Tag: Gresham College

Immunotherapy With James Larkin, Gresham College, 15 February 2024

It’s been a while since I attended a Gresham lecture live. In Janie’s case, probably not since the most recent of mine…

…which took place before we met James Larkin in 2013 in the most stressful of circumstances, as Janie had a dismal diagnosis/prognosis of melanoma at that time.

The worst did not come to pass, against the odds.

We had been impressed with James Larkin and were keen to see what he had to say about developments with immunotherapies since our formal interactions with him on that topic.

Here is a link to all of the resources from this February 2024 Gresham lecture. Or if you just want to watch the vid, you can click the vid below:

A few of the usual suspects were at Barnard’s Inn Hall that night, including Basil and Lesley from the Gresham Society.

There was a drinks reception after the lecture, which gave me a chance to speak briefly with James. He hadn’t recognised us, unsurprisingly (just one consultation more than 10 years ago) but the dismal nature of that consultation clearly returned to his mind as we spoke.

So, she’s alright? Completely well?

James asked, looking at Janie with a slightly bemused expression on his face. Perhaps I was reading too much into it.

Anyway, fascinating talk.

There’s a panel discussion on this and related topics as part of the same series on 12 March – we’ve registered to follow that one on-line.

Samuel Pepys The Guitarist, Gresham College, 16 May 2018

To St. Sepulchre Without Newgate for the last time (at least for the purposes of this lecture series) to see Christopher Page’s last Gresham lecture. This one covers Samuel Pepys’s interest in the guitar later in his life.

I have long been fascinated by Pepys – indeed one of my working titles for Ogblog was “Mr Poopys’s Diary” – based on the notion that it would be like an on-line cross between Mr Pooter’s Diary and that of Mr Pepys…

…but I digress.

Samuel Pepys
Oh look, I found a public domain portrait of Pepys with music in his hand
Here is a link to the full Gresham College resource on this lecture, including the video. If you simply want to watch the vid, I have embedded it below:

I had missed the previous lecture, The Guitar At The Restoration Court, in March, due to work commitments, but did find the time to watch it on the web ahead of my May visit, so my attendance at today’s Pepys meant that I have seen all six of them; three live and three on the web.

I got to the church in good time and chatted ahead of the lecture with an interesting gentleman who encouraged me to watch Ian Christie’s lectures on early motion pictures and stereo photography – both areas of special interest to me.

I also realised when Christopher Page made his closing remarks that I would find several of his earlier lectures (before this year’s series) fascinating – all early music (apart from his first series which was on romantic period guitar) – and they are all on-line too:

So that will no doubt be some interesting evening activity over the coming weeks and months.

A Couple Of Gresham Lectures To Enhance My “Tudor Guitar” Knowledge, 17 January and 7 February 2018

I felt a little foolish at the end of the Gresham Society soiree in December, when Professor Cox asked me, after seeing my Renaissance guitar and vocal performance of Innsbruck – reported here and below, why he hadn’t seen me at Christopher Page’s lectures on 16th and 17th Century guitar…

Gresham Society Soirée, Barnards Inn Hall, 14 December 2017

…the answer, quite simply, was that I hadn’t even noticed that they were happening. I know I’m supposed to be finding more time for the things I want to do now, but I hadn’t even skimmed the Gresham College lecture list for the 2017/18 year.

Of course, one of the many wonderful things about Gresham College these days is that the lectures are all archived on-line, including in video form.

So over Christmas I caught up with Christopher Page’s series, by watching the first two lectures on-line.

You can find the whole series here – to the extent that it has already been delivered and uploaded by the date when you click through.

I found both lectures absolutely fascinating. I was particularly taken with the notion, which Christopher Page stated very clearly in the first of the lectures, that the Tudor guitar was, to all intents and purposes, a baritone ukulele; i.e. “my” instrument.

I learnt a lot watching those two lectures and/but I realised that such lectures, with live performance included, would be far more stimulating and enjoyable live…

…especially in the beautiful setting of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate…

…which is, after all, within even easier reach of the Z/Yen offices than Gresham College itself (by a few hundred yards).

So I booked out the remaining four dates in my diary and resolved to try my very hardest to organise my City working days around those slots.

I’m glad to report that my plan worked for lectures three and four.

17 January 2018 – The Guitar in the Age of Charles I

This was a wonderful lecture, not least for the diversity of the performances that peppered the lecture. Not only several different stringed instruments – the period covers the transition from four-course gittern-type Tudor instruments to five-course Baroque guitars of the Spanish variety – but also some performance with castanets which was a very pleasant surprise and addition. Christopher Page himself played a bit during this lecture.

So I commend the YouTube below if you can spare the time to watch it – most enjoyable as well as informative:

This link to the Gresham College site itself – click here – not only has the video but also the transcripts and audio file.

I picked up a few ideas for my playing at this lecture, not least realising that even I can muck around with the later Folia progression.

A charming lady sat next to me during this lecture – a visitor from Canada – who was strolling the City – had never heard of Gresham College and had simply wandered in having seen the sign outside the church. She was absolutely transfixed by the lecture and the whole idea of Gresham College. She chatted for a while with me, Professor Francis Cox and Frieda after the lecture; it turned out she was also named Francis.

7 February 2018 – An Englishman (with a Guitar) Abroad

I actually did a slightly better job of organising my work around this day, but that did mean that I really was squeezing in the lectures time slot, but still I was able to get to the church in time to grab a decent seat.

At the time of writing (9 February 2018) the video has not yet been uploaded, but the other resources are there and the lecture will go up in full eventually I am sure…

…update: below is the video of the lecture:

– click here for the full Gresham resource – i.e. the above video plus all other available resources.

Ulrich Wedemeier – the sole performer for this lecture

Again the lecture and the performances were fascinating and interesting.

My fun takeaway from this lecture was a vignette about Charles Stuart (soon to become Charles II) spending 50 livres to transport one guitar and 18 tennis rackets from France to England (presumably in expectation of the Restoration).

Click here for a link to the relevant page in Christopher Page’s book.

This possibly says something about Charles’s relative levels of interest in those two hobbies, but probably says more about his relative playing styles and the fact that broken tennis rackets cannot be repaired in quite the same way that guitars can be restored.

It brought to mind one of my favourite pictures from a busy day a year or so ago when I indulged both hobbies on the same day:

Packing it all in; real tennis and 16th/17th century guitar jam – did Charles Stuart’s consignment look anything like this?

An Unusually Busy Day With Tennis, Middlesex/Saracens and DJ Jamming Session, 9 May 2017

The rest of that day was littered with early music coincidences, which took me back thirty years and involved the Hilliard Ensemble and even Christopher Page’s Gothic Voices project too. Truly weird. Watch this space for a retroblog piece on’t.

Gresham Society AGM and Dinner, National Liberal Club, 4 February 2016

A convivial evening at the National Liberal Club; the Gresham Society AGM and dinner. Michael Mainelli said he was going to miss not only the pre-AGM drinks but even the AGM, so suggested that I leave the office ahead of him.  But by the time I had got there and made his excuses to everyone, he arrived; a good 5-10 minutes before the AGM started.

In the hands of Tim Connell, an AGM is neither painful nor lengthy. So there was time for more chat between the AGM and dinner. Several people were complimentary about my maiden baritone ukulele performance at December’s Gresham Society soiree, which certainly made me feel good at the end of a long day.

I sat next to Elisabeth Mainelli on one side and Noel-Ann Bradshaw from the University of Greenwich on the other side, which made very pleasant company; indeed at Gresham Society functions, pleasant company is more or less guaranteed.

The speaker was Michael Binyon, whose tales of derring-do as foreign correspondent for the times didn’t quite match Boot of The Beast (Scoop is one of my favourite novels) but raised several laughs none-the-less. A memorable tale about Messrs Foot and Healey meeting Brezhnev sticks in my mind, as does the problem of dictation down the phone line which led to the reporting of “dead sea squirrels”. What a by-gone era story that makes, although it occurred within living memory).

No doubt Michael Binyon had to dodge a bullet or two as a correspondent, but he struggled to dodge a “question-bullet” about the Times pay-wall, claiming that the iPad version of the Times is making money now.  As the economists, accountants and operational researchers on our table might put it; that depends on how you count.

I imagine that the merriment continued in the bar long after I sloped away, but at the end of a long day I decided to quit while I was still feeling very much on top.  A most enjoyable evening.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Gresham Nativity Song, Gresham Society Soiree, 9 December 2015

To Gresham College at Barnard’s Inn Hall, for the biennial Gresham Society soiree.  Those of a musical or light entertainment persuasion put on a short variety show, as the scene-setter for a jolly social. The usual assortment of super people gathered; a mixture of professors, former professors/lecturers and Gresham College enthusiasts.

I wrote a version of “I’m Henery The Eighth I Am”, to describe the events that might have led to Thomas Gresham’s birth and eventual financial heroics. I decided to give my recently-acquired baritone ukulele skills an outing this time, not least because I have recently imported a Roosebeck Baritone Baroq-ulele which certainly looked the part for this “piece”.

This was quite a daunting performance for me – I only took up the baritone ukulele 18 months ago, having eschewed all instruments since the disaster that was my attempt at the violin as a small boy. So this was to be my first performance in front of an audience.

Further, the song I chose did not have any simple chord versions to be found on the web; the chorus of course (a big hit for Herman’s Hermits and Joe Brown before them) but not the verse.

So I needed to work out the chords for myself – see attachment with my hand-written notes.  I wrote “capo 1” all over it, as I chorded it in G but it was originally written (and indeed Herman’s Hermits sang it) in A minor. In the end, though, I sang and played it without the capo, i.e. in G major, as the baroq-ulele was a little quiet for the Barnard’s Inn Hall and my voice copes a little better the deeper I go.

The audience participation elements worked well and I am told the performance was well received. In any case, as the compere Professor Tim Connell put it at the start of one of the other acts that evening, “it’s not all about music tonight”. That was certainly the case for my little rendition.

The text that follows has the original verse and chorus, by Fred Murray and R P Weston, followed by two verses of my own. Shown in the text below the music notes and then further below as viewable JPEGs and also a downloadable PDF.But, as Michael Mainelli said, there’s probably only one music hall in the world that will really appreciate my Thomas Gresham verses for the song; Barnard’s Inn Hall.

♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬

THE THOMAS GRESHAM NATIVITY SONG

(Song to the Tune of “I’m Henery The Eighth, I Am”)

FIRST VERSE

You don’t know who you’re looking at, now have a look at me,

I’m a bit of a nob I am, belong to Royaltee;

I’ll tell you how it came about, I married widow Burch,

And I was King of England, when I toddled out of church.

Outside the people started shouting, “Hip hooray”;

Said I, “Get down upon your knees its Coronation Day.”

CHORUS 

I’m Henery the eighth I am, Henery the eighth I am, I am

I got married to the widow next door

She’s been married seven times before

Everyone was a Henery (AUDIENCE: Henery)

She wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam (AUDIENCE: or a Sam) 

I’m her eighth old man named Henery,

I’m Henery the eighth I am.

SECOND VERSE (different from the first; different from the original too)

I’m not so good with money if I’m left upon me own,

So I called my mate, Dick Gresham, who could organize a loan;

I said, “I need the wonga, but I can’t afford the fleece,

Get terms I can afford or else we’ll end up just like Greece”;

Dick planned long finance, so he said, “thy will be done,

Your brood will still need Greshams’ help, I’d better pop a son.”

CHORUS 

I’m Henery the eighth I am, Henery the eighth I am,

I am I got married to the widow next door

She’s been married seven times before

Everyone was a Henery (AUDIENCE: Henery)

She wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam (AUDIENCE: or a Sam) 

I’m her eighth old man named Henery, I’m Henery the eighth I am.

THIRD VERSE (different again!)

So Dick, he had a son named Tom, as smart as smart could be,

And when my Ted went brassic, Tommy saved the currency;

My Mary fared no better, Tommy had to bail her out,

And Liz retained his services, though she was more adroit.

All raise a glass to Tom, without him we’d be poor,

Bad money drives out good, I say, and call it Gresham’s Law.

CHORUS AND OUTRO 

I’m Henery the eighth I am,

Henery the eighth I am,

I am I got married to the widow next door

She’s been married seven times before

Everyone was a Henery (AUDIENCE: Henery)

She wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam (AUDIENCE: or a Sam) 

I’m her eighth old man named Henery, I’m Henery the eighth I am. 

H-E-NRY, ‘Enery, (AUDIENCE: ‘Enery) 

‘Enery the Eighth I am, I am, Henery the Eighth I am! 

 

Gresham Song Page One of TwoGresham Song Page Two of Two

The Thomas Gresham Nativity Song With My Chords and Hand Written chords.

Click here or below for a link to see Harry Champion’s original version of this song.

 

Changing Money: Communities & Longer Term Finance & You, Ian Harris, Gresham College, Museum Of London, 16 November 2010

This was my second Gresham Lecture (the first was in 2008 – click here).

A larger audience for this one, at the Museum of London; slightly more intimidating feel to the platform too (Barnards Inn Hall sort-of feels like home).

Still, by all accounts it went well. But then people would say that, to me, wouldn’t they? You can judge for yourself, here is a link to all of the resources for the lecture – transcript, slides, the lot.

Or take a look at the YouTube below if it is just the lecture you are interested in:

Guns, pens, cattle, face-painting…all money, of sorts.

After the lecture and post-lecture reception, we decamped to the Bleeding Heart Bistro for dinner.

Sir Thomas Gresham Finance Lecture & Dinner With Anne Craine, East Wintergarden, 2 November 2010

Michael Mainelli was organising this prestigious event each year at that time. 2010 was the year of Anne Craine, Minister for the Treasury, Isle of Man.

Here is a link to the Gresham College resources for that lecture.

Below is embedded is the lecture itself.

I was an honoured guest at the dinner with Anne afterwards, which I’m pretty sure was at the Four Seasons Canary Wharf (at the time of writing, April 2020, the Canary Wharf Riverside Plaza).

Good meal and interesting discussion over dinner.

Sir Thomas Gresham Finance Lecture & Dinner With Charlie McCreevy, East Wintergarden, 10 September 2009

Michael Mainelli was organising this prestigious event each year at that time. 2009 was the year of Charlie McCreevy.

Here is a link to all the Gresham College resources on that lecture, including a video of the lecture itself.

I was an honoured guest at the dinner with Charlie afterwards, which I’m pretty sure was at the Four Seasons Canary Wharf (at the time of writing, April 2020, the Canary Wharf Riverside Plaza).

Good meal and interesting discussion over dinner.

Several Friends And Family Events In The Space Of A Few Days, 21 To 24 May 2009

Thursday 21 May 2009

Janie might try to deny that she attended Michael Mainelli’s last Gresham lecture in his series as Professor of Commerce, but all the evidence suggests she was there 21 May 2009. Her diary. My diary. Worst of all, CCTV evidence if you merely look at the thumbnail of the video – click here.

Back then, of course, that four year series of lectures was the bedrock of what would become a joint magnum opus between me and Michael, The Price Of Fish. So that last lecture of the series was both a milestone and a landmark personal event. I suspect we all ended up at The Cheshire Cheese for a Samuel Johnson-inspired meal afterwards.

But before that, we held a reception in the Headmaster’s Study at Barnard’s Inn Hall, during which someone without question will have told me I look like the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, a copy of which hangs in that study. I’d been handling that quip in that place since 2005 and at the time of writing (2020) am still handling it there and in other places.

Friday 22 May 2009

I did some work in the morning before heading down to Balham/Streatham Hill, where I treated my mum to lunch at a delicatessen named Fat. Now long gone. I rather liked it, but mum had her favourite places (by that time I think there was a Parisian-style cafe, also in Balham, which she favoured) so I don’t think we went there a second time.

Postscript: actually it looks as though Mum, me and Janie went to Fat together the following Sunday (31 May), so I have a feeling I might have posited the idea of Fat with mum on 22 May without us actually having vivited it that day.

In any case, I think I went straight on to Sandall Close, where Janie and I had a quiet evening in.

Saturday 23 May 2009

Phillipa and Tony arrived. They were staying in the Crown Plaza, on the Hanger Lane gyratory, very near to Sandall Close.

We went to Chez Gerard in the evening; no evidence as to which branch; Janie’s and my combined brains reckon Chiswick most likely.

Sunday 24 May 2009

Both our diaries say “Barby” or “BBQ” at Kim’s. That will have been the main purpose (or at least the focus) of Phillie and Tony’s visit. In truth I don’t remember this particular Sunday lunchtime gathering especially well. We wouldn’t have known it at the time but it was to be Phillie’s last such visit to Kim’s place.

The following picture was taken just a few weeks later in Sandall Close. I prefer its look in B&W because the colours, not least the red eye, were not so good:

Janie, Phillie & Me

Commercial Ethics: Process or Outcome?, Gresham Lecture, Barnard’s Inn Hall, 6 November 2008

This was my first Gresham Lecture and by gosh the preparation felt like hard but very interesting work.

A lot of the material from this one ended up in The Price Of Fish.

Here is a link to the lecture – you can watch it, listen to the audio, read the text, download the text, look at the slides, download the slides…

Here’s the YouTube of it so you can watch from here instead (but for the resources as well, you need to click the above link):

More observant followers of this lecture (e.g. John White) noticed that I strung some lines from songs and stuff through the slides. I made up an iTunes playlist for the lecture – back then, iTunes playlists felt like fun things to try.  Here it is: 

We held a traditional Z/Yen-Gresham reception in the Headmaster’s Study after the lecture. Doubtless someone pointed out my resemblance to the Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare in that room – someone always did. As I explained on Facebook to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death:

After the reception, Michael Mainelli escorted an honoured few of us to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for one of his traditional post lecture meals. Not sure exactly who attended but I do recall Michael, Elisabeth, Kim, Micky, Charlie, Me, Janie and a few others.