The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Experts discuss how the latest 3D recording technology has supported their research by revealing near-invisible markings from originals held at Oxford University Institutions The very latest in 3D recording technology has revealed near-invisible markings from originals held at Oxford University institutions. Imagery captured with this technology shows what has never before been possible to record. These recordings have assisted researchers in making exciting discoveries which will be shared at this event. In this presentation, a panel of experts will discuss how recordings have supported their research. Incised text from second century wax tablets, newly discovered designs found on the reverse of copper printing plates and examples of preparatory stylus markings from High Renaissance drawings will all be explored through these incredible new images. Recordings of specimens from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History will demonstrate how this new method for 3D acquisition could have the potential to assist in the classification of species. The technology used to create these recordings will be described and explained by their designer, and the Bodleian's imaging specialist. Members of Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services will demonstrate online viewers to disseminate these 3D recordings, and newly developed tools which allow users to interact with them. ARCHiOx – Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford – is a collaborative project bringing together the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation. Based in Madrid, the Factum Foundation specialises in high-resolution 3D imaging and has worked in cultural heritage institutions throughout the world, producing exceptional, three-dimensional facsimiles of artworks and artefacts. Speakers Adam Lowe is the director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation. Founded in 2001, Factum Arte is a multidisciplinary workshop dedicated to digital mediation for the production of works for contemporary artists. John Barrett is Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries. Since 2005, John has provided photographs of Bodleian originals for numerous publications. His work involves the development of new methods of recording special collections material. John is technical lead at the Bodleian for ARCHiOx. Jorge Cano is Head of Technology at Factum Foundation. He has developed a multidisciplinary career working in the intersections of art and technology. Jorge is an expert in 3D recording, image filtering and Geographical Information Systems. Carlos Bayod is Project Director at the Factum Foundation. His work is dedicated to the development and application of digital technology to the recording, study and dissemination of cultural heritage. Richard Allen is a Software Engineer for Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services where he works primarily supporting Digital Bodleian and the Imaging Studio DAMS. He is also CEO of an Oxford University spinout company called Palaeopi Limited that specialises in photogrammetry. Angelamaria Aceto is a Senior Research in Italian Drawings at Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Dr. Mark Crosby, FSA is an associate Professor and Director of the K-State Digital Humanities Center at the Department of English, Kansas State University. With an introduction by Richard Ovenden OBE, Bodley's Librarian & Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) The project has been generously funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Elizabeth Savage and Ed Potten. A conversation reflecting on the techniques for ascribing dates to woodblocks and prints.

Andrew Honey and Alexandra Franklin Discovering and re-discovering the uses of wooden printing blocks within a library.

Madeleine Katkov, Alex Walker and Nicole Gilroy Exploring the conservation of the fabric and content of Bodley's Library.

Associate Professor Donna West Brett gives a lecture on the collection of photobooks donated to the Bodleian Library in 2020 by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey. Conveying meaning through photos alone, the photobook is a radical format that enabled the widespread dissemination of modernist aesthetics. This lecture will take a closer look at the way photobooks portray the ‘everyday' – the familiar, the practical, the ordinary – and its intersection with the visual languages of politics and propaganda. Speaker Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at The University of Sydney. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (Routledge, 2016); co-editor with Natalya Lusty, Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (Routledge, 2019), and has published widely on photographic history. She is Research Leader for Photographic Cultures at Sydney, and Editorial Member for the Visual Culture and German Contexts Series, Bloomsbury. Brett is a recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Ernst and Rosemarie Keller Fund, and Sloan Fellow in Photography at the Bodleian Libraries for 2024.

In this webinar, Professor Marion Turner introduces some of the themes of Chaucer Here and Now, the exhibition currently on view at the Weston Library. Focusing on manuscripts and printed books from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, Professor Marion Turner discusses some of the ways in which readers of Chaucer have responded to and reimagined Chaucer's works. From medieval scribes to Zadie Smith, via early printers, Victorian children's authors and William Morris, Professor Turner explores the afterlife of one of our greatest poets.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales tell the story of pilgrims 'from every shires ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende'. Experience these journeys, both real and imagined, through medieval manuscripts from the Bodleian collection live under the visualiser. Dr Alison Ray, archivist at St Peter's College, and Dr Andrew Dunning, RW Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, will explore the new iconography that developed after Thomas Becket's murder, the impact of his death on Oxford's religious houses and how Canterbury became a significant pilgrimage destination.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales tell the story of pilgrims 'from every shires ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende'. Experience these journeys, both real and imagined, through medieval manuscripts from the Bodleian collection live under the visualiser. Dr Alison Ray, archivist at St Peter's College, and Dr Andrew Dunning, RW Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, will explore the new iconography that developed after Thomas Becket's murder, the impact of his death on Oxford's religious houses and how Canterbury became a significant pilgrimage destination.

Tia Blassingame introduced her work leading the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective (aka Book/Print Collective) and shared methods for supporting and empowering BIPOC book and print artists In this lecture, Tia Blassingame introduced her work leading the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective (aka Book/Print Collective) and shared methods for supporting and empowering BIPOC book and print artists. She also discussed her educational work centred around Black American artists working in the book form and her curatorial work challenging the exclusion and erasure of Global Majority traditions and artistry in hand papermaking. Founded in 2019 by book artist and printmaker Tia Blassingame, the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective brings Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) book artists, papermakers, curators, letterpress printers, printmakers into conversation and collaboration with scholars of BIPOC Book History and Print Culture to build community, support systems. Biography: Tia Blassingame is an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College, where she teaches Book Arts and Letterpress Printing, and serves as the Director of Scripps College Press. Her artist's books and prints can be found in library and museum collections across the world. In 2019, Blassingame founded the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. Most recently, Blassingame has co-curated, with writer, book artist, publisher Stephanie Sauer, the NEA and Center for Craft grants-awarded exhibition, Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, held at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (14 April – 12 August 2023) and San Francisco Center for the Book (28 October -22 December, 2023). Tia Blassingame was the current Bodleian Printer in Residence, 2023. Book/Print Collective | Instagram: @bookprintcollective Programmed by The Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries.

In this session, we explore what Playford's publishing activities can tell us about how music was incorporated into different social environments in seventeenth-century English society and the role music played in peoples lives. Although The Dancing Master was one of John Playford's best-known and most widely distributed publications, it belonged within a music-publishing portfolio that provides something of a snapshot of the breadth of music-making activities in which people from different parts of society participated in the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. In this session, we explore what Playford's publishing activities can tell us about how music was incorporated into different social environments in seventeenth-century English society, from the tavern to the concert room to the royal court, and what the writings of people known to have used his books, such as Samuel Pepys, tell us about the role music played in their lives. Rebecca Herissone is Professor of Musicology at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focuses on the musical cultures of early modern England, particularly issues of creativity, reception and manuscript and print cultures, which has led her to work extensively on the publishing activities of John and Henry Playford, Thomas Cross and John Walsh, and to consider the complex relationships between musical notation and performance in the period. She has written three monographs, most recently Musical Creativity in Restoration England (awarded the Diana McVeagh Prize by NABMSA in 2015), and has had articles published in journals including the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Musical Quarterly, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She co-edited Music & Letters from 2007–19 and is now a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association, Chair of the Musica Britannica Editorial Committee, Series Co-Editor of Cambridge Elements in Music, 1600–1750, a General Editor of the Works of John Eccles, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Purcell Society and Music & Letters. Her current research focuses on Purcell's reception, particularly the material traces we can uncover of the small network of individuals who preserved, performed and transformed his music in the 18th and 19th centuries. Alice Little is a Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, part of the Music Faculty of the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on collectors and collecting, particularly eighteenth-century tunebooks and their compilers, looking at what sources the collections were gathered from and what the selection of music says about the people and cultures that collected and used them.

This talk will consider how and why the frontispiece to this edition was different from those in earlier editions and place the image in relation to other images of ballroom dance bands before and after 1728. The music publisher John Playford built his success on the publication in 1651 of the first book to give tunes and dance instructions for country dances. He named it The English Dancing Master and in subsequent editions The Dancing Master. The frontispiece to the eighteenth and final edition of vol. 1 (c.1728) shows a trio of musicians – violin, oboe, bassoon – accompanying a group of country dancers in a ballroom. This talk will consider how and why the frontispiece to this edition was different from those in earlier editions and place the image in relation to other images of ballroom dance bands before and after 1728. The speakers will also examine Hogarth's print A Country Dance and what it tells us about decorum and licence in mid-18th century ballroom dancing. Jeremy Barlow specialises in English popular and dance music from 1550 to 1750, and also has a particular interest in the illustration of music and social dance over the centuries. He has lectured on a variety of subjects for organisations such as the The Arts Society, U3A, the Art Fund and National Trust. His books include The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery (Ashgate) and The Cat & the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Bodleian Library). The Bodleian Library has also published A Dance Through Time: Images of Western Social Dancing from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. Jeremy is well known for his work on Playford and has published an edition of Playford's dance tunes, The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1651–ca.1728) (Faber Music). Alice Little is a Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, part of the Music Faculty of the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on collectors and collecting, particularly eighteenth-century tunebooks and their compilers, looking at what sources the collections were gathered from and what the selection of music says about the people and cultures that collected and used them.

Conservation Scientist Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli looks at lacquered bookbindings made by Persian artisans in the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian artisans are known for their contributions to the field of bookbinding, with the lacquered bookbinding technique being one of their notable breakthroughs. This intricate technique involves multiple layers, each with their own materials, methods, and motifs that have been used from the Safavid to Qajar periods. Professor Barkeshli delves into the details of each layer and explores the various treatments used during manufacture, as well as providing insight into the environmental enemies of the lacquered bookbinding. Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli is Head of Research and Post Graduate Studies of De' Institute of Creative Arts and Design UCSI University in Malaysia and Principle Fellow at University of Melbourne. Her current research project is titled, 'Paper Dyes Used in Persian Medieval Manuscripts: Creating a Materials Construction Digital Database'.

An introduction to the analysis of painted Byzantine and Japanese manuscripts by the Bodleian Libraries' new Heritage Scientist. The post of Heritage Scientist at the Bodleian Libraries was re-instated at the beginning of 2023, enabling the analysis of manuscripts in the library's collection. The focus so far has been on Byzantine manuscripts from the 10th to 13th centuries, and Japanese scrolls from the 17th century which contain painted pictures.

Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller. He returns to the Bodleian library to muse on his life and archive and the power of photography. Photographer Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller, he has spent his life recording British society, challenging the status quo by working in a collaborative way to capture extraordinary aspects of ordinary life through pictures, audio recordings and short movies.   Fifty years ago, photographer Daniel Meadows set out in The Free Photographic Omnibus, a Leyland Titan double-decker remodelled as his mobile home, darkroom and gallery. He drove it around towns and villages and offered free portraits to the people he met on his travels. The photographs became a vast and beautiful archive, now safely deposited in the Bodleian Library. In this talk, Daniel Meadows triumphantly returns to muse on his life and work and the power of photography. He shows examples of his archive and reflects on a lifetime of creative work.   The Bodleian Library acquired the full Daniel Meadows Archive in 2018.

What is queer bibliography? How does it intersect with other critical bibliographies, (feminist, Black and liberation bibliography)? How does it relate to traditional bibliographic practice? What opportunities might queer methods and approaches provide? Following the inaugural symposium Queer Bibliography: Tools, Methods, Practices and Approaches in early February 2023 at the Institute of English Studies, hear Sarah Pyke and JD Sargan discuss this emerging subfield with Adam Smyth. Organised by Oxford Bibliographical Society. Speakers, Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, London), and JD Sargan (University of Limerick). Chaired by Adam Smyth (Oxford University).

In this lecture, Matthew Kirschenbaum considers textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing, in the post-digital era. Books are not dead as was once feared. But they are not the same either. With digital processes and workflows now thoroughly integrated into the art and industry of publishing and printing them, books are altered by the post-digital moment in which we have arrived. Matthew Kirschenbaum's lecture will pay particular attention to questions of textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing. How stable are texts when the book is now manifest as a collection of digital assets, a network which only might, at times, assume the physical and tangible form of the familiar codex?

Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them. Why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them? Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder these questions and more, using their own work as guides towards a photography that is humane and politically-engaged. Jim Mortram is an award-winning social documentary photographer and the creator of Small Town Inertia. Craig Atkinson is an award-winning publisher, artist and lecturer. He runs Café Royal Books, an independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines based in Southport, England.

Thomas Gravemaker explores the history of wood type printing as well as his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router. Wood type has a history as long as printing itself. Thomas Gravemaker, Printer in Residence at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press during March 2023, tells the story of the materials, manufacture and use of wood type since the nineteenth century and brings this up to date with an account of his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router.

Geoffrey Batchen explores the first fifty years of photography in Britain. The announcement of photography's invention in January 1839, first in Paris and then in London, introduced a new power into British life. This new power—derived from photography's capacity to automatically capture the images created in a camera—was soon being used for every conceivable purpose. The two exhibitions curated by Geoffrey Batchen for the Bodleian Libraries focus on those uses by tracing the development and dissemination of photographic images within Britain during the medium's first fifty years. By identifying the key themes addressed in the exhibitions, Batchen shows how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, helping to make Britain the society it is today.

A research collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation The Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation is a not-for-profit organisation, founded by Adam Lowe in 2009 in Madrid. The Foundation was established to demonstrate the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying, recreating and disseminating the world's cultural heritage through the rigorous development of high-resolution recording and re-materialisation techniques. Using technology conceived and developed at Factum Arte, the ARCHiOx Project will use both a prototype photographic system (Selene Stereo Photometric Scanner, developed by Jorge Cano) and 3D scanning (Lucida 3D Scanner, developed by artist-engineer Manuel Franquelo and the team at Factum) to bring to life relief surfaces of some of the Bodleian's most celebrated artefacts. This relatively unexplored path to mapping and digitisation should in turn present fascinating new avenues of exploration and research, as it reveals aspects of the item hitherto unrealised or recorded. ARCHiOx will provide a free exchange of knowledge and approaches between the academic and technical team at the Bodleian and Factum Foundation's experts, as we explore and demonstrate the potential of applying non-contact digital technologies to the study of materials held by the Bodleian Libraries. This session demonstrates how the technology is used and the benefits it brings to researchers of manuscripts

Drawing on a detailed survey of shareholders of the Marconi in 1897 and 1900, this lecture will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to back this venture through it's experimental phase to becoming commercially viable. What were the economics of radio's invention? How did wireless communication manage to get through the costly experimental phase and develop into a commercially viable technology? How did the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company not only survive, but also raise the stakes by attempting to establish a transatlantic connection? Drawing on a detailed survey of the shareholders of the company in 1897 and 1900, Dr Anna Guagnini will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to partake in this adventure. This lecture will throw new light on how financial backing was obtained in the face new challenges and divergent perspectives and expectations about the commercial future of the company. Dr. Anna Guagnini is a Byrne Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, and a former Research Fellow at Linacre College and at the University of Bologna. The lecture is organised jointly by the Centre for the Study of the Book and the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

Join our experts in conversation as they consider the thinking of two great 19th century women writers exploring the boundary between human and machine Using the notebooks of Sir Humphry Davy, an influence on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the surviving manuscripts of the novel itself, Professor Sharon Ruston will consider Shelley's thought-process in writing and how far the Creature might be thought of as crossing a boundary between automaton and man. Professor Ursula Martin will reflect on Ada Lovelace's work exploring algorithms finding patterns in nature and her conjecture on the capabilities ‘beyond number' of Charles Babbage's unbuilt Analytical Engine. She will discuss Lovelace's letter speculating on how a ‘calculus of the nervous system' would aid understanding of the human mind. The event is part of ‘Imagining AI', which celebrates objects in the Bodleian's collections that explore the boundary between human and machine.

Discover how cutting-edge scientific techniques are transforming our understanding of medieval manuscripts, and how book production began to recover under King Alfred and his successors

Discover the treasures that illustrate how exchanges between England and the Netherlands have shaped literature, book production and institutions such as the Bodleian itself, on either side of the North Sea.

Dr Martin Holford and Dr David Rundle explore how the Italian Renaissance led to major changes in how manuscripts were made, written and decorated in England.

Focusing on four very different maps of Oxford - each of the maps has its own tale to tell, some showing Oxford as it was; others showing Oxford as it might have been; and others how Oxford never was. This webinar will be focus on four very different maps of Oxford from the standpoint of why these maps were made. Each of the maps has its own tale to tell, some showing Oxford as it was; others showing Oxford as it might have been; and others how Oxford never was. Each has an agenda aiming to depict a city under the influence of the military, mass delinquency, motor vehicles or moles. Nick Millea, Map Curator, and Stuart Ackland, Principal Library Assistant, Map Room, will focus on each map's aesthetic charms, their functionality, and how they have visualised such a well-known city in such unusual ways. Join us to be surprised, alarmed and charmed in equal measure as we appreciate the purpose of these of maps but never lose sight of the powerful image they are able to convey.

Dating from around 1520 and probably conceived as a pattern book, this manuscript is best described as a 'herbal and bestiary' and contains images of flora and fauna together with stylised, floriated ornaments and coloured alphabets. MS Ashmole 1504, which can best be described as a 'herbal and bestiary', contains images of flora and fauna together with stylised, floriated ornaments and coloured alphabets. Dating from around 1520, the manuscript was probably conceived as a pattern book for a variety of decorative media, including wall painting, stained glass, painted cloths and embroidery. Dr Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, and Dr Lynn Hulse, Co-Founder of Ornamental Embroidery, explore MS Ashmole 1504 and the project inspired by it: The Needle's Art, an exhibition of contemporary stitch, on display at the Weston Library until 30 January 2022.

In the 3rd talk in our Meet the Manuscripts series, you will learn how singers lived with change in their favourite songs, and hear carols of the Middle Ages both familiar and new. Have you ever come close to fisticuffs with a friend over the tune to which ‘O little town of Bethlehem' should be sung? You're experiencing a very old problem. The Bodleian's Selden Carol Book is a famous collection of Christmas songs that only barely made it into modern consciousness: many of them survive in no other books, but have been modified in the manuscript itself, meaning that we have more than one version to choose between. How do we deal with phenomena of scribal correction, error, and variation in late medieval carols? What can this tell us about performance and the oral culture of the late medieval period? Speakers: Micah Mackay, doctoral student in the Publication Before Print Doctoral Centre and Andrew Dunning, R. W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts

In this lecture, we look at some beautiful, austere, and distinctively uncomfortable manuscripts and learn how the Middle Ages shaped the way we read today both in print and on screen. Medieval manuscripts written in early English are familiar and yet foreign to us, not only for their language but also for their style. Like their cathedral counterparts, Gothic script and page design come across to us as beautiful, austere, and distinctively uncomfortable. But is this how their designers intended them – and can we indeed speak of these books as designed?

Exploring their physical function in manuscripts – and the bad things that can happen when they are removed for study – as well as showing what they can contribute to book history. Leafing through a manuscript, it's easy to ignore the fragments of other books that were often used to strengthen its binding or as endleaves to protect the beginning and end of the text. In this session the fragments are the focus. Manuscripts: MS. Lat. th. c. 10 – Guardbook of fragments. (https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_6695) MS. Hamilton 13 – Summa theologiae, Secunda Secundae, by Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) originating in Erfurt, Germany. With fragments of Dante, Monarchia, with the commentary attributed to Cola di Rienzo. (https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/641872ca-263b-41f6-b844-69ff6281bdf8/) MS. Laud Misc. 306 – Homiliary and sermons, 12th century, originating in Germany. (https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/b2fb86ae-c8cd-4738-aa37-0a7d3e3ab0cc/surfaces/a86e86c7-e22b-4010-97a1-f7ab105e5abf/) MS. Douce 55 – cookery book in English, 15th century (https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_4726)

Join Professor Stephen Harris (Curator of Roots to Seeds at the Bodleian Library) and Dr Chris Thorogood, (Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum) as they discuss the past, present and future of botanical research and teaching. Discover how the herbarium of Bobart the Elder, John Sibthorp's 'Flora Graeca' expedition and the Amazonian waterlily have contributed to four centuries of Oxford botany and current research.

In this online event, Ana Paula Cordeiro, the creator of Body of Evidence, speaks from the workshop in New York City where she produced it. She will be joined in conversation by Merve Emre, Associate Professor of American Literature. Body of Evidence (2020) is an artist's book that examines the role of documentary evidence in defining national and individual identity. The red, white, and blue of the printing and binding echo a national story, viewed from the perspective of an immigrant, with quotations from Rebecca Solnit, Emily Dickinson, William James, Agnes Martin, and Fernando Pessoa. We open the conversation by examining the book's unique structure, moving on to consider the questions posed by the book's theme. What qualifies as a document? When does a document become evidence? And what does this evidence prove about an individual or a nation? How can an individual's narrative assert their integrity in face of dehumanization? The conversation will be launched after a live presentation of the copy of this book now in the Bodleian. Originally from Brazil, Cordeiro is based in New York and composes her book works at The Center for Book Arts in New York City, from where she will speak. In 2020 she was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her artist books are collected privately and institutionally. Book Arts programme from the Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book. Supported by a generous donation to the Bodleian Bibliographical Press.

As both audience members and actors, you will learn to sing the classic Easter sequence hymn 'Victimae paschali laudes' ('Praises to the paschal victim') and see how it formed part of a medieval play. Gregorian chant is an ancient communal song tradition, much loved for its calming, meditative feel – but we are increasingly appreciating its dramatic and even emotional aspects. This workshop will showcase a play performed in medieval Wienhausen (the Wienhäuser Osterspiel), a Middle Low German drama focusing on Mary Magdalene. As both audience members and actors, you will learn to sing the classic Easter sequence hymn 'Victimae paschali laudes' ('Praises to the paschal victim') and see how it formed part of a medieval play. No experience of singing, music reading, or ancient languages required - and from the comfort of your own home, no strangers can hear you!

Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, and Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections, in conversation about the artists, patrons and significance of three extraordinary manuscripts. Some of the greatest treasures of medieval painting are not displayed on museum walls but lie hidden – relatively speaking – in manuscript books. Our experts at our introduce some of the lesser-known treasures of the Bodleian and leaf through the pages during the live event recorded on Zoom. Sessions will include manuscripts from German-speaking lands which are being shared online for the first time as part of a Polonsky Foundation digitization project.

Building on the repertoire from our previous workshop, we will add further pieces for Candlemas where everybody is invited to join in by singing the communal response Gregorian chant is an ancient communal song tradition with its roots in the medieval Church, but its calming, meditative effect has made it a surprise hit in lockdown. Sing in the comfort of your own home (where no strangers can hear you!) in this online choir session suitable for the absolute beginner. Medieval researchers will also give a brief introduction to the 15th-century manuscript from the Cistercian nunnery of Medingen where the music is preserved.

The covers can tell us as much about a book as its contents. This workshop explores the secrets which bookbindings reveal about the uses and histories of medieval manuscripts.

In this online choir workshop you will learn to sing along with a simple voice part from the Candlemas Nunc Dimittis and see the 15th-century manuscript from the Cistercian nunnery of Medingen where the music is preserved in the Bodleian Libraries A Gregorian chant workshop based on the 15th-century Manual for the Provost of Medingen (Bodleian Libraries MS. Lat liturg. e. 18.) This event is part of the Manuscripts from German-Speaking Lands Project, funded by The Polonsky Foundation. The Project is a three-year collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel to digitize nearly 600 medieval manuscripts. Thanks to St Edmund Hall for their talented singers and the use of the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East.

Frank Close tells the story of Klaus Fuchs and the Bodleian Library. Trinity was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. In this talk, Frank Close tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls (Prof Close's one time mentor in Oxford); his intellectual son, the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs; and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Close's meticulously researched book, Trinity, reveals new insights into Fuchs' espionage from MI5 files in the National Archives, documents of the FBI and KGB, and – this talk's focus – from the Bodleian Library. This includes correspondence between Fuchs and Peierls, which, with other letters in the Bodleian's Peierls Collection, strongly suggests that Fuchs passed more to the Russians than has been previously realised. The Bodleian possesses the original letter from Fuchs, written in Brixton Prison in 1950 to Peierls' wife, Genia, in which Fuchs' resistance to preserving the spying code of secrecy finally broke. A new Bodleian collection of photographs, previously unseen and still being catalogued, gives a profound glimpse of the intimate relationship between Fuchs and the Peierls family, for whom Fuchs was "like a son" and the discovery that he had betrayed their trust, along with the country that had adopted him, was devastating. This lecture was hosted by the Friends of the Bodleian. For almost a century, the financial support, advice and expertise of the Friends of the Bodleian have helped ensure we remain one of the world's premier libraries. Friends enjoy a range of benefits, including exclusive events, member-only discounts and the chance to see all our exhibitions before the open to the general public. Become a Friend today and enjoy closer access to the Bodleian inspiring collections and beautiful libraries. To join, renew and find out more, go to https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/friends-of-the-bodleian

Shiva Mihan, Harvard Art Museums and Bahari Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, gives a talk on her work in Persian arts. Manuscripts produced in the 15th century under Timurid patrons are among the most exquisite examples of Persian arts of the book. Codices containing sumptuous illuminations and lavish illustrations attracted the mutilating attention of album-makers and art dealers in the 19th and early 20th century. This paper provides evidence of such practices in a unique treasure from Prince Baysunghur's library: the Rasayil copied in Herat in 830/1427. This presentation will share the result of an in-depth codicological analysis of the manuscript (known as the Berenson Anthology) and the textual study of its rare and unique treatises, along with research into other collections and archives, and finally bring together some of the missing pieces and provide a digital reconstruction of the original manuscript. This talk will be followed by a drinks reception in Blackwell Hall. Presented by the Oxford Bibliographical Society and The Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book.

David Armes (Red Plate Press), the Bodleian's Printer in Residence 2019-20, describes artists and ideas that influence his work, asking how meaning can mutate through the process of production. And, what impact the physicality of materials has, and how we can read narratives created through improvisational production techniques.

The making, use and trade of manuscripts was an important part of Islamic culture, the technical developments influenced the making of books in the west from the later medieval period onward. When dominance of powers shifted, the perception of the Islamic manuscript tradition also changed. While intricately embellished bindings continued to receive attention, the majority of manuscripts were usually not studied as artefacts. Yet there is much to be learned from the methods and materials used to make these objects, and the traces of use that history left in them.

Professor Larry Schaaf delivers the 2020 Colin Ford Lecture, providing a fascinating insight into his work on The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonne. There are approximately 25,000 Fox Talbot prints known worldwide, these range from crude experiments through to highly accomplished works of art. For more than four decades Professor Schaaf has been examining and compiling information on Talbot images worldwide. Beginning in 2014, with the backing of the William T Hillman Foundation, the Bodleian Libraries began converting these private databases into a public resource. So far, images and data of more than 16,000 images and data have been freely made available online, allowing researchers to pursue their own questions and draw their own conclusions.

Dr Alexandra Lloyd, Lecturer in German, Magdalen College and St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, gives a talk on the White Rose Resistance Group. In 1943 five students and a professor at the University of Munich were arrested, tried, and executed. They were members of The White Rose (Die Weiße Rose), a clandestine group that wrote and distributed pamphlets calling on the Germans to resist Hitler. The pamphlets are fascinating texts, drawing on a range of philosophical ideas and influences. They urge readers to open their eyes to the atrocities being committed in the name of the regime, denounce the persecution of European Jews, and call for an end to the war. This talk introduces the White Rose group and examines the way they used the written word to inspire resistance.

Dr Alexandra Lloyd, Lecturer in German, Magdalen College and St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, gives a talk on the White Rose Resistance Group. In 1943 five students and a professor at the University of Munich were arrested, tried, and executed. They were members of The White Rose (Die Weiße Rose), a clandestine group that wrote and distributed pamphlets calling on the Germans to resist Hitler. The pamphlets are fascinating texts, drawing on a range of philosophical ideas and influences. They urge readers to open their eyes to the atrocities being committed in the name of the regime, denounce the persecution of European Jews, and call for an end to the war. This talk introduces the White Rose group and examines the way they used the written word to inspire resistance.

6,000 surviving notes and drawings reveal Leonardo da Vinci's way of thinking. This talk focuses on Leonardo's second book, On Mechanics, and explores how he later applied mechanical laws to studies for 'useful inventions'.

6,000 surviving notes and drawings reveal Leonardo da Vinci's way of thinking. This talk focuses on Leonardo's second book, On Mechanics, and explores how he later applied mechanical laws to studies for 'useful inventions'.

Join Dr Donal Hill for a tour of the invisible, as he describes how particle detectors measure 3D information to help uncover the secrets of tiny fundamental particles.

Join Dr Donal Hill for a tour of the invisible, as he describes how particle detectors measure 3D information to help uncover the secrets of tiny fundamental particles.

Discover how researchers are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to acquire images that show how the heart works on both a whole organ and cellular level. With Dr Kerstin Timm and Dr Justin Lau.

Discover how researchers are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to acquire images that show how the heart works on both a whole organ and cellular level. With Dr Kerstin Timm and Dr Justin Lau.

Dr Karl Kinsella introduces a 12th-century manuscript which explores the mystical visions of the prophet Ezekiel and contains some of the earliest architectural drawings in existence.