James Barry

Um, well, one of the great, uh, narratives in European literature is, of course, the Odyssey, uh, now newly popular, uh, thanks to the film that was such a big hit this summer.

And, uh, James Barry, the great Irish painter, got there first with, um, his self-portrait with his patron, Edmund Burke, uh, who's product of Trinity College.

And Burke here, the politician who warns against the excesses eventually of the French Revolution, acting as Ulysses in smuggling out, uh, Barry and other, um, members of his team from the giant Polyphemus.

Uh, is, is this an allegory of the situation of the artist in relation to political patrons? Is it an allegory of Irish emancipation, which Barry was keen to talk, uh, about, i- if in a veiled way at e- at, at every possibility? Or is he just, like, slightly mocking i- in this strange juxtaposition of genres, um, the politician? And, and I think that the, the artist, the poet, the writer, through works of the imagination, is really important to our concept of Europe and of humanity, and we need to keep the politicians a little bit in check really.

And it's a great pleasure on behalf of myself and Cameron and the teams at the Academy of Medical Sciences and the BMJ to welcome you to this very special lecture.

I should say these are James Barry murals And the six of them, they depict the progress of human knowledge and culture, which I think is a very fitting venue for tonight's lecture.

So the origins of this lecture, I remember it very well because Cameron and I met for lunch in the Honey and Company on Store Street.

And I remember it well because I paid.