concept of asymmetric information is that more information can l…

This lecture explores the very limits of music: investigating historical efforts to catalogue musical materials including the melacarta of Carnatic music, the wazn of Arabic maqam, Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, Schillinger’s Encyclopedia of Rhythms, Forte numbers, and contemporary attempts to ‘pre-copyright’ every possible m…

Starring in My Fair Lady (1956), The Sound of Music (1965) and Cinderella (1957) gave Dame Julie Andrews unparalleled profile. These were among the most successful Broadway, Hollywood and TV musicals of their time. Yet following this golden decade, she made few films and appeared in no Broadway shows during her forties and fifties, typically an art…

Weather and climate-related events can cause significant mortality and disability. Sudden cold, heat, storms and floods all present risks to health, especially to the most vulnerable. Even in countries with temperate climates like the UK, weather-related deaths can be in the thousands, for example cold snaps causing cardiovascular deaths. In countr…

In this lecture I will show you some mathematical illusions: “proofs” that 1=0, that fractions don’t exist, and more. There are curious and important implications behind what’s going on. These “proofs” reveal some very common logical slips that can go unnoticed when we are trying to prove more plausible statements. And the stakes are high. As I’ll …

Evolution has led from amoebae to blue whales and from algae to giant redwoods. So what might it do in the future? What species might evolve in the next ten million years? How will evolutionary processes change as a result of human innovation and what are the risks of us getting it disastrously wrong? What might evolution look like if we ever set u…

Come take a ride in the Tech Time Machine and explore how IT may change our lives in the next fifty years. By employing techniques used by science fiction writers, we can imagine how Artificial Intelligence, extended reality, mobile connectivity, quantum computing, and others will develop. How will they converge, enable and accelerate each other? W…

What makes a piece of music challenging, bland, intriguing, beautiful or ugly? This lecture explores the concept of ‘musical flavour’ formed by intervallic, rhythmic and timbral components and how they contribute to a sense of consonance and dissonance. In particular we look at the interval vector, a system by which harmonic objects are analysed as…

Boyajian's star, a faint and unprepossessing presence in the constellation of Cygnus, attracted astronomers' attention when it began to flicker alarmingly. We will discuss explanations for its behaviour, from disintegrating comets to alien megastructures, and consider how modern astronomy hunts for the truly unusual objects in the Universe. For thi…

This lecture makes a survey of learned ceremonial magic in Europe throughout history and demonstrates that both of the customary claims made for it by practitioners since the Middle Ages are actually correct: that there is a continuous tradition of it and that it is ultimately derived from ancient Egypt. In doing so, it also shows what is distincti…

Queer urban life has changed dramatically in England over the last seventy years. Shifts in the economy, culture, attitudes, and technology have all played their part in this. London has often been used as the barometer for these shifts, suggesting they were experienced in similar ways across the nation. In an exploration of the queer contours of L…

How are refugees protected in English law? This lecture traces the history of refugee protection, the limits of the Refugee Convention, and changes to the law in recent decades that have made refugees’ lives increasingly difficult. The Government’s latest tranche of policies: the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Rwanda offshoring scheme, ar…

Climate Change is predicted to spark increasing threats to food security and demands for climate reparations, fuelling geopolitical instability. Probably the greatest risk of all, is tension over solar geo-engineering: the idea of reflecting away sunlight deliberately to modify global climate. Recognizing solar geo-engineering as an inherently dest…

Most of the world’s 102 million forcibly displaced people – refugees – lack access to reliable, affordable, sustainable energy. Attempts to provide such energy in refugee camps have been marred by governance challenges, and a lack of technical expertise within humanitarian organisations. But new research discussed in this lecture on the lived exper…

In the Great Depression, producers of food and raw materials complained that they received low prices and paid high prices for industrial imports. Latin America adopted ‘import substituting industrialisation’ to encourage production behind tariff barriers. This approach continued after the war as more countries gained independence. Did this policy …

Evidence that childhood lead exposure caused stunted intelligence and behavioural problems motivated efforts to ban lead in petrol, with the world finally eradicating leaded fuel in 2021. This is a public health success story, but it took a long time to force industry to take action. The lead released from historic emissions persists within the env…

The Black Welsh singer started out recording cover versions of American songbook classics but rose to international fame after her performance of the title song of Goldfinger. Movie songs, successful albums and popular television specials followed, but so too did personal tragedy and a highly critical (and gendered) reputation of her professional b…

We often think of evolution as ‘something that happened’ in the past. But of course, evolution is a constant, powerful process and one that is often unleashed by human behaviours. Often this is deliberate, we’ll look at how artificial selection has shaped our crops, livestock and domestic pets, and we’ll find out how modern science is uncovering th…

We increasingly share with online services intimate details of our lives, such as mental health and reproductive data. Far from being a ‘tick box’ legal exercise, data protection is about fair and responsible use of our personal information. It gives us rights which we are entitled to exercise against mega corporations, governments, and anyone who …

Governments increasingly use detention as a central component of immigration and asylum policy. The lecture addresses several important questions. What does immigration detention look like? How is it a reflection of those societies that tolerate its use and the policies that support and endorse its expansion? What place does it have in the journeys…

Demokratia is the power (kratos) of the people (demos). But what kind of power, and who constitutes the people? Although ancient democracy is often stylized as “direct democracy” and so positioned as very different from modern “representative democracy,” in fact, issues of accountability are central to both. Ancient Greek models of holding leaders …

In partnership with Novartis Treatments and research in cancer are moving very fast, giving new hope to many. This event will bring together speakers in the series to delve further into new treatments and research in cancer, including immunotherapy, genomics and AI imaging. This lecture was recorded by Parker Moss, Dr Richard Sidebottom, Sanjay Pop…

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a combination of hyperactivity, impulsiveness and inattention which significantly impacts those living with the condition. The medical approach to the ADHD pattern of behaviour has been very successful in childhood but the results have been somewhat less impressive in adulthood. This has led to a r…

The Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen has posed the question, ‘equality of what?’ The value of equality depends on what standard is chosen. As ancient Greek thinkers recognized, equality can be deployed to exclude as well as to liberate, and its relationship to law and freedom needs to be interrogated. If equal social freedom is a product of iso…

This lecture looks at the role played by nudity in European religion and magic from ancient times to the present, with some reference to a global context. It reveals the unexpected pattern and explains why it has been marginal to religion, except in initiation ceremonies, but very important in magical practices. This lecture was recorded by Ronald …

The impacts of climate change that probably worry people the most are irreversible changes that affect the entire world, such as a collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet, shutdown of the global thermohaline circulation, loss of the Amazon biome, or a melting of Arctic permafrost. Sudden, unpredictable and irreversible changes can happen in respon…