This is one for all you fans of ruins, or post-apocalytic imagery.  The University of Cambridge hosts the Darwin College Lecture Series each year, and this year’s theme is “life”.  The second in the series this year was a lecture entitled Life in Ruins by Dr Robert Macfarlane.

In the talk, Dr Macfarlane discusses our fascination with ruins, whether they be actual ruins from the past, or our imagining of a future destruction of our current cities and environments.

His chronicle of the history of ruinism mentions several early and also modern examples of what we would now consider post-apocalyptic fiction, including poetry, books, movies and even Japanese anime.

The lecture is just over an hour long, and is available below, or in a variety of audio and video formats on the Cambridge media site.

Originally posted 2012-02-04 06:22:37.