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Change & Challenge: the history of Bath’s Assembly Rooms
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathYou've visited Bath's Assembly Rooms, but what do you actually know about them? Bath’s Upper Assembly Rooms have faced many threats over their 250 year life. After a glamorous heyday, the Rooms sank into neglect and disrepair: even a grand restoration in 1938 ended in ruin after a direct hit from an incendiary bomb in...
Is Poetry some sort of Joke?!
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathDid I tell you the one about the comic and the poet?! Join an upcoming BRLSI talk looking at where the worlds of comedy and poetry intersect and how both genres offer a similarly anarchic take on the world around them. Duncan McGibbon explores what the two genres share in common and delivers a rather...
What is the basis of ethics?
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathThe tradition holding that our ethical assertions express sentiments or attitudes has a long history. Its distinguished proponents include the Scottish “sentimentalists” David Hume and Adam Smith, and in the last century Freddie Ayer and Charles Stevenson. But in 1965 Peter Geach produced an argument, derived from points made by Gottlob Frege, which seemed to...
Mr Pulteney’s Bridge: the first 250 years
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathPulteney Bridge has become a major Bath icon, the only Georgian bridge in the world to have a complete row of shops on both sides. That’s not how it started off, so how did the bridge end up like that? As if the hurdles that Pulteney had to overcome weren’t intriguing enough, by the time...
Putting climate change solutions on the supermarket shelf
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathTackling human-induced climate change requires solutions at every level; how about in the supermarket? In this talk, Professor Chris Chuck will give an overview of three major projects that he has led over the last few years where the team has taken a fundamental scientific idea, modelled the economic and climate impacts and further developed...
Reaching across the gulf of space: William Huggins at 200
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathJoin us as we continue to celebrate other notable bicentenaries this year! 2024 marks 200 years since the birth of Sir William Huggins, the Victorian pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy. In this talk, Hugh Allen - Chairman of the Wells & Mendip Astronomers, Herschel Society member and lifelong amateur astronomer - celebrates William’s life and work,...
The RSPCA at 200 – past, present & future
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathJoin us for another talk celebrating our fellow 200 year old institutions! In the 200 years since the RSPCA was founded, the charity has changed attitudes, behaviours and laws towards animals and, as a society, we have revolutionised the way we think, feel and act towards them. We’ll look at the history of the world’s...
William Holburne: A life in objects
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathTwo hundred years ago, in the founding year of Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Sir William Holburne embarked on a grand tour of Europe, lasting till 1825. This tour sparked his career as a collector, spanning 50 years. Holburne came to be known as a respected collector of paintings, silverware, and the decorative arts,...
Literary, lively, learned: Farleigh Castle & Bath in 1824
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathAnother talk to illustrate notable (and in this instance, local) links with BRLSI’s bicentenary! Whilst researching the life and times of her ancestors, the Houltons of the Farleigh Hungerford estate, Dr Mary Redmayne uncovered important links between Colonel John Houlton (1773-1839) of the Somerset Militia and BRLSI. A lively story emerged, from Joseph Houlton (a...
Bluegrass: where it came from & where it’s goin’
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathReady for an evening of live music? Bluegrass, an American musical style, which started in the 1940s is still going strong. Most of us recognise the sound of banjo-led bluegrass from films such as O Brother Where Art Thou and Bonnie and Clyde, and some will remember The Beverley Hillbillies on 1960s television. It was an organic music created by...
The Global Origins of Psychology
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWhat have the philosophers ever done for psychology? Psychology is as old as humanity itself and we have been asking questions about ourselves for millennia. This talk charts the fascinating origin of psychology and draws on numerous themes, structuring the journey via the central theory developed by the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master...
Sustainable Hydrogen for net zero
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWhat are the current status and future prospects of sustainable hydrogen technologies? In the latest talk in our Sustainability series, discover the entire hydrogen value chain - from production, storage, distribution and end use, as well as alternative carriers such as ammonia. Cross-cutting aspects such as safety and social, environmental and economic sustainability will also...
The Discovery of Gravitational Waves
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathIn 1916 Albert Einstein predicted that his new theory of gravitation, now called General Relativity, included wave modes which could propagate in vacuum a little like electromagnetism. These modes - the “gravitational” waves - were predicted by Einstein to be so weak that they would “never be detected”. With the development of electronics, lasers and...
The Shelleys and Bath
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWhat brought the Shelleys to Bath? This talk looks at the association that Percy, the Romantic poet, and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein, had with Bath and of the time they each spent in the city. The works of both Percy, born into an aristocratic family but who was open to free thinking and...
The Voices of Bob Dylan
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathHe’s been called the voice of his generation, but people have not always been complimentary about the voice of Bob Dylan. To many, Dylan’s songs sound better when sung by other people, but this talk presents the argument that Bob Dylan’s vocal talents are as central to his art as his song writing. With the...
Rome’s African emperor & his campaigns in Scotland
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWhat made Septimius Severus one of the first great reforming emperors of the imperial Roman military, and how did he concentrate power around the imperial throne and create a reset of the Roman Empire based around allies from his North African homeland? Since the 1970s, new archaeological evidence has come to light to illuminate the...
The Welsh in Afghanistan, 1839-2022
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathFor nine years, BBC Wales journalist Gareth Jones followed the Queen’s Dragoon Guards - The Welsh Cavalry - as they took on insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he is coming to BRLSI to give a first-hand account of an ambush in which the Queen’s Dragoon Guards were attacked by the Taliban in Afghanistan in...
Who Owns the Moon?
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathOne of Britain’s leading intellectuals, Professor A C Grayling, joins us to take a philosophical stance on the subject of the Moon. Does history give us confidence that humankind's rapidly approaching commercial exploitation and possible colonisation of the moon will be peaceful and constructive, or further reason for conflict, trouble and wars? If we look...