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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Right now, the technological challenge we are most likely to face in the labour market is ‘frictional’ technological unemployment – where there is plenty of work available, but not enough people are able to do it. This lecture explores the phenomenon and its main causes – that people might lack the right skills for the work, not live in the place where the work is created, or have an identity that is at odds with the nature of the work.

This lecture was recorded by Professor Daniel Susskind on the 24th of February 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London

Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is a Research Professor at King’s College London, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University.

His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. He is currently working on his next book, What Should Our Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI.

Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University

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

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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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/

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Economic history has been written by men, for men and about men, giving the impression that – until recently – the economy was “just for men”. This lecture rescues from obscurity the many female producers, bankers, and economic revolutionaries who, over the course of human history, have transformed our economic fortunes. It reveals how as women’s economic opportunities have ebbed and flowed, so too have the fortunes of nations, providing a fresh perspective on the “rise and fall” of civilisations and illuminating our own prospects for the future.

This lecture was recorded by Dr Victoria Bateman on the 6th of November 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London

Dr Victoria Bateman is an economic historian and author of books including Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power (Headline Press, August 2025), Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty (Polity, 2023) and The Sex Factor: How Women made the West Rich (Polity, 2019). She has twenty years’ experience teaching economics and economic history at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts.

Victoria was resident economic historian for BBC Radio 4’s “Understand: the economy” and has written for Bloomberg, Times Higher Education, The Guardian, CapX and The Telegraph, offering longer-form perspectives on history and the economy. In addition to her writing, Victoria works behind the scenes as a historical consultant for period dramas.

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

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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Our digital world's convenience masks a heavy environmental cost. This lecture explores the destructive rare earth mineral mining powering our devices, the vast energy consumption of data centres fuelling climate change, and the toxic e-waste contaminating our environment and harming human health. From resource extraction to digital consumption, we'll uncover the environmental trade-offs of our tech-dependent lives and discuss pathways towards a sustainable digital future that minimizes degradation, protects health, and mitigates climate change.

This lecture was recorded by Ian Mudway on the 17th of February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, London

Dr Ian Mudway is Visiting Professor of Environmental Health. He is a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Imperial, a member of the MRC Centre for Environment and Health; MRC & Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and the NIHR-PHE Health Protection Research Units in Environmental Exposures and Health and Chemical and Radiation Threats and Hazards.

He has over 25 years of experience researching the impacts of air pollution on human health and in the development of assays to quantify the toxicity of the chemical cocktails that pollute the air we breathe. Over this period Dr Mudway has published over 100 research papers, reports and book chapters on these topics, as well as providing advice to the local, national and international governments and NGOs. Dr Mudway is passionate about the communication of science to lay audiences and has worked extensively with artists and educationalist to promote the public understanding of the risks associated with environmental pollutants. Currently his work is focused on understanding early life impacts of pollutants on the development of the lung and cognitive function in children living within urban populations, as well as furthering our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that drive these adverse effects and modify an individual’s susceptibility to air pollution

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

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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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Hwl0YRRaHgE

Why did coastal homeowners lose insurance while UK energy bills spiked after Russia’s invasion? Because risks started moving together. In this lecture, I show how climate extremes and geopolitics create synchronized shocks that overwhelm insurers and energy suppliers, pushing up premiums and bills. I discuss the basics of risk pooling, why it breaks under correlation, and what realistic fixes look like—from parametric policies and better building standards to smarter hedging and targeted support.

This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on the 18th of February 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London

Raghu is the Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business

He is also the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School.

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

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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How can the visual arts be used to promote peace? Professor Mitchell investigates how the visual arts can not only incite violence, but also bear witness, reveal dangerous memories, transform violence, contribute to healing trauma and imagine more hopeful futures. Examples are taken from both current conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine) and past wars (Paul Nash and Otto Dix in the First World War, local artists in the Iran-Iraq War and the 1984 Rwandan genocide). Professor Mitchell analyses the ambivalent role of the visual arts in building peace.

This lecture was recorded by professor Jolyon Mitchell on 11th February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, London

Professor Jolyon Mitchell is Principal of St John’s College, Durham and a Professor at Durham University who specialises in Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding, with reference to the arts and media. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Durham and Edinburgh, Professor Mitchell worked as a Producer and Journalist with BBC World service and Radio 4 before moving to the University of Edinburgh where he served as Director of CTPI (the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Edinburgh) and Academic Director for IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities). He is a former President of TRS-UK (2012-2018 - the national association for Theology and Religious Studies in the UK).

He is author or editor of over a dozen books, as well as many chapters and articles, including Promoting Peace and Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (Routledge, 2012); Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012); Religion and War: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2021), Religion and Peace (Wiley Blackwell, 2022), Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (Bloomsbury, 2025) and Media Violence and Christian Ethics (CUP, 2007). He is currently finishing a book on A Passion for Performance: The mysterious resurgence of religious drama (OUP, 2027). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a life member of Clare Hall, at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Mitchell has also served on international film juries at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals. He directs several projects on Peacebuilding, including one which led to a widely used co-edited volume on Peacebuilding and the Arts (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). He has also worked with Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, as well as Palestinian and Israeli journalists, on a peace building project in Jerusalem and beyond. A keen cricketer and former marathon runner, he has lectured all over the world.

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

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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