Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 7 September 2026

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | One-Hour Lecture


Known from Homer’s Iliad as the site of the Trojan War, the ancient city of Troy, situated on Anatolia's western coast in modern-day Turkey, has captivated cultural and historical imagination for nearly three thousand years.

First narrated by travelling storytellers and immortalised in the seventh century BCE, the Iliad is a tale of love, loss, courage, vengeance, victory, and tragedy—with flawed heroes and divine beings influencing its epic narrative. At its core is Troy, besieged for ten years by a Greek alliance led by King Agamemnon, in a conflict full of moral ambiguity and uncertain victory.

This story has inspired scholars to hunt for a real Troy. In the 19th century, Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations uncovered several settlement layers, revealing a complex urban history possibly linked to the legendary war.

In this lecture, Dr. Lauren Mackay examines Troy as both a literary myth and an archaeological site, showing how epic poetry, artifacts, and scholarly insights weave together - and why Troy remains a symbol of myth, history, and cultural importance.

LECTURER

Biography

Dr Lauren Mackay is an historian, author, lecturer and consultant, with a B.Mus from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music/University of Sydney, Australia, a Masters of History from the University of New England, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research explores the interconnected worlds of the Early Modern period, from the courts of Tudor England and the famed Habsburgs, to the Ottoman Empire, and the global reach of European expansion into the New World. Lauren is also the author of three books, and her fourth, Thunder Through the Realms: Five Kingdoms and the Shaping of Early Modern Europe, is due out in 2025 with Bloomsbury Publishing. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has lectured throughout the UK, at venues including Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Sudeley Castle, Hever Castle, Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, The National Archives, Kew, The Portrait Gallery, London, and the BBC History weekends.

Dr Lauren Mackay

Historian