From the first Christmas song by a 12th-century Northumbrian hermit, through the earliest surviving Christmas carol of the mid-14th-century, to the heyday of the carol in 15th-century England, Jeremy Summerly traces the early history of the world's favourite musical genre with sung illustrations from the St Luke's Carollers of Chelsea.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medieval-carols

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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