Quite often, I am asked why I chose to be a cardiologist. At one level, the answer is easy. Aged fourteen, I was drawn to the heart through the simple conviction that it is the ‘the most important bit’. Decades later, I have been a doctor for over 30 years, am a practising cardiologist and professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Oxford, where my laboratory works to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of heart injury and repair.  Over the years, I have come to realise that I am far from alone in my sense of the pre-eminence of the heart.  It is a notion that has persisted for millennia.  The Beating Heart is a cultural detective trail to try to understand how and why we have come to see the heart as we do. It is a story of the heart, and in some sense a cultural history told through depiction of the heart.  The story uncovers beautiful heart images that illuminate the age-old dance between art, religion, philosophy and ‘scientific’ thinking. Across time, we meet saints, artists, lovers, scholars and eventually scientists who unwittingly influence each other, in approaching and building an understanding of the beating heart.   The talk will be an exploration of this story told through images.  Think 'Botticelli to Banksy'.