The opening plenary session will be a public lecture, to excite and inform a wide audience about our subject. The host will be comedy icon, writer and television presenter Sir Tony Robinson, famous as Baldrick in Blackadder and for his work on documentaries eg Time Team.
We are working with the Royal Armouries, a West End theatre producer and scholars from around the world, to make this an unforgettable moment in the history of the subject: The lecture will be developed from a newly commissioned book and be the basis for a legacy film.
In the audience we’ll have all the world’s leading experts on the topic. But we’ve also invited 500 local school students aged 15-16 to learn about our subject. We want the event to be a celebration of today’s research, an inspiration to future generations, and an opportunity to lift a veil for a broad international public into a rich world of imagination, discovery, and extraordinarily large forces.