Tagged content
The Global Financial Crisis - Why Didn’t Anybody Notice?
On 17 June 2009, a group of leading academics, economics journalists, politicians, civil servants, and other practitioners met at the British Academy for a round-table discussion of the current financial crisis. The question under discussion in this British Academy Forum had been framed by Her Majesty The Queen on a …
The Rule of Law in International Affairs (BAR)
On 23 October 2003, Professor Brian Simpson FBA delivered the Maccabaean Lecture in Jurisprudence, in which he took a wry look at the influence (if any) of international law on the conduct of states in relation to the use of force. To give this topical subject an historical perspective, Professor …
How Northern was the Northern Master at Assisi? (BAR)
Dr Paul Binski delivered the 2001 Aspects of Art Lecture at the British Academy on 29 March 2001. In this edited extract, Dr Binski explores the artistic influences on the painters who worked in the great basilica at Assisi.
The Vision of Keith Douglas
Keith Douglas (1920-1944), poet, artist, prose writer and veteran of El Alamein, was the subject of the 2001 Chatterton Lecture, delivered at the British Academy on 26 April 2001 by Dr Tim Kendall. In this edited extract, Dr Kendall considers the centrality of the ‘visual’ in Douglas’s poetry.
A Third Concept of Liberty (BAR)
Professor Quentin Skinner FBA delivered the inaugural Isaiah Berlin Lecture at the Academy on 21 November 2001. The title of his lecture was ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, referring to Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay propounding two concepts of liberty, positive and negative. In this edited extract he illustrates the long …
The Life of Learning (BAR)
In the fifth British Academy Lecture, delivered on 20 November 2001, Past President of the British Academy Sir Keith Thomas FBA considered the historical role of scholarship in national life. In this edited extract, he describes some of the public and personal imperatives that ruled the life of learning in …
Welfare-to-Work: Which Policies Work and Why? (BAR)
Professor Richard Blundell FBA, of University College London and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, delivered the Keyes Lecture in Economics on 1 November 2001. The key organizing idea in the lecture was to provide an integrated view of the way ‘welfare to work’ and ‘make work pay’ policies affect the …
English Episcopal Acta (BAR article)
In 2005 the Academy published the 30th in its ambitious series of volumes containing the texts of all English episcopal acta to survive for the period between the Norman Conquest and the emergence of bishops’ registers during the course of the thirteenth century. Professor Barrie Dobson FBA, current Chairman of …
The acts of medieval English bishops, illustrated
The British Academy is publishing a volume of ‘Facsimiles of English Episcopal Acta, 1085- 1305’. The author, Dr Martin Brett, explains why it is so important to make available images of these administrative documents.
Palace or Powerstation? Museums Today (BAR)
Mr Duncan Robinson, former Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, delivered the 2007 Isaiah Berlin Lecture. In this edited extract he describes some of the challenges that museums face today.
Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c.700-1200)
Professor Julia M.H. Smith summarises the arguments she presented in her 2010 Raleigh Lecture. Her Raleigh Lecture on History was delivered in Edinburgh on 15 November 2010, as part of the British Academy Medieval Week.
Lost without translation: Why codebreaking is not just a numbers game
The recent film ‘The Imitation Game’ has portrayed the part played by the mathematician Alan Turing in decrypting the messages sent from the German Enigma machine in the Second World War. But Nigel Vincent and Helen Wallace remind us that other skills – particularly in languages – have always been …
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