Professor Anthony Bale - Public Lecture: Conflict, Novelty and Print: The Birth of News Writing in the West

Date

05 Feb 2026

Address

HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU

Professor Anthony Bale - Public Lecture

Conflict, Novelty and Print: The Birth of News Writing in the West

Date: February 5, 2026 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)

Registration is required. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For HKU members (HKU Portal login is required): https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=104907
For non-HKU members: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=104907

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.