THE LEICESTER LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Founded in 1835 TRANSACTIONS OF THE LEICESTER LITERARY www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL President: Professor A Yarrington PhD FRSA FSA FRSE VOLUME 111 2017 Life Vice Presidents Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FZS FSA Dr TD Ford OBE BSc PhD FGS Professor MA Khan BSc PhD FGS FRAS FRSA Mrs HAE Lewis JP MA Vice Presidents Mrs Joan Beeson BSc Mrs Ann Fuchs Mr Michael Taylor BA Dip TP MA MRTPI IHBC Mr Kanti Chhapi Dip Arch FRIBA Hon Secretary: Mr John Heard 4 Harrow Place, Leicester LE2 3AP Hon Membership Secretaries: Mr David Beeson & Mrs Joan Beeson BSc The Hollies, Main Street, Frolesworth, Leics LE17 5EG Hon Programme Secretaries: Dr Geoffrey Lewis MA MD FRCA & Mrs Hilary Lewis JP MA 3 Shirley Road, Leicester LE2 3LL Hon Treasurer: Mr Michael Kirk OBE FCA Elms Cottage, 46 Shirley Road, Leicester LE2 3LJ Hon Editor of Transactions: Dr Geoffrey Lewis MA MD FRCA 3 Shirley Road, Leicester LE2 3LL Publicity Officer: Dr Diana Thurston BSc MSc PhD FGS Linden House, Loddington Lane, Tilton on the Hill, Leics LE7 9DE Assistant Hon Publicity Officer: Mrs Ann Fuchs The Elwells, Bennetts Hill, Dunton Bassett, Leics LE17 5JJ Independent Examiners: Mr Keith Smithson FCIB MIMgt FRSA Mr Peter Fuchs MA Website Editor: Dr Craig Vear BA PCGE PhD Email [email protected] Members of Council MARBLE MOVEMENT MEMORY AND THE MUSEUM IN SOUTH ASIA: SOUTH ASIA Professor PJ Boylan BSc PhD FGS FMA FBIM FRSA • Professor John Fothergill MSc PhD CEng FIEEE FIEE FInstP LIGHT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH IN THE MUSEUM Mr B Greaves BA Dip Arch • Mrs J Humphreys MA • Professor JH Holloway OBE BSc PhD DSc C.Chem FRSC NINETEENTH- CENTURY SCULPTURE Professor J Phelan MA PhD • Dr R Shannon MA MB DCH FRCP FRCPCH • Professor M Stannard BA MA DPhil FEA FRLS THE ORIGIN OF LIFE NEUTRINOS AND THE UNIVERSE Dr B Towle CBE DL • Professor N P Wood BA MA PhD • Sir Kent Woods MA MD ScM FRCP FMed Sci HOW LEICESTER MADE RUGBY A WORLD GAME The Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University (represented by Professor Phelan) SOMERSET MAUGHAM: A LIFE UNDER COVER SEX SURNAMES AND THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN The President of The University of Leicester (represented by Professor Stannard) TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE BADGER: HERO OR VILLAIN? The Vice Chancellor of The University of Loughborough (represented by Professor Wood) ANCIENT GREEK DEMOCRACY One representative of the Geology Section • One representative of the Natural History Section PUTTING DESIGN INTO ITS 21ST CENTURY SHAKESPEARE AS DRAMATIST Geology Section Hon Secretary CONTEXT: 21ST CENTURY CREATIVE PRACTICES GROUND-SHAKING EDUCATION: USING SEISMIC Ms F Barnaby, Cuckoo Cottage, 22 Church Lane, Dingley, Market Harborough LE16 8PG ANNUAL REPORTS SIGNALS TO EDUCATE AND INSPIRE Natural History Section Hon Secretary Mrs R Hayes, 31 Kipling Drive, Enderby, LE19 4QR The Society is a Registered Charity No 1047498 TRANSACTIONS OF THE LEICESTER LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. VOLUME 111 • 2017 CONTENTS MARBLE MOVEMENT MEMORY AND LIGHT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH NINETEENTH- CENTURY SCULPTURE Presidential Address by Professor Alison Yarrington ..............................................................2 NEUTRINOS AND THE UNIVERSE Dr Susan Cartwright ............................................................................................................5 SOMERSET MAUGHAM: A LIFE UNDER COVER Lady Selina Hastings ..........................................................................................................11 TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ANCIENT GREEK DEMOCRACY Professor Paul Cartledge ...................................................................................................13 SHAKESPEARE AS DRAMATIST Professor Nigel Wood ........................................................................................................16 GROUND-SHAKING EDUCATION: USING SEISMIC SIGNALS TO EDUCATE AND INSPIRE Mr Paul Denton .................................................................................................................20 THE MUSEUM IN SOUTH ASIA: SOUTH ASIA IN THE MUSEUM Professor Deborah Swallow ...............................................................................................24 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE Professor Nick Lane ...........................................................................................................30 HOW LEICESTER MADE RUGBY A WORLD GAME Professor Tony Collins ........................................................................................................33 SEX, SURNAMES AND THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN Professor Mark A. Jobling ...................................................................................................37 THE BADGER: HERO OR VILLAIN? Mr Patrick Barkham ...........................................................................................................40 PUTTING DESIGN INTO ITS 21ST CENTURY CONTEXT 21ST CENTURY CREATIVE PRACTICES Professor Tom Inns .............................................................................................................44 ANNUAL REPORTS ........................................................................................................... 47 58TH ANNUAL BENNETT LECTURE Professor Simon Wallis ......................................................................................................54 ANNUAL SATURDAY SEMINAR 2017 ..............................................................................58 STUDENT AWARDS 2017 .................................................................................................61 Cover Illustration: Credit: NASA/SwR/MSSS. Processed by R. Tkachenko Electronic version of the Transactions available on line. Transactions <www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk> © Copyright 2017 Leicester Literary & Philosophical Society, c/o Leicester Museum, New Walk, Leicester, LE1 7EA ISSN 0141 3511 Transactions of the Leicester Literary & Philosophical Society. MARBLE MOVEMENT MEMORY AND LIGHT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH NINETEENTH- CENTURY SCULPTURE Presidential Address by Professor Alison Yarrington Lecture delivered on 3rd October 2016 The display of sculpture in the nineteenth century is a subject that has become of increasing interest and importance to contemporary scholarship, not least due to the ways in which our historical understanding can inform the redisplay of collections today. My Presidential Address examines some of the significant features of sculpture’s historical display, with a special focus on the Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire that was originally conceived by William Spencer Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Here I draw upon the experience of being academic adviser for the Gallery’s redisplay in 2008-9 and the series of published articles that followed, addressing the Sculpture Gallery and the display within it of works by Antonio Canova and Lorenzo Bartolini, among others. These include: “Under Italian Skies”: the 6th Duke of Devonshire, Canova and the formation of a Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth House’, Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 10 (2009), pp. 41-62, “Like a Poet’s Dreams”: The Re-display of the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth’ (with Charles Noble, curator of the Chatsworth Sculpture Gallery), Apollo, 150, November 2009, pp. 46-53, and ‘“A constellation of the most beautiful forms”: Bartolini’s sculpture at Chatsworth, in Lorenzo Bartolini, Atti delle giornate di studio, S. Bietoletti, A. Caputo and F. Falletti (eds.), Pistoia: Gli Ori, 2014, pp. 61-69. The Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth and the Leicester It was a totally modern project: the 6th Duke created Literary and Philosophical Society came into being a state-of-the art treasure house of contemporary as entities in the early 1830s: the building of the ‘Italianate’ sculpture, the majority of which was Sculpture Gallery was completed in 1834 and sourced between c. 1819-33 from what was then the Literary and Philosophical Society was founded sculpture capital of the Western world: Rome. At the in the following year, 1835. The first was a project heart of the Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth are works devised by an individual, William Spencer Cavendish by Italian sculptor Antonio Canova, accompanied by the 6th Duke of Devonshire; the second a public others created by Italian, British, Dutch and German institution established by Dr Shaw and Mr Paget for practitioners. the intellectual benefit of the people of Leicester. How such collections were encountered in the Whilst there appears to be little to connect these two nineteenth century, in exhibitions, in public places ‘projects’ both were deeply involved in their different such as parks, cemeteries, squares and streets, in ways with a love of mineralogy and geology, with religious settings, in private galleries – the ‘close the fine arts and with botany. One of the Literary and encounters’ of my title – is not something that can be Philosophical Society’s members’ earliest ambitions replicated today. The contemporary perspectives that was to create a museum for the proper display of we bring to them are historically as well as culturally fossils, minerals etc. belonging to the Society, which constructed and our viewing of these collections and became reality here at New Walk Museum and Art individual works is in dialogue with their past and our Gallery. A similar but differently orientated impulse present. The ways in which a viewer’s response were generated Chatsworth Sculpture Gallery: a personal