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City of London Festival lectures
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1
London-Derry Connections: The early years, 1613-1640 - Dr Ian Archer
by GreshamCollege 320 views
How did the City of London come to be involved in the Irish plantation? How well did the City discharge its obligations as colonial entrepreneurs on behalf of the English crown? Why did Charles I seek to confiscate the City's holdings in the 1630s?
In this lecture Dr Ian Archer, a historian of early modern London, explores the early years of the Londonderry plantation, showing the reluctance with which the Londoners took it on, but suggesting that they made the best of a difficult job. It brings out the challenges of colonial development and shows how the project soured relations between the City and the Stuart crown, the confiscation proving to be a major element in the breakdown of the regime in the 1640s.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/london-derry-connections-the-early-years-1613-1640
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege -
2
The Tree of Life - Dr Richard Chartres
by GreshamCollege 915 views
Illuminating one of the City of London Festival's main themes, the Bishop of London will explore trees as spiritual, mystical and religious symbols of faith and life.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-tre
e-of-lifeGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege -
3
Poetry Of War - Gillian Clarke
by GreshamCollege 184 views
Poet Gillian Clarke has responded through her writing to many of the world's wars and troubles -- for this special event she will read from her own work and that of war poets such as Wilfred Owen.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/poetry-of-war
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege -
4
Stravinsky, Britten and the Lure of the Classical Past - Professor Jonathan Cross
by GreshamCollege 242 views
Professor Cross examines the themes of metamorphosis and other classical myths in music.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/stravinsky-britten-and-the-lure-of-the-classical-past
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege -
5
Treaty-Making and International Relations - Professor Jack Spence OBE
by GreshamCollege 238 views
Professor Spence will explore the impact of the Treaty of Utrecht - 300 years after its creation - and other major treaties, and of the role of diplomacy.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/treaty-making-and-international-relations
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege -
6
The Plane Forest: Does the City have the right trees? - Hugh Johnson OBE
by GreshamCollege 252 views
The City of London actively seeks to make the most of its green spaces and plant trees wherever possible. But does it plant the right sort of trees? What are the right sort of trees?
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7
Sir Andrew Motion on William Wordsworth's "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"
by GreshamCollege 1,942 views
Sir Andrew Motion reads one of his favourite poems, William Wordsworth's "She dwelt among the untrodden ways".
He proceeds this with a short description of why the poem means so much to him, and follows it with a particular story of how much such poems can come to strengthen us when we are at our most vulnerable.
For Sir Andrew, the last line is "one of the greatest and one of the simplest lines of all English poetry."
"[It] registers a devestating loss, but admits as it does so, that any more conprehensive account of grief is impossible. It is a very beautiful lyric built on solid ground, [...] but built above a huge subterranean cavern of silence."
This is an extract from the lecture 'Resetting the Human Compass: The Use and Value of the Arts' which was given as a part of the 2012 City of London Festival. The full hour-long lecture be accessed on the Gresham College website here:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/resetting-the-human-compass-the-use-and-value-of-the-arts
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There is currently nearly 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gresham-College/14011689941 -
8
Sir Andrew Motion on Alice Oswald's 'Wedding'
by GreshamCollege 842 views
Sir Andrew Motion reads the sonnet, 'Wedding', by Alice Oswald, and offers some short thoughts on its greatness.
Sir Andrew argues that the poem's "rush and change of the poem is its own point. It makes us think, first and foremost, about transformations, about the changes that love creates, and the changes that art creates, as it takes hold of familiar experience, illuminates it and passes it back to us as something deeper and refreshed."
The poem, Sir Andrew believes, shows exhilaration, "the breathless catching of love's breathlessness", but also rapture...
"...And when the luck begins, it is like a wedding, which is like love, which is like everything"
This is an extract from the lecture 'Resetting the Human Compass: The Use and Value of the Arts' which was given as a part of the 2012 City of London Festival. The full hour-long lecture be accessed on the Gresham College website here:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/resetting-the-human-compass-the-use-and-value-of-the-arts
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There is currently over 1,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gresham-College/14011689941 -
9
Sir Andrew Motion on Seamus Heaney's 'Posterity'
by GreshamCollege 1,238 views
Sir Andrew Motion reads Seamus Heaney's poem 'Posterity' and reflects on what it could mean for us and our relation to the world.
In the sonnet, Posterity, by Seamus Heaney a wind is catches "the heart off guard and blow[s] it open."
Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate describes this as the moment when "the speaker of the poem forgets himself and becomes open to the world in which he exists; the world of seen things, and of unseen things."
So the poem addresses the problem at the centre of poetic and human experience: that "speech, the thing that makes us what we are and which is central to our humanity, is doomed always to do less than we want it to do." Thus the poem acts "to put us in our place, as humans; to put us in our place, in a way that only art can."
Sir Andrew Motion sees this poem by Heaney as one of the great examples of what art can do to express the human condition.
This is an extract from the lecture 'Resetting the Human Compass: The Use and Value of the Arts' which was given as a part of the 2012 City of London Festival. The full hour-long lecture be accessed on the Gresham College website here:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/resetting-the-human-compass-the-use-and-value-of-the-arts
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There is currently over 1,300 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gresham-College/14011689941 -
10
Resetting the Human Compass: The Use and Value of the Arts - Sir Andrew Motion
by GreshamCollege 765 views
How might the arts help 'reset' the direction of the human compass in our difficult times? Is an instrumentalist approach to the arts and culture ever a good thing? Knighted for his services to literature and Poet Laureate from 1999 -- 2009, Sir Andrew Motion proposes answers to these questions, with reference to his own education as well as poems by Alice Oswald, Seamus Heaney and William Wordsworth.
This lecture was given as a part of the 2012 City of London Festival. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/resetting-the-human-compass-the-use-and-value-of-the-arts
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There is currently over 1,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gresham-College/14011689941 -
11
The Lost World of 1962 - Dominic Sandbrook
by GreshamCollege 1,679 views
In this lecture, Dominic Sandbrook, the acclaimed historian of Sixties Britain, marks the 50th anniversary of the City of London Festival by looking back at Britain in 1962. Fifty years on, the Britain of Harold Macmillan, Acker Bilk, Jimmy Greaves and James Hanratty feels like a vanished world. But was life back then really so different?
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-lost-world-of-1962
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
12
Human Livelihoods Depend on Wild Flowers: Kew's Millennium Seed Bank explained - Dr Robert Probin
by GreshamCollege 512 views
In this talk Dr Robin Probert explains why human livelihoods depend so much on wild plant diversity. He outlines the current threats to wild plants across the globe and how Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership works to conserve plants and make seeds available for habitat repair, re-introduction and research. Current work in the UK that aims to restore wildflower meadows and other threatened habitats is also highlighted.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/human-livelihoods-depend-on-wild-flowers-kew%E2%80%99s-millennium-seed-bank -explained
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
13
Trading Places and Travelling: Musical Legacies of the Hanseatic League - Dr Geoffrey Webber
by GreshamCollege 722 views
The cities of Northern Europe developed their trading links with our own City of London. An important by product of their economic success was the flowering of culture in all these cities and their attraction of talent from other places.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/trading-places-and-travelling-musical-legacies-of-the-hanseatic-league
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
14
Berlioz's Requiem: The Grande Messe des Morts and the Absence of God - David Cairns
by GreshamCollege 973 views
David Cairns delivers this lecture on Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts Op. 5 (Requiem), ahead of the City of London Festival performance of the piece by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Colin Davis, which took place at St. Paul's Cathedral.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-grande-messe-des-morts-and-the-absence-of-god
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
15
Nga Reo o te Whenua (Voices of the Land): Traditional Maori Instruments and Music - Richard Nunns
by GreshamCollege 9,013 views
In his solo presentation of traditional instruments (taonga puoro), Richard Nunns introduces his audience to the ancient sound world of the Mäori of Aotearoa New Zealand. For each presentation he chooses from among fifty different instruments - mainly percussion or flutes and trumpets. Made from materials such as wood, bone, stone and shell, many of the instruments are carved in exquisite detail.
The voices of the traditional instruments had rarely been heard since the early nineteenth century. Nunns's musicality and facility in playing the instruments are underpinned by his extensive scholarship and research. In a report of a recent workshop, Tewe Eru (Tuwharetoa) said "It's sad that so much of this traditional knowledge has been lost to us, so I'm here to learn. Richard is an encyclopaedia and I can't get enough of it!"
This presentation is interwoven with stories about the instruments and their functions within the rituals and ceremonies of a traditional community.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the on the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/voices-of-the-land-nga-reo-o-te-whenua
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. -
16
Percy Grainger: Australia's greatest composer? - Professor Malcolm Gilles
by GreshamCollege 557 views
We can think of world-leading Australians in sport (Don Bradman), media ownership (Rupert Murdoch) and film (Nicole Kidman). In music, some great performers come to mind, especially female singers (Nellie Melba, Joan Sutherland). But how many people can even name an Australian composer? In his Gresham Lecture, Malcolm Gillies probes this elusive category of greatness. Percy Grainger (1882-1961), the composer of Country Gardens, is often mentioned as a contender. But, despite his birth, was he really Australian, was he primarily a composer, and what was so great about him, anyway?
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the on the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/percy-grainger-australias-greatest-composer
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
17
Birdsong and Music - David Matthews
by GreshamCollege 730 views
Many composers have been influenced by birdsong. Mozart treasured the songs of his pet starling, even giving the bird a ceremonial funeral. David Matthews, one of Britain's leading composers, has always been interested in the incorporation of the natural world into his music, recently even including birdsong in some recent compositions. This lecture offers an opportunity for reflection on the relations between music and the natural world and how a composer can be brought closer to one through the other and vice versa.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the on the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/birdsong-and-music
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk -
18
Culture and Resistance: Indigenous Responses to a Globalised World - Michael Walling
by GreshamCollege 568 views
This lecture looks at the place occupied by indigenous cultures in today's globalised world.
At a time when the world is confronted with economic insecurity, ecological instability and endemic cultural dilution, Michael Walling points towards alternative approaches to living which embody the struggle for physical and cultural survival in the face of environmental insecurity, corporate aggression and the criminalization of indigenous lifestyles and social protests.
The lecture explores some of the ways in which indigenous artists are drawing off their rich cultural inheritances to confront and resist the global concerns facing us today.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the on the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/culture-and-resistance-indigenous-responses-to-a-globalised-world
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk
