Brief Encounter: The Adoration Of The Shepherds, London
The Wallace Collection’s Brief Encounter series has a simple premise: an expert takes 20 minutes to unpack the history surrounding a single object or painting from the display. Amy Gee, the lecturer for this week’s talk on Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s 17th-century oil work The Adoration Of The Shepherds, has a trickier task than most. The painter depicts the baby Jesus in his crib. A heavenly glow lights the scene from above, godly cherubs looking down on the earthly meek. There can’t be a better-known story in the western world. Gee will make clear that it is a mark of Murillo’s genius that he made something so familiar feel extraordinary. There is a sense of realism uncommon to religious art here and a bewitching lack of hierarchy to the composition, in which the lowly animals are as perfectly worked as the Christ child himself.
The Wallace Collection, W1, Wed 23 Dec
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An Evening With Ricky ‘The Hitman’ Hatton, Wolverhampton
With even BBC News presenters now having to resort to colourful language to describe boxing’s heavyweights, Ricky Hatton remains one of the sport’s more affable personalities. Hatton’s professional career began with a blistering 38-fight unbeaten run, yet it was a 2005 bout with Kostya Tszyu that made him a global star. This newfound fame led to two career-defining – and almost career-ending – fights: defeats to Floyd Mayweather in 2007 and Manny Pacquiao in 2009. Already renowned for a penchant for booze, fags and “bulking out” between fights, after those defeats Hatton entered a spiral of drinking, drugs, weight gain and depression. It was a 2012 comeback bout with Vyacheslav Senchenko that brought him back from the brink. Here, he discusses his remarkable career.
Wolverhampton Civic Hall, Mon 21 Dec
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The Christmas Lectures: How To Survive In Space, London
With all the chaos on our planet right now, you’d be forgiven for wanting to escape it altogether. Living that dream, last week Brit astronaut Tim Peake began a journey to the International Space Station to join a weightless research laboratory, where fluid physics, new technologies and human endurance are all being tested. Back on Earth, Dr Kevin Fong will steer these lectures, outlining the mission’s research aims and explaining how human bodies can withstand a zero-gravity, high-radiation atmosphere (tip: a good spacesuit helps). As well as live link-ups with Peake (which include a chance for kids to ask questions about life 400km above the Earth), Fong will host gravity-defying experiments, chat with guest space scientists and hold a discussion of how we might eventually land – and stay alive – on Mars. Cosmic.
Royal Institution, W1, Sat 19 & Tue 22 Dec
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