In this talk festival patron Rob looks at the social, political and artistic background to Newton's 'wonderful year'.

John Dryden's famous poem of the same was published in at the start of 1667, and commemorated various triumphs in the early stages of the Second Dutch War, as well as London's marvellous deliverance from a worse fate following a severe outbreak of plague and the effects of the Great Fire.

Rob contrasts various religious accounts of the disasters of 1666, which saw them as portents of even worse things to come, with more optimistic accounts of what the future offered. Indeed, plague permitting, the year witnessed a flourish of metropolitan activity in fields as diverse as literature, theatre and science.  £6 (£5)