HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH (3/12)

When:
November 9, 2016 @ 10:45 am – 12:45 pm
2016-11-09T10:45:00+00:00
2016-11-09T12:45:00+00:00
Where:
The Course at the University Women's Club
2 Audley Square
Mayfair, London W1K
UK
Cost:
£46/£54
Contact:
Mary Bromley
020 7266 7815

Founded in 1994, THE COURSE offers art history lectures, opera and literature courses, guided museum visits and London walks.

More than any other country on the planet, Britain has pooled its constitutional, financial and cultural forces within its capital. In this series of 6 lectures and 6 accompanying walks we will show HOW LONDON BECAME THE GREATEST CITY ON EARTH. Lecturer, Harry Mount, will explore how, over 2,000 years, London has dealt with six of those forces: the monarchy; the law; religion; finance; entertainment; and education. The story of the Reformation, of constitutional monarchy, of Shakespearean theatre, of the public school, of the common law, the story of Britain…. They can all be told through London’s unique collection of buildings.

LEGAL LONDON                            

This lecture (9 November) and walk (16 November) of Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple and Inner Temple will explain the development of legal London from the Temple Church – and the tombs of the Knights Templar – touching on Norman and Early English Gothic architecture. It will then move to the arrival of the lawyers via Middle Temple Hall, the finest Elizabethan hall in London. Middle Temple gateway explains the arrival of classicism while The High Court on the Strand reaches the high point of the French Gothic Revival. Lincoln’s Inn Chapel is the last breath of Perpendicular Gothic in early C17th London. We will look at Lincoln’s Inn as an introduction to early C18th terraces and Lincoln’s Inn Hall, the height of the C19th Tudor Revival. The talk and walk will also be peppered with legal references in history and literature, from Bleak House to Rumpole of the Bailey. Harry Mount was a barrister himself so he has some first-hand experience.