Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26: Public Lecture by Prof. Anthony Bale

Public Lecture: Conflict, Novelty and Print: The Birth of News Writing in the West
Speaker: Anthony Bale, Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English, University of Cambridge

February 5, 2026, 4:00PM (Thursday)
HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location Map)

Abstract:
The newspaper has conventionally been seen as an early modern innovation, connected to print, enlightenment and the transformation of the public and literate sphere. In this lecture I will show how news writing was a distinctive development of western Europe in the period 1453-1485, when contemporary events started to circulate in vernacular writing.
Biography:
Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English (1954) at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Professorial Fellow of Girton College Cambridge. He is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow, working on The Siege of Rhodes (1480) and medieval news media.

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https://english.hku.hk/event/570/Professor_Anthony_Bale_-_Public_Lecture:_Conflict,_Novelty_and_Print:_The_Birth_of_News_Writing_in_the_West

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