Programme 2022
10th March 2022 7.30pm
James Wright
Busting Medieval Myths
I thought that I ought to give you some advance notice that the Speaker for our March Lecture
has changed from Annelie Talent to James Wright because Annelie cannot come to us for family
reasons. Annelie has been rebooked for May 2023. James Wright is coming to us again from
Nottingham at short notice.
Many of you will remember the lecture he gave us under similar circumstances in June 2019:
“The story of the masons, carpenters, cooks, clerks, servants, stable-hands and lower status
visitors to great castles.” This was incredibly interesting and well received; we later rated it as
Outstanding.
In his Busting Medieval Building Myths, James will look at some ten common myths about
medieval buildings and discuss how they arose, and give us the correct answers, insofar as they
are known.
14th April 2022
Neil Faulkner
Dickens, Lawrence & Zhivago. David Lean’s Art of Cinema
Cinematic images are modern art forms. In the ‘golden age’ of cinema – before the development
of CGI technology – film-makers had to construct sets to represent landscapes, townscapes, and
interiors. Sometimes they used paintings and photographs, sometimes they built scale models,
sometimes they constructed full-size replicas. In each case, they created an art installation they
then captured in celluloid images.
Drawing on new insights from the archaeology of cinema, this lecture will use the films of
renowned British director David Lean to explore the art of cinema. How do the ‘artists’ – in this
case formed of large collaborative teams (directors, screenwriters, production designers, costume
designers, camera crews, fixers, etc) – choose locations, construct sets, dress actors, and, more
generally, ‘imagine’ the world they seek to represent? How much is authentic, and how much
preconception and prejudice? What are the influences on the way the cinema depicts the world?
12th May 2022
Rupert Dickens
Through a Glass Darkly-Vermeer & The Camera Obscura
The tranquil and meditative paintings of Johannes Vermeer are among the best-loved artworks in
the world. Relatively little is known about the master
from Delft but that has not deterred a torrent of
publications about him, both fictional and scholarly.
One of the most hotly debated topics in Vermeer
literature is his supposed use of the camera obscura.
We will tackle this controversy head on by
investigating the history of optical devices in art and
examining the latest theories on Vermeer’s technique.
It will be a great opportunity to look at Vermeer’s
beguiling body of work afresh through a different
lens.
Camera Obscura Photo: Heinrich Stürzl
9th June 2022
John Benjamin
At the Sign of the Falcon:The Life & Works of Harry Murphy Goldsmith, Silversmith &
Unique Englishman
H G Murphy’s greatest misfortune was to die just before the start of the Second World War. The
designs and inspirations of the pre-war era were simply seen as passé and totally out of keeping
with the new spirit of modernism which quickly grew after the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Harry Murphy served his apprenticeship under Henry Wilson, probably Britain’s greatest designer
goldsmith of the Arts and Crafts era. Here he learnt a wide range of skills and techniques
including enamelling, gem-setting and polishing, niello, engraving and hammering.
From 1928 until his death in 1939 he worked from retail premises in Marylebone, London, known
as the Falcon Studio where he designed and created a prodigious amount of silverware for the
corporate, civic and private sectors as well as some truly startling gold, silver and enamel
jewellery inspired by nature, architecture, the Ballet Russes and the vibrancy of the Jazz Age.
8th September 2022
Peter Ross
Shakespeare’s First Folio 1623
How was one of the most important books in the English Language created by Shakespeare’s
friends and fellow actors seven years after his death? How was the book put together, what was
missing and without it would we have truly have lost eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays?
This lecture looks at the creation of the book, its structure and design, the people involved in the
extraordinary project and the subsequent history of some of the copies and their distribution
across the world.
13th October 2022
Giles Ramsay
Terence Rattigan – Passion Restrained
One of the highest paid and most successful writers of his day,
Terence Rattigan (along with Noel Coward), was to fall out of favour
in the 1950's with the rise of the Angry Young Men. This lecture
examines the stark contrast between pre and post-war British
theatre and how we, in the C21st, can now reassess which
playwrights really stood the test of time.
Portrait 1974 Photo:Allan Warren
10th November 2022
Mariska Beekenkamp—Wladimiroff
Women in the Dutch Republic
Independent, vocal and brave, the Dutch women were different enough for various 17th century
visitors to Holland to note in their diaries and letters that they had never seen anything like it!
What set them apart and why, this one hour lecture will illustrate the pragmatic Dutch and their
strong women.
8th December 2022
Graham Jones
A Very Ceremonial Christmas
Find out, in this very light-hearted lecture, about the various ceremonial events that take place
around Christmas time. Carol services, concerts and even Changing the Guard at Buckingham
Palace and Windsor all play their part. How do the Chelsea Pensioners prepare and celebrate the
festive season? All will be revealed so, come along and feel wrapped in a blanket of Christmas
loveliness.
2023
12th January 2023
Jacky Klein
A Picture a Day – Peggy Guggenheim. The Birth of Mid Century Modernism
This is the story of how the socialite and muse Peggy Guggenheim became one of the greatest
collectors in the history of modern art. Friends with the leading cultural figures of her day –
including Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Barbara Hepworth, Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Djuna
Barnes and Igor Stravinsky – she was photographed by Man Ray and Andre Kertesz, took advice
from Marcel Duchamp and married – among others – the artist Max Ernst. She moved with ease
between the social elites of New York and the bohemia of Paris.
This talk asks why it was that – seemingly out of the blue – Guggenheim started collecting
contemporary art in the 1930s? What impact did her subsequent galleries in London and New
York have on artists and the wider art world? How and why did her name become inextricably
linked with the city of Venice? And how did a New York heiress play such a pivotal role in the
making of mid-century Modernism?
9th February 2023
Janusck Karczewski-Slowikowski
Are you sitting Comfortably? - The History of the Chair
A lecture on the development of the chair in terms of its construction and style from ancient
times through to the 19th century and also its use as a symbol of power and authority in courtly
ritual.
May 2023
Annalie Talent
Great & Small: Writers, Their Pets & Other Animals
He prayeth best, who loveth best/All things both great and small…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From Robert Burns’s mouse to Shelley’s skylark; from Wordsworth’s butterfly to Keats’s
nightingale; throughout the Romantic period, animals often inspired great writing. This lecture
focuses on the creatures that have been loved, lost and immortalised by some of our greatest
writers.
We begin in the 18th century, with Gilbert White recording in minute detail the behaviour of his
pet tortoise, Timothy. We then turn to the Romantics - including Byron, who wrote more
movingly about his love for a dog than he did for any woman. We end by taking a look at some
Victorian writers’ pets, and discover how these animals inspired their owners – and other
authors.
Along the way, we explore why writing about animals increases during the Romantic and
Victorian periods, and what this tells us about changing attitudes towards them during this time.
8th June 2023
Barbara Askew
Happy & Glorious: The 70th Anniversaries of the Accession & Coronation of HM Queen
Elizabeth 11
2022 is the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and 2023 marks the 70th Anniversary of her Coronation,
events which are unique in the history of our nation.
This lecture celebrates these events and looks at the evolution of the coronation ceremony from
Saxon times to that of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It examines the different stages of the
ceremony from the Recognition through to the Homage and explains the significance of the
different items of the Coronation Regalia.
Finally, the lecture gives an account of the ill omens and memorable mishaps which have
occurred at coronations throughout the centuries and ends with the coronation of Her Majesty
the Queen, the first to be genuinely witnessed by the people through the medium of television.
14th December 2023
Peter Ross
The Curious History of Christmas Food
The foods we eat at Christmas have a long, curious and visually spectacular history. This lecture
narrates and illustrates that history from Medieval boar’s head and brawn, by way of highly
decorated seventeenth century mince pies to the almost forgotten Twelfth Night Cake. Medieval
illuminated manuscripts, paintings and prints from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries,
and illustrations from cookery books provide us with images of some of the lost glories of the
British Christmas feast.
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