This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Antony Penrose, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Antony Penrose is a film maker, photographer, author, artist, photo-curator, and co-founder of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection.

Following on from his Gresham College lecture, ‘Lee Miller’s Indelible Images’, we caught up with him to learn more about his mother Lee Miller’s work as a photographer during the Second World War, the atrocities she bore witness to, and how the trauma of her work impacted her and her family after she returned home.

Antony also reveals more about his efforts after Lee’s death to preserve and popularise her photographic legacy. Her work reveals an extraordinary career that spanned multiple worlds: not only her wartime photography, but also her earlier years as a model and photographer for Vogue, and her involvement in the Surrealist movement alongside many of the leading artists of the pre-war period.

Watch Antony's Gresham College lecture here:

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

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What is it that makes an image stick in our memory against our will? People find many of Lee Miller’s combat photographs have this indelible quality, and of these the most powerful are from her witness of the Holocaust. Her stark and harrowing evidence takes us back to one of the most terrible episodes of persecution in the whole grim history of man’s inhumanity to man.

In this lecture Miller’s son Antony Penrose talks about why his mother responded to the Holocaust in the way she did, and the work he has done to authenticate her evidence as a witness – evidence she deliberately left for us in the hope it would help prevent history repeating. When we learn the background, we begin to understand why so many of her images are so poignant, and why they have the ability to engrave themselves in our minds.

This lecture was recorded by Antony Penrose on the 10th of February 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Antony Penrose is a film maker, photographer, author, artist, photo-curator, and co-founder of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection.

Antony’s photographic career began at an early age when peering through the viewfinder of his mother Lee Miller‘s Rolleiflex camera. At the age of 14, a family visit to see Pablo Picasso produced some amateur images which later became widely published. On a trip to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1962, Lee was taken ill and handed him her Zeiss Contax to get the pictures she could not take.

Antony has dedicated a large part of his life to research into the lives of his parents Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, and their circle of artist friends. He established the Lee Miller Archives in the 1980s with his late wife Suzanna. Today, with his daughter Ami Bouhassane, Antony is the co-director of Farleys House & Gallery Ltd, which comprises the archives, the house museum and galleries and The Penrose Collection

You can watch the podcast with Antony Penrose in Conversation here: https://youtu.be/QY3xZLk5NS8

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/lee-miller

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Since Pythagoras, we have imagined the universe as a vast, resonant instrument—a cosmic harmony waiting to be heard. From Holst’s orchestral visions of the planets to Tuvan throat singing echoing the murmur of rivers, composers have long sought to capture the music of nature and the heavens. Villa-Lobos shaped melodies from landscapes and architecture, just as scientists now transform earthquake tremors and celestial frequencies into sound. This lecture explores the deep connection between music and the cosmos, where all existence vibrates in frequencies—the very essence of pitch, resonance, and melody.

This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on 25th February 2026 at LSO, London

Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and scientists as diverse as Evelyn Glennie, Tim Minchin, Pat Martino, Peter Zinovieff, John Williams and Brian Eno. Son of a CERN nuclear physicist, he was raised with an enthusiasm for both the arts and sciences, an eclecticism which has been maintained throughout his teaching, research and creative career.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/music-earth-space

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

Website: https://gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege

Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege

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