Year 1760 (MDCCLX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Saturday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

François-Joseph Gossec (January 17, 1734 – February 16, 1829) was a French composer of operas, string quartets, symphonies, and choral works.

The son of a small farmer, Gossec was born at the village of Vergnies, then a French exclave in the Austrian Netherlands, now in Belgium. Showing an early taste for music, he became a choir-boy in Antwerp. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken on by the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. He followed Rameau as the conductor of a private orchestra kept by the fermier général Le Riche de La Poupelinière, a wealthy amateur and patron of music. Gradually he became determined to do something to revive the study of instrumental music in France.

Gossec's own first symphony was performed in 1754, and as conductor to the Prince de Condé’s orchestra he produced several operas and other compositions of his own. He imposed his influence on French music with remarkable success. His Requiem premiered in 1760, a ninety minute piece which made him famous overnight. Years later, in 1778, Mozart visited Gossec during a trip to Paris, and described him in a letter to his father as "a very good friend and a very dry man".

Simon John Thurley, CBE, FRIBA, F.R.Hist.S. (born 29 August 1962, Huntingdon) is an academic and architectural historian, and the present Chief Executive of English Heritage (since April 2002).

Thurley grew up in Godmanchester - he feels that it was inevitable he became a historian since "by age seven I was helping out at Roman digs near my home ... and childhood holidays invariably involved ticking off stately homes and cathedrals". He attended Kimbolton School in Cambridgeshire (1972 – 1982), before leaving to study for a BA degree in History at Bedford College (1982 - 1985). He passed with a 2:1, and continued his studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art (1985 - 1989). There he gained a distinction for a MA degree in Art History, and obtained a PhD degree with the thesis entitled 'English Royal Palaces 1450-1550'. In 2010 he was awarded an Honorary LL.D degree by the University of Bath.

Whilst working on his PhD he took up a post as Inspector of Ancient Monuments for English Heritage (1988 to 1990), late becoming Curator of Historic Royal Palaces (1989 to 1997) and director of the Museum of London (1997 to March 2002). He is also a prolific history broadcaster, presenting a history slot on BBC London for 3 years and - in television - presenting Flying Through Time, Channel Four’s six part series Lost Buildings of Britain (Channel 4), The Buildings that Shaped Britain (Channel 5) and a six-part history of London (Granada). He has also appeared in other programmes (such as Time Team) as a 'talking head'.