How do you help people understand the law? For Ancient Greeks, it was making a song and dance about it. Many archaic lawgivers captured imaginations by composing laws to be sung, making them easy to remember. One of the first lectures in the 2024-25 academic year at Gresham College will explain more about the institution of legal rules in Greek antiquity Gresham College Professor of Rhetoric, Melissa Lane will give the lecture entitled Singing the Laws: Ancient Greek Lawgivers in History and Legend. Professor Lane says: “I’ve always been fascinated by the resonance of these figures of the great lawgivers from Greek history and legend. Some were possibly legendary, like Lycurgus of Sparta. Others were unquestionably historical, such as Solon of Athens. One of the things that really interests me is that these figures are not the inventors of law as such. The Greeks knew that there were laws that had evolved before these great lawgivers came along. But they celebrated these figures as having pulled together a set of laws for a given society, usually at a kind of moment of crisis and social factionalisation, creating new cultural identities that those societies could identify with going forward.”
The music world looked to Munich this August, where the groundbreaking Adele residency hit all the right notes and set multiple records. Over 730,000 fans from all over the world came to see the unique artist as part of her series of ten open-air concerts. The concerts took place in the bespoke Arena at the Messe in Riem, which was tailor-made for her. More than two thirds of the visitors celebrated before and after the performances in the adjacent, first of its kind, Adele World with its diverse entertainment and catering offerings.
Michael Ball and Alfie Boe are back, and this time it’s personal. 
Following their summer performances at Wilderness, Glastonbury Festival and Brighton’s Gay Pride to packed out crowds, Björn Again announces a brand-new UK tour for 2025. The tour will commence 
On Ukranian Independence Day (24th August), a nation reels 2 years post Russia’s invasion on 24th February 2022. A political issue stemming from 8 years of unrest between Ukrainian Government forces and Russia backed separatists, the Ukraine seeks to defend what’s theirs. Born out of the current conflict that impacts over 30 million people, Alex Borovenskiy has gone on to found the first Ukraine Fringe Festival – a showcase of the country’s rich cultural landscape, highlighting work from the often underrepresented. Ahead of this year’s festival – from 30th August until 1st September, Alex tells us more about the festival’s motto – “Steel Standing”, curating a 2nd year of the festival in light of ongoing conflict and the significance of ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine, one of the festival’s host venues.