Queen Mary's renaissance seminar, convened by Professor Kevin Sharpe, has an absolutely stellar programme for this academic year. Attendance is absolutely de rigueur for all CELL students, but the line-up is so attractive compulsion should be completely unnecessary.

The dates for the diary are:

• 6 November – Stephen Greenblatt, 'Utopian Pleasure', chaired by Quentin Skinner
• 28 January – Keith Thomas, 'From Barbarism to Civility: Assumptions About Social Evolution in Early Modern England', chaired by Colin Jones
• 4 March – David Starkey, 'The History We've Forgotten: Diplomacy and the Biography of Henry VIII', chaired by Susan Brigden
• 5 May – Professor Kevin Sharpe Inaugural Lecture: 'Representing Rule: Spin and Politics in Early Modern England', chaired by Peter Lake
• 20 May – Julia Boffey, 'Did the 'Urban Reader Exist? Books and Reading Practices in London at the Start of the Early Modern Period', chaired by Greg Walker
• 16 June – Anthony Pagden, '“The Present Terror of the World”: European Visions of the Ottomans in the the Renaissance', chaired by Trevor Dadson