Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern

He was a country boy, born in 1632, just as England entered the most turbulent period in its history, who never built anything until he was 30 years old but rose to become a glittering architectural talent. 

It is 300 years since Christopher Wren died, aged 90, leaving hundreds of buildings - including St Paul’s Cathedral, 55 City of London churches, the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford  (where he was known as ’that miracle of a youth’) and magnificently tweaked royal palaces at Kensington, Greenwich and Hampton Court. He was an astronomer and geometrician respected across Europe, a founder member of the Royal Society, tried to redesign London after the Great Fire (fat chance) and ended up with arguably the world’s most modest tombstone. 

He also had a profound influence on American architecture, particularly in the Antebellum South. So join Sophie for an hour’s brick-by-brick (or Portland Stone by Portland Stone) deconstruction of the life of legendary English architect, Sir Christopher Wren.

Thursday, May 18, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern

Join Professor Adam Tooze as he shares his insights on the state of the world in these unprecedented times.

Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern

Well, it was stuffed with the great and sometimes good, old Twickenham, the riverside suburb in southwest London now known more for its national rugby stadium than its grand residents. Quite aside from well-connected characters such as Alexander Pope and Horace Walpole, Twining the tea magnate and, much later, the millionaire industrialist Rajan Tate, it was home to a clutch of Pretenders to the French throne, often at the same time as their rivals were in central London. It’s also one of the prettiest places in London, with a stretch of unspoilt eighteenth-century landscaping by the river and one of two surviving Thames foot ferries. Come along for the ride!

Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern

If you are the heir, and not the spare, the way you advertise it is with a coronation, a ceremony that in Britain dates back the best part of a thousand years. Our coronations are also the only surviving mediaeval coronations in the world, something that either fascinates people or makes them think that change is long overdue. So what is it about a circlet of gold, an ancient chair and a gigantic procession? Why? Who started it? Why has Britain’s coronation ceremony survived and why is it in Westminster Abbey. Please wear formal attire. Crowns welcome.

Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern 

Between 1855 and 1937, Paris hosted a series of ever-more extravagant World Exhibitions, displaying everything it considered great, at home and overseas. Huge shows lasting months and attracting millions of visitors, each of these spectacular events was ephemeral with the major part of the displays being dismantled afterwards. A few now world-famous traces have survived and mark the Paris cityscape, while fragments have been recycled in unlikely places. Discover the lasting legacy of these great spectacles.

Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern 

At the end of the 19th century, the great World Exhibition of 1889 and the rich avant-garde artistic reputation of Paris attracted foreign artists to Paris. Many of them ended up in the Montparnasse district on the Left Bank, always hard up and in search of lodgings. Sculptor Alfred Boucher recycled elements from the dismantled pavilions of the 1900 World Exhibition and created a residence for them in the south of the city, La Ruche (Beehive). The artistic effervescence of Montparnasse had begun. The terraces of the boulevard cafés buzzed with painters, writers and dealers speaking in a host of accents. Discover the history of this fascinating neighbourhood, birthplace of the École de Paris art movement.

Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern 

When, in the late 18th century, putrefying corpses started oozing out of cellar walls amongst the vegetables of the whole-sale food market in the heart of Paris, it seemed like a good idea to re-think what the city did with its dead. Next came the task of convincing well-to-do society that they really did want to lie for eternity amongst the working classes. This is the extraordinary story of how Paris embarked on a major upheaval of dead bodies, romanticized death, and succeeded in incorporating the deceased into its fast-evolving urban fabric.

Thursday, April 6, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern

Join Professor Adam Tooze as he shares his insights on the state of the world in these unprecedented times.

Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern 

Just five hundred metres separate the Madeleine church form the Paris Opera House. Yet, in between these iconic buildings, crammed into this short stretch of quintessential Parisian boulevard, are the birthplaces of cinema and Impressionism, the home of one of Paris, literature and music’s most famous courtesans, the city’s most prestigious music hall, the site of the world’s first georama, and the most beautiful loos in Paris. Come take a stroll with us!