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