The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. In the early development of wireless, short waves were considered of no technical and commercial consequence, and left behind as a research field. While working on the improvement of wireless for military communications, Marconi was once more first in understanding the existence of unexpected possibilities - starting a new 'wireless revolution'. Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company.

Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development. Focusing on a South Atlantic case study which brings new perspectives on geographical implications of wireless communications networks at an early stage of development.

Jonathan Lloyd and Tiffany Stern, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now Accompanied by actors to help illustrate their points, Jonathan Lloyd, Artistic Director of Pegasus Theatre, and Tiffany Stern, Professor of Early Modern Drama, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature, Oxford, gives a talk for Shakespeare Oxford 2016 series. When the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth was celebrated in 1864, Robert Browning observed that he and his contemporaries had Shakespeare 'in our very bones and blood, our very selves'. In this talk, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores some of the ways in which the Victorians tried to keep Shakespeare alive in the nineteenth century: through theatrical revivals and literary allusions; through paintings and photographs; and especially through their fascination with the idea that, as Tennyson put it in his poem Vastness, 'the dead are not dead but alive'.

A conversation with Dr Nasrin Askari, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book 2016 and Alasdair Watson, Bahari Curator of Persian Collections, Bodleian Library

Cristina Dondi and her colleagues launch the 15th Century Booktrade. Books printed between 1450 (the year of Gutenberg’s invention of modern printing) and 1500 (conventional cut-off date in scholarship) are known as incunabula. Some 30,000 editions are known today, in some 450,000 surviving copies, located in about 4,000 different public libraries, mostly in Europe and North America.

Each surviving copy has a different history, which can be reconstructed with the help of physical evidence (ownership inscriptions, decoration, binding, coats of arms, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.) and bibliographical evidence (historic library catalogues, bookseller and auction catalogues, acquisition registers, etc.): all this is known as copy-specific information, or provenance, or material evidence, or post-production evidence.

The idea that underpins the 15cBOOKTRADE Project is to use the material evidence from these thousands of surviving books, as well as unique documentary evidence -- the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices -- to address five fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence.

Join the head gardeners of Stowe and Compton Verney to explore the challenges, changes and rewards of protecting and preserving Capability Brown's landscapes in his tercentenary year.

Lauren Kassell (Reader in the History of Science and Medicine, Cambridge) gives a talk for the Bodleian libraries. If the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had lived in London, they might have consulted the astrologer-physician Simon Forman, whose casebook is shown in the exhibition Shakespeare's Dead. Lauren Kassell looks into the working life of a medical practitioner in Shakespeare's England.

Vernacular Translations of Plutarch and Political Argument in Renaissance France

Emma Smith (Professor of English Literature, Oxford), gives a talk on Shakespeare memorials. Ben Jonson wrote in 1623 that Shakespeare 'art a Moniment, without a tombe/ And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live'. Centuries later Jorge Luis Borges observed that 'when writers die, they become books', adding, 'which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation'. This lecture considers Shakespeare's First Folio as a literary memorial to Shakespeare, alongside other elegies, epitaphs and responses to the playwright's death.