The Enlightenment was a watershed moment in European history, society and culture. Individual merit, thought and emotion were celebrated by thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire and Hume, challenging the established order, and economic power was slowly passing into the hands of a new, industrial class. Such upheavals inevitably generated new explorations in the arts

This course will use ten buildings to explore key aspects of European architecture. The buildings have been chosen for their architectural quality and for their capacity to stand in for architectural trends of their own time as well as those which come earlier and later. The lectures will be free-standing, but interlinked issues concerning structure,

Over the centuries numerous artists have disappeared for a number of reasons, usually because they were not fashionable. But some have not only vanished, they have been deliberately excised from the historical record. Their crime? They were women. But if we explore this rich seam, we can see that these artists not only flourished, but

This series of lectures will look at art in relation to science. Although the two subjects are often pitted against each other, on account of their apparent subjectivity and objectivity, they are joined at the hip. We will explain how the two stories - both epic in their own way - developed together.

The Decameron’s Big Idea is to create an endless pretext for people to tell each other tales (true or false), not just to pass the time but also to outdo one other in narrative brilliance. Boccaccio’s biography reads like one of the tales: he might have been born in Florence, or in rural Tuscany at

Today, we use the Middle Ages as a touchstone for all that is crude, primitive and ignorant, but does this really accord with the radiant windows of Chartres, the elegance of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, the soaring cathedrals and ravishing aristocratic manuscripts? We will look at the range and accomplishment of the arts,

The ancient Italian cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried during the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in late August 79 CE.

Following a successful introductory course to garden history in 2020, Stephen Smith returns with this series of lectures covering the history of European gardens. The course will cover the evolution of garden design as well as the progress of botany and horticultural science in countries across the Continent from the Renaissance to the Twentieth century.