Have you ever wondered what happened to the art collections at the National Gallery, the V&A, and the National Portrait Gallery – even the Crown Jewels – during World War II? 

This is the gripping and sometimes hilarious story of how a band of heroic curators and eccentric custodians saved Britain’s national heritage during the Second World War.  As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives forged extraordinary and ingenious plans to send their collections to safety.  Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, quarries and even their own houses, a dedicated bunch of unlikely characters packed up the nation’s greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures. 

Dr Caroline Shenton is a writer and historian.  She has a degree in medieval history from St Andrews and a doctorate from Worcester College, Oxford. She is the former Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London. When she’s not writing, she is now Secretary to Council at Girton College, Cambridge.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863 – 1923) was a Spanish painter, born in Valencia.  He excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by the people, landscape and sunlit water under the bright sunlight of Spain.  Claude Monet once said that painting in general did not have enough light in it: Sorolla could not agree more.  He managed to capture the light of the Mediterranean beaches he loved and the energy of Spanish life like no other.  He painted what he saw, quickly, to capture that precise moment.

Arantxa Sardina:  Previously a portfolio manager with JP Morgan, Arantxa completed her Masters degree in Art History in 2019 where her dissertation focused on fellow Spaniard Joaquin Sorolla, the master painter of Mediterranean light and a friend of John Singer Sargent.   Since that time although based in London, she has lectured in the UK and around the world.  She is an official volunteer guide at Tate Modern, covering the permanent collection and some of the temporary exhibitions at both the Modern and Britain galleries. 

Illustration: Sewing the Sail, 1896

Pevsner liked to describe himself as a GP in the world of art history. He covered an extraordinarily wide field, although he is best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, 'The Buildings of England'.  He is also renowned for his definition of Englishness in art; his so-called feud with John Betjeman; his love-hate relationship with modern architecture; his views on religion and how they coloured his assessments of church architecture; his career as a Penguin pioneer, and his life-long campaign to save the buildings which he considered the essence of the Victorian spirit.

Susie Harries is a writer, lecturer and editor, specialising in twentieth-century culture and history.  After reading Classics at Cambridge she worked for a music agency, the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption, and the Royal Society of Arts, where she was Head of Ethics. Her  most recent book is a biography of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, which won a Wolfson History Prize and was short-listed for both the Duff Cooper and James Tait Black Prizes in 2012. 

The legendary quality of light, dramatic landscape and sparking turquoise seas have drawn artists to West Cornwall for over 200 years. This talk explores the 'Newlyn School' artists, from their first flowering to the Lamorna colony, together with their contemporaries in St Ives. Featured artists include 'Newlyners' Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes, Walter Langley and Frank Bramley; the later generation, including Laura Knight, Harold Harvey, Dod Procter and ‘Lamorna’ Birch, and St Ives-based contemporaries Helene Schjerfbeck, Marianne Stokes and Julius Olsson.

Alison Bevan studied Art History at the University of Nottingham, and has spent over 35 years working in public art galleries in Wales and the West Country.  During this time, she has met and worked with artists, their families and their models, studying many great works of art in public and private collections across the UK and beyond.  In her lectures she shares her passion for art, and brings to life the stories of the people who produced and feature in these stunning paintings.

By 1960 interest in rock ‘n’ roll had started to fade, its biggest star was moving on and a new generation of teenagers were seeking something different. It came in the form of the Beatles, who broke all the rules and all the records. 

The 1960s was one of the most creative and innovative periods in the history of music:  this lecture features all the major artists, important songs and principal musical genres.

Steve King is a music and media specialist with over 40 years working in the radio industry as a Broadcaster, Programmer and Events Director. He has managed some of the biggest radio brands in the UK and has interviewed and worked with many well-known popular music artists. He has also directed over 50 multi-artist events at venues including the Royal Albert Hall, London Palladium and Manchester Arena. His highly entertaining lectures are based on his extensive knowledge of popular music and his experiences in the radio business.

During the Edo period of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate (1615-1868), the arts of Japan gained in richness and diversity. With the rise of the merchant class and the growth of cities such as Edo (modern-day Tokyo), a new vitality was injected into traditional forms, and an emerging middle-class culture gave rise to exciting developments in the visual and performing arts. This lecture will consider the arts of the period including castle architecture, golden screen painting, ukiyo-e prints, textiles, lacquerware and netsuke, as well as the emergence of the flamboyant kabuki theatre.

Professor Marie Conte-Helm has lectured extensively on the history, arts, and culture of Asia and the Pacific.  She has served as Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group and Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, the largest UK charity supporting links between the two countries.  She was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations.  In 2019 she was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan.

Nicholas Hilliard (1547 – 1619) is the most celebrated English miniaturist of the Elizabethan era. He pioneered the genre known as 'limning', which involved painting with rich, opaque watercolours on vellum (calfskin). The term 'limning' comes from the Latin word 'luminare', meaning 'to give light'. As the trusted creator of Queen Elizabeth I's iconic image, Hilliard played a pivotal role in shaping her public persona.  Hilliard's contributions established Britain as the centre of miniature painting for centuries to come.

Nicole Mezey  studied at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris before becoming Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast, where she established the Department of Art History. Nicole is currently a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society, the National Museum of Northern Ireland, Queen’s University and the National Trust.  Her publications focus on adult education and the arts. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Christmas was a popular time to hold jousts, tournaments and courtly spectacles, especially so in the reign of Henry VIII.  We explore the rich history through the personal experiences of the lecturer.

Tobias Capwell is an American historian who lives and works in London. He was Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection, and is the internationally acknowledged authority on Medieval and Renaissance weapons. 

An academic specialist, he is one of the world’s foremost jousters and author of several books on his subject - and has claimed to be the world's only jousting curator.

From his beginnings as a street artist on the streets of Bristol, Banksy has been creating works for sale for over 20 years and is now one of the recognisable names in the art world, which finally caught up with his popular appeal and now views him as more than a graffiti artist living for a laugh and a headline.

This lecture will examine the reasons behind his incredible rise, looking at some of his famous stunts and discuss what his influence has been on the art market today and look at what his legacy, if any, might be.

Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff is a social psychologist, an Art Historian and founder of Art Historical London, an organisation which offers art historical lectures, museum visits, courses, tours, travel and events from Amsterdam, London and New York.  She will examine this innovative artist who has earned his place in cultural history.

Our lecturer has visited over 12,000 parish churches and has found that along with the peace and serenity, many also contain countless images of Murder, Sex and Mayhem.  Medieval murals and stained glass depict the martyrdom of saints from home and abroad, and the grisliest of dooms. At a lower level may be found depictions of whippings, wife beatings, and brawls.  Many monuments and memorials show scenes of murder and mayhem, including stagecoach crashes, bridge collapses, falling trees, falling bridges, falling chimneys, shootings, stabbings, mine collapses, shipwrecks and explosions. This lecture will show a selection of images of murder and mayhem from across the country and explain both the stories behind them and their relevance to particular periods of history.

Following a career in academia John Vigar worked for 13 years for The Churches Conservation Trust and he is a Trustee of a national charity, The Friends of Friendless Churches.  John is a member of the Advisory Council of The Norfolk Churches Trust and has previously served as Hon Sec of the Ledgerstone Survey of England and Wales, and as Photographic Curator of  The Kempe Society.  He is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Centre for Parish Church Studies.

This lecture tells the stories of alchemy and adventure behind some our most beautiful and colourful paintings.     

In our modern world it’s easy to take colour for granted. Yet before organic chemistry, the most desirable pigments were often exotic or poisonous.  Merchants supplied pungent yellow ‘purree’ nuggets from India, cochineal ‘grana’ from the holds of Spanish galleons, lapis rock carried by camel train from the mountains of Badakhshan. Alchemists prepared deadly ‘King’s Yellow’ and ‘Ruby of Arsenic’. ‘Moorish Gold’ was concocted, according to a 12th century monk, from basilisk powder ground with human blood!   Small wonder that artists kept their paint recipes closely guarded in Books of Secrets.

Lyn Gibson originally trained as a fine artist and has taught painting, drawing and printmaking in higher and adult education. She lectured as an art historian for the universities of Sussex and Bristol where she introduced "Understanding Art" to the Lifelong Learning programme. She gives talks, lectures and guided tours to a wide range of organisations and institutions including ARCA colleges, the National Trust, National Gallery, art museums and art societies. She has worked as a professional artist specializing in oil painting and etching. 

Jewellery and fashion are often seen as two distinct fields of design, but this is very far from the case.  In his talk Andrew guides us through the extraordinary periods and events between 1890 and 1929, where the great fashion houses collaborated with the finest of jewellery creators to produce works of art of outstanding quality and glittering opulence.  The creative skills involved will be examined, along with the clients and patrons who commissioned these fabulous jewels - and how they were worn with the sumptuous gowns.

Andrew Prince's enthusiasm for jewellery can be traced back to the time when, at the age of three, he swallowed one of his mother’s pearl earrings having found her jewel box hidden in a cupboard.  Among his many commissions, including from Michael Jackson and Shirley Bassey, he was asked to create the jewels for the main characters in Downton Abbey, which provided the inspiration to create this lecture.

The dramatic rescue of Wentworth Woodhouse, Britain’s largest country house captured newspaper headlines. This lecture looks at its extraordinary history and shows how the story of the house is inextricably linked with the colourful lives of the three great aristocratic families who lived there- the Wentworths, the Watsons and the Fitzwilliams. In the 18th century rivalry between two branches of the family led to each trying to outdo the other by building the larger house. By the 1750s Wentworth Woodhouse was 600 feet long, and the interiors enriched the house with fine paintings, sculptures

Barbara Peacock is an architectural historian and lectures both in Britain and abroad.  Her particular interest is in the art and architecture of the country house and its associated landscape or garden setting, and this has led to extensive travel throughout Britain and the Continent.  She was formerly Assistant Keeper in the Department of Fine Art at Birmingham City Art Gallery and Adult Education Tutor in Fine Art at Southampton University.

The role of sculpture in our public spaces has changed somewhat over the years.   Our Victorian ancestors raised up statues of royalty, or public and military figures they admired, on pedestals.  These days, it’s more likely to be contemporary sculpture creating a different kind of impact on our streets.  This lecture examines how sculpture plays an important role in cities, and how sculpture can become a challenging space for social encounters.  Some examples include the work of Anthony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Cornelia Parker.

Anna Moszynska is a lecturer and writer, specialising in contemporary art. She developed the first British Master’s Degree in the subject at Sotheby’s Institute and has also taught at institutions including The City Lit, the Royal Academy and Tate, as well as lecturing to diverse audiences in cities ranging from Dubai to New York. She has reviewed for BBC Radio and for various art periodicals. Anna currently teaches at academic institutions in London and Paris and runs her own art courses. Her books include Abstract Art (1990) and Sculpture Now (2013) are published by Thames & Hudson.

The wild excesses of the Picturesque, with its fondness for Gothick horror and surprise, produced some wonderfully dramatic, if impractical, gardens. The reaction to this gardening chaos led to a more formal style of planting championed by Humphry Repton and then an explosion of garden ornamentation in every conceivable style, as taste and restraint were abandoned altogether. Technology came to the aid of the gardener and conservatories and greenhouses were built on a larger and larger scale until the Crystal Palace, the ultimate glasshouse, was built by the giant of the nineteenth century, Sir Joseph Paxton.

James Bolton studied at the Inchbald School of Design 1990.  He worked as Head Gardener, Old Rectory Farnborough in the early 1990s;  he was then appointed as Faculty Director, Design History, Inchbald School of Design. He has been a garden designer since 1992. He organises tours to the best private gardens in the UK, Italy, France and South Africa.  His book Garden Mania, a book on garden ornaments, was published in 2000.

Peggy Guggenhein was the ‘poor little rich girl’ who changed the face of the twentieth-century art.  Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912; and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.  She discovered and nurtured a new generation of artists producing a new kind of art. Through collecting not only art but the artists themselves, her life was as radical as her collection.  The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of the most important museums in Italy displaying European and American art of the first half of the 20th century:  her collection includes  Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Alexandra Epps' background is in graphic design, having practised and run her own design consultancy for many years.  She established Art in the City as a platform from which to introduce her walks, talks, tours and her love for art and design in London, and she is an accredited Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern and Tate Britain.

This talk is about the White House’s perhaps most celebrated twentieth century residents, the Kennedys.  No other couple who inhabited the White House was ever so glamorous, sophisticated and celebrated.  They will never be forgotten given the tragic end to the Kennedy presidency, but the astounding aesthetic and artistic changes made during their relatively brief tenure has also been a legacy.  The wonderful film tour of the residence made by Mrs Kennedy is still shown to visitors today, and the Rose Garden was a fine creation by Jackie and her friend, garden designer Bunny Mellon.  The interiors were restored following careful historical research, and items belonging to the house throughout its history were tracked down, purchased, and in many cases gifted back by patriotic individuals. Take a trip down memory lane and visit Camelot in this richly illustrated talk.

Educator and author Andrew Hopkins was Assistant Director of the British School at Rome in the late 1990s, and since 2004 has been Associate Professor at the University of L’Aquila.  His PhD was on Venetian architecture, part of which was awarded the Essay Medal by the Society of Architectural Historians.  He was a Fellow at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti in Florence, and has been a Senior Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.  

Using illustrations from illuminated manuscripts, readings from literature and contemporary accounts, and the songs, carols and lively dance tunes of medieval England, the spirit of a Medieval Christmas is brought alive - a time of joy and celebration for some, but hardship and suffering for others. With extracts from literature and manorial household accounts, life in a medieval manor house at Yuletide is pieced together.

Sarah Deere-Jones is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.  She performs, writes and lectures about the harp regularly in America, Australia,Europe and UK.  Her lectures  include live music and songs on harps and other instruments.

The Christmas Party will follow this lecture

Raphael was one of the most talented painters of the Italian Renaissance.  Although largely known for his paintings, many of which can still be seen in the Vatican Palace where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the largest work of his career, he was also an architect, printmaker, and expert draftsman. In other words, a true "Renaissance man.

Stuart Harvey is a “History and Art Communicator” of 30 years' experience. He is a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide and also a Guida Turistica Abilitata della Provincia di Roma. He has worked in educational tourism since 1992, leading study tours all over Europe. Living in Rome since 2003, Stuart has developed a great love for the Eternal City and its many treasures. In addition to his primary career as full-time Rome tourist guide, Stuart’s entertaining and lively lectures bring the rich artistic and historical wealth of Rome’s 28 centuries to life.

Instead of commemorating their own losses, German artists created art forms which responded to questions of apology and atonement.  How does a nation of former persecutors mourn its victims? How do you remember what you would rather forget? 

Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer with a long career of teaching art in prisons in Germany and England. Her time ‘behind bars’ gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation.

In the past decade Angela’s Anglo-German roots led her to research Germany’s post-WW2 process of remembrance and the extraordinary culture of 'counter memorials' and site-specific artworks that emerged to express national shame and apology.  With the current debates on statues and monuments, the ways in which Germany has tried to deal with its dark past is more relevant and inspiring than ever.  

Murder, poison, corruption and incest: all perfect ingredients for sensational popular culture. But in an age known for its brutality and church corruption were the Borgias really so bad? This sumptuous illustrated lecture reveals the real story of the family that dominated the Papacy and Italian politics during the last decade of the 15th century: the wily charismatic, womaniser, Pope Alexander; his sociopathic son, Cesare, cardinal, general and the model for ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli, himself a character in their story; and his adored daughter Lucrezia, who moves from ‘the greatest whore in Rome’ to a devout and treasured duchess of the city of Ferrara. Sometimes truth is more intoxicating than myth.

Novelist, broadcaster and critic, Sarah Dunant read history at Cambridge, then worked for many years as a cultural journalist in radio and television.  She has published thirteen novels, taught renaissance studies at Washington University, and lectured around the world at festivals and conferences.  Her last five novels have been set within the Italian Renaissance. In the Name of the Family completes the story of the Borgia family and the remarkable period of Italian history in which they lived.

From Burns to Byron and from Jane Austen to the Brontes; this lecture will uncover the fascinating stories behind some literary portraits of the Romantic period. The lecture will look at various ways in which Romantic writers have been depicted in art, and how these likenesses have been received, both during the writers’ lifetimes, and posthumously. It will also explore the afterlives of literary portraits and their use in popular culture – from banknotes and fridge magnets, to tins of shortbread and bottles of gin. How do writers’ portraits contribute to literary fame and celebrity? 

Following a career in teaching, Annalie Talent spent several years working on education programmes at museums and literary houses across the UK, including the Wordsworth Trust; Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.  She also worked with the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and Chawton House Library in promoting Austen’s work to young people.
Annalie’s lectures focus on aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature.  She uses her knowledge and personal experience of literary houses – and their collections – to offer a unique perspective on writers and their works. 

A tiny section of the Seine to the West of Paris which would have represented the perfect antidote to the claustrophobia of mid 19th Paris, has been termed The Cradle of Impressionism.   Five neighbouring riverside villages in this area were frequently visited by the artists who would later become known as the Impressionists.  In some cases they even set up home for a while. The lives and early works of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley and Morisot will be explored in this lively and entertaining lecture. Their desperation to gain recognition and make their mark is apparent and both the painting styles adopted, and subject matter depicted, were to cause a revolution in the Art World.

Carole Petipher is an experienced guide and lecturer on combined history and art tours in France, with 20 years experience. Having lived and worked on a number of bespoke river vessels and converted barges there, she has used them as a platform from which to research her lectures. She uses art in all its guises to explore the characters who shaped France and likes to delve behind the scenes to discover hidden truths.

In the spring of 1889 the young Edwin Lutyens, later to become the most famous British architect of the 20th century, met the artist-gardener-craftswoman Gertrude Jekyll for the first time at an afternoon tea party in rural Surrey.  She was a well-known eccentric and a generation older than the young man.

Though they always maintained their independence from one another, their joint creations of house and garden became the talk of Edwardian society.  Separately they were interesting, curious, isolated: together they proved irresistible

Steven Desmond is an independent landscape consultant specialising in historical gardens and architecture.  He lectures at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford and is a specialist tour leader in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy.  He is a writer and broadcaster on historic gardens.  His book, ‘Gardens of the Italian Lakes’ is published by Frances Lincoln

There are many theories about what happened in Arles in 1888 between Gaugin and Van Gogh, but the theory we will hear today may be quite controversial.  At first Van Gogh had been very happy at the Yellow House in Arles, but he and Gaugin had dramatically different approaches to their art which led to many disagreements and arguments.  

Julian Halsby studied History of Art at Cambridge, before embarking on a career of lecturing, writing, and running an art gallery in North London.   He interviews artists for the Artist Magazine and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and The Critics Circle.  A practising artist, he was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1994 and appointed Keeper in 2010.

His special period as an art historian is from about 1850 to 1920, a period rich with amazingly talented artists from the Pre-Raphaelites, whom he sees as radical and revolutionary painters who defied the old painting conventions of colour and composition, to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. 

This lecture is a look at backstage life at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the pressures faced by performers – be they singer, dancer, conductor or musician. We see how the building copes with the demands of modern productions, and examine audience expectations both inside the theatre and out.  We also look at some of the highs and try to understand some of the lows that have been the fortune of this world-class performing venue over the years.

Nigel Bates has worked as a performer for more than forty years in and out of the Royal Opera House. After two years in Australia he returned to the UK to resume his music and speaking engagements across the country. He was a producer for both the BBC’s Maestro at the Opera and Pappano’s Classical Voices television series. He lectures widely for the Arts Society Network.

Followed by New Members' Party

From the early sixties, when he left the Royal College of Art more famous than his teachers, Hockney's paintings have shown a charm and humour that sets them apart from others of his generation. A naturally gifted draftsman, his love of ingenious visual devices has led him to experiment with a whole range of techniques, from stage design to coloured paper making. From the early abstract expressionist images, through his famous Californian scenes of swimming pools to the photomontages of the mid-eighties, this lecture follows the career of an artist whose wit and imagination has never faltered.
Douglas Skeggs read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. He was the director of ‘The New Academy of Art Studies’ for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at ‘The Study Centre’, ‘Christie’s’ course ‘The History of Art Studies’ and other London courses. He helped set up the Abercrombie & Kent “Private Label tours” and is presently cultural adviser to Ultimate travel. He has written and presented various TV documentaries, notably the Omnibus programme on ‘Whistler’ and the exhibition video on ‘William Morris. He is also a painter and author.

Followed by the AGM

It is not known exactly when Advent was first acknowledged as part of the Church’s calendar, but it appears to be a tradition that was started sometime in the late 5th century.  Etymologically, Advent is derived from the Latin adventus – coming, arrival – and for many people today, as in the past, it is a time for reflection and spiritual preparation for the birth of Christ on 25th December. Over the centuries Advent has attracted many customs and traditions, and has also inspired a wide range of fine prose and poetry, as well as some first class music.  The lecture follows the ever evolving traditions of Advent and samples a range of inspired poetry and music.

Peter Medhurst’s work as singer, pianist and lecturer-recitalist has taken him all over the world and travels in the last few years have included tours of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, as well as mainland Europe.  Closer to home, he has presented events at the King’s Place, the Barbican, St John’s Smith Square, and the Royal Festival Hall on subjects that range from Beethoven String Quartets, Mozart Operas, Vermeer’s Music Lesson, The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Golden Age of Vienna, and 18th Century Venetian Art and Music.  He has also directed presentations at the Wallace Collection, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A, linking the visual arts with the world of 17th & 18th century music making.

He is a familiar face to audiences of music societies, regional theatres and British festivals, as well as to those of arts based organisations such as The Art Fund, The National Trust ,and the Arts Society (formally known as NADFAS).  Radio work has included Classic FM, Radio 3, and Radio 4.  His recordings number For Two to Play, Schubert Songs, Handel and His Satellites,  Tyme at the Virginalls, and On Christmas Night – a programme of Christmas carols and seasonal songs.

In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder was commissioned to create a series of paintings for a dining room in Antwerp.

The images, charting the course of a year, changed the way we view the world through art. Landscape had previously been a decorative backdrop to dramas both sacred and profane. But in Bruegel's hands the landscape and our interaction with it became the focus. Looking at paintings such as The Return of the Herd, Hunters in the Snow and The Gloomy Day, this lecture explores how Bruegel pioneered a whole new way of thinking about the environment and our individual places within a shifting cosmos.

Gavin Plumley - A writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. Lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, is published in June 2022. 

In the year 2000, having been a Curator in the Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum for 13 years, our lecturer decided to escape. Given a trowel with a diamond and silver casing in the handle as a leaving present, she set off on a series of extraordinary archaeological adventures. This richly illustrated talk will take you to a mysterious and atmospheric ancient city on the coast of southern Albania, to the banks of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia - the Euphrates and the Tigris - and then to the wild and wonderful mountains of northern Ethiopia.

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. Her book, The Mycenaeans, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects - previously in south-eastern Turkey, Greece and Albania and currently in Ethiopia. She has recently been appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome 

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll wrote a short but seminal article in The Garden in which she urged the readers to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”.  As an accomplished watercolour artist, Miss Jekyll was familiar with the principles of using colours, but she felt that in gardens these principles “had been greatly neglected”.  This talk looks at how to apply these principles in designing a border, how a border is different from a painting and also how the work of Turner, Monet, Rothko and Jackson Pollack evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should look like.

Timothy Walker - was the Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014.  Botanic gardens are often described as living museums, and garden curators lecture about them in the same way as museum curators talk about their collections.  Gardens are often thought of a place where science and art meet on equal terms and my lectures often investigate this relationship.  Since 2014 Mr Walker has been a college lecturer and tutor in Botany and Plant Conservation at Somerville College Oxford. 

Manet, Toulouse Lautrec and inspirational work done by many artists made the world’s first effective method of mass communication a great art form.

In his lecture The Great Age of the Poster Charles Harris relates how technical innovations in printing enabled the poster to become the world's first effective method of mass communication.

From his vast experience he shares insider secrets and reveals how an effective poster is designed and how it plays on the mind, and why most posters today go unnoticed.

Focusing on the role of posters and poster artists in the history of advertising, this global-award winning Creative Director of international advertising agencies has lectured extensively on design, illustration and photographic styles as they have influenced the building of brands. He has himself created posters for major brands including British Airways, Nestlé, Sony, General Motors and Shell. His travel writing and photography has appeared in various airline magazines as well as Time. He has also written and produced several hundred TV and Radio commercials and corporate video programmes. A member of The Arts Society Winchester.

L. S. Lowry, RA (1887-1976) is probably Britain's most popular artist. His pictures of Northern mills, and life in the industrial districts of Manchester and Salford, have a humanity and universal appeal that makes them accessible to and admired by all ages and generations.

Nevertheless, as Michael Howard's new monograph shows, the popular image of Lowry has tended to obscure both the strength and conviction of his vision, and his place within the modernist tradition. Lowry himself was a complex character, a man who kept his life and activities strictly compartmentalized. Until his death, he kept hidden from the art world the fact that he had worked all his life until retirement as a rent collector in some of the poorest areas of the Manchester conurbation - an activity that assuredly had profound effects on his art.

Michael Howard takes a completely fresh look at Lowry. It is possible now, over 20 years after his death, to dispel a number of the myths and sentimental stories that have grown around him - many of them encouraged or promulgated by the man himself - and to look afresh at the very real achievement of his art.

Michael Howard is an artist, lecturer, and a writer of art books, plays and poems. As an artist he is passionate about drawing - responding to his immediate surroundings in tiny sketchbooks. His ambition regarding his paintings and his hand-crafted artist’s books is simple - to give pleasure. On occasion, he works with his friend, the artist Alastair Noble, most notably on a number of sculptural pieces celebrating the philosopher Wittgenstein’s sojourn on Chunal Moor, (1908-1911). He was also responsible for the recreation of Degas’s sculptures in the award-winning film Degas and the Dance. Examples of Michael’s paintings, artist’s books and sketchbooks have been exhibited in the UK and abroad

This lecture starts with an examination of evolving attitudes in India (as well as in the UK) towards the British Empire, and towards the buildings which survive as testament to its achievements.

A whistle-stop tour is then made of the very best colonial buildings in Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi and elsewhere.

The final third of the lecture focuses on Bombay, reflecting on the lecturer's experience of having masterminded a British Government backed project to restore that city’s magnificent George Gilbert Scott designed university buildings. The telling of this mid-Victorian building’s story – its design in England, construction, history and, of course, its restoration – provide useful starting points from which to consider the broader historical, cultural and architectural context. Bombay’s economic boom of the 1860s coincided with the high point of the Gothic Revival. Nowhere else in the world can claim to have as magnificent an assemblage of Gothic Revival buildings. Whilst examining the city’s colonial architecture study is made of the carvings of Bombay’s Jeejeebhoy School of Art (see above), whose Architectural Sculpture Department was – for a short time - headed up by John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling. The story of the award winning project to restore the University of Mumbai’s Gothic Revival buildings provides an opportunity to touch upon philosophical approaches to conservation as well as traditional repair techniques. An account is also given of the work undertaken by those who took time away from their respective Cathedral workshops in the Uk to transfer knowledge and skills to their Indian counterparts.

Anthony Peers - A freelance historic buildings' consultant, educated as an Architectural Historian at Manchester University and trained in building conservation at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York. After two years with SAVE Britain's Heritage, where he wrote Deserted Bastions, worked with the English Heritage Listing Division on the review of military buildings. In the mid 1990s was employed by the DTI in Bombay, India, setting up and running an innovative project to repair George Gilbert Scott's university buildings and training local architects and craftsmen in conservation techniques and philosophy. From 1998 until 2010, worked as Rodney Melville & Partners' historian, involved with research, analysis, assessment and conservation planning at such sites as The Workhouse, Southwell; Aston Hall, Birmingham; The Royal Institution, London and Cliveden. Published a book on the History of Birmingham Town Hall in 2012, to critical acclaim. Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and Deputy Chairman of the Ancient Monuments Society.

In his heyday, the animal artist Edwin Landseer was hugely celebrated and loved for his dogs and Highland stags; later, for his lions in Trafalgar Square. He was a child prodigy; aged 5 years old he made a detailed study of a foxhound which astounded everybody; later he became known for his vivid and varied textures of animal skin, hair and fur, which he achieved with special brushes, keeping their design a secret. He was a party man, with party tricks; with his left hand he could draw a horse’s head and with his right a stag’s head complete with horns – at the same time!

Most widely appreciated for his dogs, he could paint comic dogs, tragic dogs and in-between dogs, and he became known - with some justification - as the Shakespeare of Dogs.

He was socially much in demand with the aristocracy and with Royalty, teaching the Queen and Prince to etch. But after awhile it all gets too exhausting; the celebrated artist feels happier up in the Highlands of Scotland. He ends up stressed, drunk and mad, comparing himself to one of his own hunted stags. Nobody can get him to behave except his neighbour Mrs Pritchard, an elderly widow said to look like “ a very small monkey, with bright blinking eyes and a merry mouth.” 

When Sir Edwin died they named a pub after him; they buried him in St Paul’s Cathedral, and someone put black wreaths around the necks of those lions in Trafalgar Square. 

Karin Fernald is known for her entertaining lectures on writers and diarists connected with the arts from the mid-18th to 19th century, and moving forward in time with Virginia Woolf. Extensive research into diaries and letters bring lectures to vivid life. Karin illustrates them with slides of contemporary pictures and portraits from varied sources.

Illustrated with many wonderful works of art, this lecture tells the extraordinary story of the rise of the son of a lawyer in Ajaccio, Corsica, to become Emperor of the French before finally being defeated and sent into exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. It also attempts to explain the nature of his genius as an administrator and a military commander, assessing his achievements and his failures, his strengths and his weaknesses. Among the topics covered will be his marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais, his relationship with the Duke of Wellington, and his place within history. It is in some ways a very human story, but one which focuses on one of the most remarkable men who has ever lived.

Educated at New College Oxford our speaker Stephen Duffy is a former senior curator of London’s popular gallery the Wallace Collection. He is an expert on 19th Century painting.

Exactly how did a modest jewellery concern with an extremely un-Russian sounding name become an enduring symbol of Romanov luxury? This talk takes us beyond the legendary Easter eggs to consider the design sources, materials and techniques that distinguished the legendary Russian firm from its contemporaries. We will look, in particular, at Fabergé gifts that were selected to convey romantic ties, filial devotion, diplomatic esteem, and even loyalty from a beloved pet.

Cynthia Coleman Sparke (MA 2001) has consulted on Russian works of art for Bonhams London since 2007. A graduate of Smith College, she was previously a senior appraiser for Chubb Insurance in London and the head of the Russian department at Christie's.

There have been pictorial representations of The Magi from as early as at least the 6th century, such as depictions in Byzantine ivories with origins in places such as Constantinople. Indeed, a vast array of artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (active 1550/1; died 1569), Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Masaccio (1401 – 1428/9?), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) to name but a few, have been clearly fascinated by story and its possibilities when it comes to visual depictions. However, these depictions over this vast period of time have been anything but consistent. All the aforementioned artists will be mentioned in this lecture, as I seek to will unravel the myth and the iconography behind the proliferation of the story of the adoration of the magi from its Eastern and pagan roots to its current Christian interpretation. To aid my examination of this story, and to trace the changes in iconography and depictions of the kings themselves, I will be illustrating it with a variety beautiful works of art, images made across many centuries that will illuminate this fascination as never before. The lecture will begin by looking at the etymology behind the term ‘magi’ and how it has come down to us and what is now means in contemporary society.

This lecture will then look at the changing iconography behind the depictions of the story and the various meanings behind these changes in its iconography, not to mention the changes in the story of the adoration of the magi itself. Moving on the lecture will then look at the origin of the names of the magi and the significance of their gifts to the Christ Child. Following this exploration of the fundamental roots of the story I will then come to the issue of the inclusion of the black king, where he came from, why he would be included, how significant was he and how European artists tackled the problem of depicting this magus when they themselves had little or no knowledge of such people of colour. Finally, I will examining the actual origins of the story and how much of a bearing does that story, as we understand it, have on the actual story written in the Bible. To examine this final question, I will contrast the relevant passages the biblical with images from many sources to help clarify the difference between those and the example images. This final part of my lecture will set out to ask what it is we want this story to mean and why do we hold on to the legendary story rather than biblical tale in our mostly Western secular society.

Leslie Primo is a graduate with a degree in Art History and an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck, University College, London. During his studies he specialised in early Medieval and Renaissance studies, including, Italian Renaissance Drawing, Art and Architecture in Europe 1250-1400 Art and Architecture in Europe 1400-1500, Medici and Patronage, Narrative Painting in the Age of Giotto, the work of Peter Paul Rubens focusing on his paintings of the Judgement of Paris, and Greek Myth in paintings.

Leslie Primo has not only worked at the National Gallery in London for 18 years, but has also taught a variety of art history course at Reading University, including: Medieval to Renaissance (a survey course), Reading Pictures – The Hidden Stories in Art (a course on iconography) and Masters of the Renaissance - Leonardo and Michelangelo.

Leslie Primo lectures at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and teaches a variety of art history courses at Imperial College, London, the City Literary and Bishopsgate Institutes in London, including: An art history survey course called Styles in Art (spanning art from Byzantium to Victorian painting), The Mirror of Nature (looking at 17th Century art and culture), The Renaissance and Beyond, Introduction to the National Galley and Introduction to the National Portrait Gallery, Introduction to Western European Art and many more.

Leslie Primo's lecturing repertoire and subject areas include: Early Renaissance painting, High Renaissance painting, Baroque and Mannerism, 17th, 18th and 19th century artists such as Seurat, Monet and Cézanne, which also encompasses Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

This also includes many slide lectures across all these subject areas, such as Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai, lectures on the Lunar Society, lectures on the Court of Charles I, and Leonardo's Portraits and Madonnas.

Edwin Lutyens surely inherited his artistic bent from his father Charles Lutyens, and his godfather Edwin Landseer. He became an Architect of some repute. His style included a period of arts and crafts, transforming to a more artistic mode, culminating in the building of imperial Delhi. His works include the Salutation (in Kent ) and his dolls house for Queen Mary.

Nicholas is a freelance lecturer in the Decorative and Fine Arts, who enjoys a reputation as a knowledgeable and entertaining speaker, on over thirty subjects ranging from the Collecting Interests of Queen Mary to the Villas and Gardens of the South of France.

He works primarily as a lecturer for some of the major travel companies such as Noble-Caledonia, Hebridean, and Travel Editions. His principal holidays with the latter company being Short Breaks to visit some of Britain’s great country houses, about which Nicholas is particularly enthusiastic.

In addition Nicholas lectures for the Arts Society (formerly NADFAS) which has taken him South Africa, Germany, and all over the United Kingdom.

Nicholas is available for clients who wish to organise a private tour, with exclusive access, and has on several occasions done this for British and Continental clients.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LECTURE ON CARAVAGGIO ADVERTISED FOR THIS DATE HAS BEEN CANCELLED.  WE ARE SORRY TO DISAPPOINT YOU AND HOPE THAT THIS LECTURE CAN BE BROUGHT TO YOU SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE.

WE ARE PLEASED TO OFFER:

THE CULTURE OF THE UKRAINE

GIVEN BY

ROSAMUND BARTLETT

This lecture tells Ukraine's story through the shared culture which binds its proud people together. We will explore the sacred art and architecture of Kyiv and its links to Byzantium, as well as the distinctive characters and ethnicities of Odesa and Lviv. Tracing Ukraine's complicated multi-ethnic history also means looking at its rich folk culture traditions. These range from native song and the secret codes embedded in ancient embroidery, which have exerted a surprising impact on modern painting and contemporary haute couture, to Cossack dancing and borshch.

Rosamund Bartlett a writer, lecturer and translator whose work as a cultural historian ranges across the arts. She completed her doctorate at Oxford and is the author of several books, including biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and a study of Wagner's influence in Russia. She is currently writing a history of the Russian avant-garde. Her new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World’s Classics was published to acclaim in 2014. She has written on art, music and literature for publications such as The Daily Telegraph and Apollo, and received commissions from institutions including the Royal Opera House, Tate UK, and the Salzburg Festival. Her lecturing work has taken her from the V&A and the National Theatre in London to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and she contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC.

The Ming Dynasty came to power in 1368. Ming translates as bright and the first emperors of this new dynasty were regarded as semi-divine and blessed by the 'Mandate of Heaven'. China's new capital city, Beijing, had massive fortified walls which protected the Imperial Palace - the Forbidden City. Fine craftsmanship developed under the patronage of the emperors including the making of glittering gold vessels which reflected the brightness of the new dynasty, brilliantly coloured red lacquer, jade sculptures and porcelain vessels including the legendary 'Ming Vases'. Lustrous silk was made into robes and tiny embroidered shoes for ladies with bound 'golden lotus' feet. Kingfisher feathers adorned their hair. China's Civil Service of administrators was drawn from elite groups of educated 'men of letters' - the literati -  who enjoyed painting and calligraphy. Their taste inclined to the cultivation of gardens, the collecting of austere classical furniture and an elegant Culture of Tea which flourished among the literati and wealthy Chinese merchants. Jesuit missionaries and Portuguese merchants arrived in China during the Ming, they brought tea and porcelain to Europe and eventually, Catherine of Braganza would be credited with popularising tea-drinking in England. By this time, the Ming had declined and their 'Mandate of Heaven' had slipped away.

DETAILS 

Anne is a lecturer at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum and the Queen’s Gallery. She is a visiting lecturer for Regent's University, Sotheby's Institute and SOAS. Since 2008, she has been a member of the London faculty of Eckerd College, Florida, teaching Art History and is also an accredited Arts Society lecturer. For ten years she guided private evening tours of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. She lectures extensively for private groups, guides museum tours in London and has lectured on William Morris for the British Council and British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.  

After studying Modern History at Durham University, she trained and became a senior specialist in ceramics at the head offices in London of Bonhams (1981-1986) and Christie's (1987-1995). From 1995 to 2002, she was resident in Shanghai, China and gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community of diplomats and expatriates in Shanghai and Beijing. On returning to London in 2002, she worked on a short project cataloguing Chinese ceramics at Kensington Palace and became Hon Membership Secretary and Treasurer of the French Porcelain Society

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This talk will consider the origins of the movement through an examination of Ebenezer Howard’s pioneering ideals which lie at the heart of the movement. With these ideals and history in mind the focus will move to the post war towns. Starting in 1946 with Stevenage the governments New Town Act of the same year created sweeping powers that saw a wave of towns being built. Now over seventy years old these towns have found a maturity and personality of their own, with the benefit of hindsight the legacy of these idealistic designers can be fully understood.

Matthew Denny is an auctioneer, valuer, lecturer, writer and educationalist. Based near the Dorset, Devon and Somerset border, he is always happy to travel for work and is in London regularly. He works in many aspects of the fine and decorative arts and offers a full range of professional auctioneering and valuation services, con.  Whilst currently consulting for one of the leading provincial auction rooms.

Lucia Gahlin is an Egyptologist based in the UK. She is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, and teaches on-line Egyptology for the University of Exeter. She lectures far and wide, and gives guided tours of museums with Egyptian collections. She is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society (formerly NADFAS), for whom she has done three lecture tours of Australia. Over the years she has taught Egyptology for the Universities of London (Birkbeck College and UCL), Reading, Surrey, Sussex, Warwick and Bristol.

She has worked at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London (in the role of Amarna Archaeological Research Data Administrator), and continues to teach with objects in this museum, one of the world’s most important collections of Egyptian antiquities. She has been a Trustee of the Egypt Exploration Society, is Chair of the Friends of the Petrie Museum and Co-Director of Bloomsbury Summer School at University College London, providing short courses on Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East.  Her areas of special interest are Ancient Egypt's social history, settlement archaeology and the rituals and beliefs of daily life. She is author of books including Egypt: Gods, Myths and Religion, and chapters in Wilkinson, T. (ed.) The Egyptian World  and in Rathbone, D. (ed.) Civilisations of the Ancient World.

She has spent two seasons working as the Small Finds Registrar at the archaeological site of Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt. She has been leading tours to the ancient monuments and archaeological sites of Egypt for over 20 years. She loves sharing her knowledge and passion for Ancient Egypt with groups of travellers to this extraordinary and awe-inspiring country.

Up until the early 19th century Russian painting consisted almost entirely of academic styles and subject matter dominated by the west, Paris in particular. Artists such as Alexey Venetsianov, encouraged by Czar Nicholas I’s promotion of ‘national trends’ began to change the focus towards more home grown themes, such as the status of the Russian peasant.

Already by mid century the class system and village structure, dominated by landowner and the orthodox church was under more critical scrutiny, led by artists such as Vasily Perov, but it wasn’t until the pioneering work of the group known as ‘The Wanderers’ that Russian society was put more fully under the microscope. By then the serfs had been liberated, in many cases ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of their new found freedom, as were their masters who suddenly found themselves with vast estates and a much reduced workforce.

This lecture reveals the fascinating insight into this moving story afforded by the paintings of more than a dozen superb artists, yet whose work is still relatively unknown in the West.

A popular lecturer at The Arts Society Fylde, Brian Healey was a senior modern languages teacher in an independent grammar school for many years, and has also enjoyed a successful parallel career since the 1980s as a professional artist and interior designer. Since 2006 he has been regularly appointed to a number of prestigious ocean and river cruise lines, either as resident artist, guest lecturer on art history or as destination speaker for more than 40 countries. Most recently this work has successfully extended to art guiding through important towns and museums in France, Belgium, Holland and Spain

In discussing famous artists of the nineteenth century, the model central to their work is frequently overlooked. This lecture explores the myths of the Impressionists’ models in France and the Pre-Raphaelite muses in England. Some of them were artists in their own right, overshadowed by the men who painted them, and others never really overcame their lowly status as an artist’s model in the hierarchy of the art world.

We begin with Victorine Meurent, the model for Manet’s Olympia, Van Gogh’s paintings of his mistress Sien and Madame Roulin in Arles and also Degas’s sculpture of Marie Van Goetham, better known as The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. They are discussed alongside the Pre-Raphaelite muses of the same period in England: Lizzie Siddal, famously the model for Millais’ Ophelia and her subsequent suicide; Fanny Cornforth, who began her life on the London streets as a prostitute and Janey Morris, the stable girl who became the wife of William Morris and Dante Rossetti’s last muse. We also look at the ways in which the force of the model’s personality influenced and determined the creation of some of the famous icons of this period.

Daphne Lawson has an MA by research and Thesis from the University of Canterbury on Degas' Public and Private Spectacle and a BA in Art History from London University.  Since 1994, until she retired she was a full time Art History Lecturer for the BISC, Herstmonceaux Castle, East Sussex, the European Campus of Queen's University, Ontario, Canada.  Her first career was as an actress.  She was trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in theatre, film and television as an actress.

The Blaue Reiter artists in Munich reacted against academic art, regarding it as shallow and materialistic, and chose instead to paint a spiritual attitude to nature and humanity. Their art was considered an affront to good taste, or at best the work of madmen.

The German Expressionists in Dresden and Berlin reacted against industrialization and chose to paint utopian visions of the Good Life: men and women living freely in nature. Their art was considered ugly and technically bad.

The New Objectivity artists, George Grosz and Otto Dix, having experienced the national humiliation of World War One, reacted against the Self-Expressionists, painting technically good pictures but with ugly subject matter: corrupt capitalists and bankers in brothels.

The Dadaists rejected the pleasure of beauty in art, and instead celebrated “bad” art, an aesthetic that confounded the middle classes.

Then Hitler damned the lot of them, classifying them all as Degenerates and instead promoted bad Neo-Classical kitsch.

This lecture examines Hogarth’s  Marriage à la Mode and other ‘modern moral subjects’. It looks at how the artist used his work to wage war against London’s sex trade and child poverty as part of his personal crusade to establish modern urban life as an appropriate subject for high art. Insights into the darker side of life in 18th century London are blended with the story of how Hogarth worked his way up from an apprenticed engraver to successful painter and philanthropist.

Julia Musgrave is a freelance accredited Art Society lecturer in the History of Art. She has a degree in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and an MLitt from The University of Glasgow, not to mention a first degree in Chemical Engineering.

The 14th century artist Cennino Cennini recommended using “the chicken bones that you will find under the dining table” for making charcoaled bone black to paint with.  His treatise, The Artists’ handbook, gives us an understanding of some of the surprising materials which any artist had to master before he could begin to paint, such as the tail of a squirrel to make his paintbrushes.  However, many of these materials were difficult to use and have an effect on the finished look of paintings from the centuries before industrial processes changed the artist’s world.  This lecture will explain the techniques and the reasons for some of the features of 15th and 16th century paintings which may seem odd to our modern eyes.

Dr Brotherton-Ratcliffe has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years' experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby's Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies in London, Italy and America. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions.

Our royal families have celebrated Christmas throughout their long history, from William the Conqueror making sure of his claim to the English throne by being crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

Feasting on a spectacular scale characterised medieval Christmases – we read of extraordinary culinary delicacies served to Henry II, crane’s flesh, peacocks and herons. Present-giving always marked the season, from the extravagant – the City of London presented Richard II with a camel and a pelican – to the witty – Mrs. Thatcher sent the Queen a pair of yellow washing-up gloves having seen Her Majesty doing the dishes without any. This lecture explores these traditions and other delights, many of which we have adopted as a necessary part of our own celebrations. 

Roger Askew was a chorister at Wells Cathedral School and a choral scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. He combined a teaching career with professional singing in London, and after a further degree in Music became Director of Music at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College in Edinburgh. He is President Emeritus of The Stoke Poges Society and Chairman of the Arts Society Windsor.

Mankind has exploited the medicinal properties of plants for thousands of years, yet the role of plants in modern medicine is still considered to be peripheral by many people. This talk attempts to put the record straight and to show that plant products are used every day by all of us to relieve pain and suffering, to heal wounds and cure diseases. This is a talk with a very wide appeal and relevance.

Timothy Walker was born and brought up in South Buckinghamshire and at the age of 13 went to school in Abingdon.  From there I read Botany at University College Oxford.  Upon graduation, I worked for two years as a trainee at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.  He then took a National Certificate in Horticulture at Askham Bryan College York.  This was followed by a one-year traineeship at the Savill Garden Windsor, and 15-months as a diploma student at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.  In 1995 he was awarded a Master of Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society of London

The'poor little rich girl' who changed the face of twentieth century art. Not only was Peggy Guggenheim ahead of her time but she was the woman who helped define it. She discovered and nurtured a new generation of artists producing a new kind of art. Through collecting not only art but the artists themselves, her life was as radical as her collection.

Alexandra Epps is an official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and Pallant House Gallery. She is an Art History Tutor at City Lit Institute and a qualified Guide to the City of London, offering lectures and walks about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. She is a member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association, and co-author of the book Lord Mayor’s Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). Alexandra’s background is in design having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years.

TO BE HELD IN THE VILLAGE HALL, DINTON SP3 5EB

Cleopatra, the woman for whose love’s sake Antony is imagined to have given up the chance to rule the Roman world, has been inspiring painters, poets and (more recently) film-makers for over two millennia. Their gorgeously voluptuous depictions of her offer insights into changing concepts of beauty, and into the racial and sexual assumptions underlying them. 

Showing images ranging from Roman portrait busts, through medieval illuminations, the glorious works of Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, the splendour of Tiepolo and the exoticism of Gustave Moreau to 20th century film stars (Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and the Carry On team’s Amanda Barry), I will show how Cleopatra became a screen onto which artists have projected their wildly differing fantasies about exotic danger and erotic bliss.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett has written three works of non-fiction - Cleopatra, Heroes and The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio - a novel and a collection of short stories.

Born in London, Hughes-Hallett is the daughter of Michael Wyndham Norton Hughes-Hallett by his marriage to Penelope Ann Fairbairn. In 1984, she married Dan Franklin and they have two daughters.

Hughes-Hallett was a Vogue Talent Contest prize-winner in 1973 and subsequently worked for five years as a feature writer on the magazine. In 1978 she won the Catherine Pakenham Award for a profile of Roald Dahl. Since then she has written on books and arts for all of the British broadsheet newspapers including The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She was television critic of the London Evening Standard for five years. She has judged the WH Smith Award, The Duff Cooper Prize, The Encore Award and the RSL Jerwood Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 2017, Hughes-Hallett published her first novel, Peculiar Ground.

Ravilious:  Life and Works

James Russell

Eric Ravilious was only 39 when he died on active service as a war artist in 1942, yet he had already achieved amazing things. A brilliant wood engraver and designer, he is best known today for his haunting watercolours in which lighthouses, white horses, empty rooms and downland paths become marvels. Over the past decade I’ve explored many of these paintings in depth, teasing out stories and characters hidden in the wings. This entertaining illustrated talk illuminates the life and work of a playful, enigmatic artist, with plentiful examples of his work in watercolour, wood engraving, lithography and ceramics. The paintings are a delight, the Ravilious story funny, sad and full of surprises

Having studied History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, James Russell enjoyed a lengthy stint selling contemporary paintings and sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an experience that inspired him to begin writing and lecturing on 20th century art. Of his dozen or so books, one was a Sunday Times book of the year, while his writing has been described by critics as 'insightful', 'informative' and 'enjoyably readable'. James has curated major exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery and for museums around the country. He bases his lectures on wide-ranging original research into the subjects that fascinate him.

Treasures of the Black Tent.

The audience is taken on a journey beginning in Outer Mongolia in the 5th century BC and follows the 11th century migrations from Turkmenistan, the cradle of weaving, into the Caucasus, Persia and Afghanistan. They will be introduced to the nomadic tribes of these countries and their woven rugs, carpets and dowry bags, with particular emphasis on those of the 19th century and earlier. These tribal weavings illustrate the skill of the women who produced exquisite works of woven art, using vegetable colours and age-old designs whilst living and travelling in primitive conditions and hostile landscapes.  

The tribal weavings of the 19th century and earlier represent the pinnacle of achievement and wonderful free expression of the art of the weaver.

Today, these weavings are highly desirable and collectable works of woven art.

Brian has been a dealer and consultant in antique oriental rugs and carpets since 1979 after his return from Iran. He is the author of Tribal Rugs - Treasures of the Black Tent which was originally published in October 1997; re-printed in April 2010 and a completely new up-dated edition in the summer of 2016. Brian is one of few western dealers to have lived and worked among tribal groups in remote areas of Iran and Afghanistan during the 1970s and then again, after the Iranian Revolution, in the 1990s. In 1990 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his work amongst the Persian tribes. He has lectured for The Arts Society since 1986.

This is a change in title from the original Selfies, Self Expression, Celebrity and the Victorian Carte de Visit.  Mark Hill, the lecturer has informed us that this lecture does not work well on zoom and so he suggests Curves, Colours and Cool instead.  This follows on from another lecture he gave in 2018 called Undressing Antiques.

The antiques market has changed dramatically and now pieces that were made during the 1970s can fetch many times more than a piece made in the 1770s. Why has the teak sideboard you threw out become so desirable? Who is this Eames guy? Drawing a blank with Timo Sarpaneva? Who’s buying what and what are they doing with it? This practical and inspirational lecture looks at furniture, ceramics, glass, lighting and metalware, identifies key designs and designers, and the examines the revolutionary design movements they began.

In 1996, Mark Hill joined Bonhams as a porter, and then became a Junior Cataloguer in their Collectors Department. He moved on to join Sotheby's in London as a Specialist in their Collectors Department.

In 2001, he joined Internet company icollector.com, rising to become Director of Auction House Services.

He has contributed to DK Collectables Price Guide (by Judith Miller) and was the co-author of the annual Miller's Collectables Price Guide from 2009 to 2017. He has also contributed to a number of other titles in association with Miller including Buy, Keep or Sell? for the Reader's Digest, Decorative Arts and DK Collectors' Guide: 20thC Glass.

In 2006, he founded his own publishing company, Mark Hill Publishing Ltd, specialising in producing books on new and developing areas in 20th century design.

The High Renaissance saw the seamless integration of art and architecture, the pinnacle of a tradition extending back thousands of years. So how was it that by the mid-20th century, mainstream Modernist architects saw painting and sculpture as anathema to their designs?

This lecture tells the fascinating story of how painting and architecture went their separate ways, exploring the complex reasons behind their dramatic divorce, including:

• The “special status” of painting as the heralded product of artistic genius
• A change in the form and function of the picture frame
• The emergence of the commercial art market
• The rise of the public “Art Exhibition”

Embracing the likes of Michelangelo, Watteau, Whistler and Matisse, this broad-ranging survey culminates with the Bauhaus and its legacy in the USA – and ends by asking whether the partnership between art and architecture might be revived in the 21st Century.

Richard Whincop was born in 1964 at Fordingbridge in Hampshire, and graduated in Art History at York University in 1986. In 1988 he moved to Glasgow where he became established as a figurative painter, exhibiting at galleries and art fairs throughout the UK and Ireland. From 2006 he had a series of successful solo shows, including Museum Pieces, which opened in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. His move to West Sussex in 2010 brought major ecclesiastical commissions and a revival of his interest in Landscape painting.

His figurative work conducts a dialogue between past and present, combining elements from works of art of the past with contemporary figures. In his landscape paintings he tries to capture the unique character of a place seen in fleeting moments of magical light and atmospehere. A recent development combines figurative and landscape elements, placing contemporary figures in the context of the natural world.

LECTURE CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS

In discussing famous artists of the nineteenth century, the model central to their work is frequently overlooked. This lecture explores the myths of the Impressionists’ models in France and the Pre-Raphaelite muses in England. Some of them were artists in their own right, overshadowed by the men who painted them, and others never really overcame their lowly status as an artist’s model in the hierarchy of the art world.

We begin with Victorine Meurent, the model for Manet’s Olympia, Van Gogh’s paintings of his mistress Sien and Madame Roulin in Arles and also Degas’s sculpture of Marie Van Goetham, better known as The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. They are discussed alongside the Pre-Raphaelite muses of the same period in England: Lizzie Siddal, famously the model for Millais’ Ophelia and her subsequent suicide; Fanny Cornforth, who began her life on the London streets as a prostitute and Janey Morris, the stable girl who became the wife of William Morris and Dante Rossetti’s last muse. We also look at the ways in which the force of the model’s personality influenced and determined the creation of some of the famous icons of this period.

Daphne Lawson has an MA by research and Thesis from the University of Canterbury on Degas' Public and Private Spectacle and a BA in Art History from London University.  Since 1994, until she retired she was a full time Art History Lecturer for the BISC, Herstmonceaux Castle, East Sussex, the European Campus of Queen's University, Ontario, Canada.  Her first career was as an actress.  She was trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in theatre, film and television as an actress.

STOP PRESS!

Change in Advertised lecture due to illness

The lecture on Wednesday 21 April 2021 will be

Catherine The Great

given by

Canon Chris Newlands 

From relatively humble beginnings, Catherine rose to be one of the few European rulers to receive the title 'The Great'. Aside from her political ambitions and successes, as a patron of the arts, she created an unparalleled collection of paintings, ornaments and sculptures, many of which remain at the centre of The Hermitage Museum. This lecture summarises her rise to power, and her passion for acquiring things of beauty for her private collection.

Canon Chris Newlands is Vicar of Lancaster, and a member of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Before ordination, he worked for the British Council in Algeria, and after ordination was posted to Romania and Bulgaria as Embassy Chaplain and Envoy of the Anglican Communion to the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe. Chris is a guest lecturer on cruise ships where his lectures relate to the destinations in Eastern Europe, the Baltic, and Mediterranean regions.

Please click the link below to join the webinar:

https://theartssociety-org.zoom.us/j/96695247137

A BRIEF STORY OF WINE 

Wine has been part of our global society for over 7,000 years, and the story tells of its origin and appearance in all societies across the Mediterranean and through Europe. There is rich evidence of the role wine has played in these societies and how it became an important component of faith, well-being and festivity. From the kwevris of Georgia in 5,000 B.C., the symposia in ancient Greece, the thermopolia of Pompeii, the hospices of Europe, to the dining tables of fine society wine has been ever present. Drawings, paintings, engravings, buildings, pottery and wine labels themselves all contribute to the story.

TREASURES OF THE FAN MUSEUM

Occupying a pair of early Georgian townhouses nestled in historic Greenwich, the story of how The Fan Museum came to fruition dovetails into the multifaceted history of the handheld fan. From an especially rare Elizabethan-period embroidered folding fan to contemporary examples decorated by street artists, discover some of the key objects within the Museum’s extraordinary collections which encompass more than 5,000 fans and related objects dating from the eleventh century to the present day and gathered from most parts of the world.

The fan is a curious and complicated article combining utility with artistry. It is a weapon of seduction; it is portable art; it is a fashion statement – hard to categorise, but perfectly described by one particularly enthusiastic 18th-century writer as ‘the noblest invention of the human mind’! From a historical and cultural perspective, it’s significance cannot be underestimated. In East Asia, for example, where both men and women continue to use fans, they function in all sorts of ways beyond practical: given as celebratory gifts at weddings and births; used in Noh Theatre and Chinese Opera; even Samurai warriors and Sumo officials used fans. Today, in the West, fans no longer retain the sort of popularity achieved in the 18th century. They are generally thought of in terms of their functionality, whereas in the past they operated as lavish symbols of status, of wealth, refined taste, learnedness, even political leanings. There is so much we can learn from these objects; when we open an antique fan, we are literally unfurling history. 

Jacob Moss is curator at The Fan Museum, London, where he has worked for almost a decade following the completion of a master’s degree in fashion curation at London College of Fashion. He became an Arts Society Lecturer earlier this year. 

CATHERINE DE MEDICI, POOR QUEEN: THE STORY OF THREE IN A MARRIAGE 

This lecture will be given by ZOOM

This is the story of this unfortunate young woman who left Florence to be Queen of France, and the unhappy life that followed. She was a brave woman, who suffered every indignity at the French Court, but survived all her enemies.

MS CAROLINE RAYMAN  has lectured for many years to universities and art organisations in America and on cruise boats. She was an official guide at the British Museum and has published articles on samplers. Her lectures range from the role of the royal mistress in history to more scholarly lectures on Frederick the Great of Prussia.

From celestial heralds of medieval art, to the surrealist beings in Marc Chagall’s work, the angel has always held a fascination for Western artists. Over the centuries angel imagery has evolved from the ethereal to more naturalistic depictions, paralleling society’s progression from faith in the unseen, to a world dominated by scientific explanation. Angels are usually associated with beauty, but more frightening depictions also exist. This talk considers a myriad of angels in various guises and looks at many interpretations including Bernini’s highly erotic Ecstasy of St Teresa, the classical beauty of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s angels and Breughel’s frenzied painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Grant explains the subject and story behind many famous works, including some of the great British paintings that belonged to Sir David and Lady Scott (one of the finest collections of narrative paintings put together in the 20th century and then sold in 2007). This highly informative talk will explain why these subjects act as an important historical record today. Grant will cover the important and colourful details of provenance, previous owners and exhibition history. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, the British Empire held sway over approximately one quarter of the total population of the world. British imperial power was projected through a variety of artistic mediums, from fine portraiture and grand imperial buildings to more popular forms of imagery. British artists also produced countless images of people from all over the globe who had become subjects of British rule. Through considering a variety of paintings, buildings and objects from across the Empire, this lecture provides a fascinating insight into the ways in which the British viewed themselves and their subjects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 The City of London’s relationship with heraldry is a unique one, since it is home to the oldest civic arms of any town or city in the United Kingdom, and the oldest corporate arms still in use to this very day. Each of the City’s many Livery Companies proudly displays their arms in an array of heraldry that blends the old with the new from heraldic banners to social media avatars. Heraldry in the City of London is at once spectacularly ancient and ultra modern.

This lecture examines Hogarth’s  Marriage à la Mode and other ‘modern moral subjects’. It looks at how the artist used his work to wage war against London’s sex trade and child poverty as part of his personal crusade to establish modern urban life as an appropriate subject for high art. Insights into the darker side of life in 18th century London are blended with the story of how Hogarth worked his way up from an apprenticed engraver to successful painter and philanthropist.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford houses one of the finest collections of Egyptian antiquities in the UK. In this lecture I shall explore a wealth of ancient material, examining highlights of the collection from the Predynastic Period (4th millennium BC) through to the Roman Period (2nd century AD). Outstanding pieces in terms of art, history and culture will include some of Egypt’s earliest monumental art – the decorated ceremonial mace-heads of Egypt’s first pharaohs; the ‘Amarna Princesses’ wall-painting dating to the reign of Egypt’s ‘heretic pharaoh’ Akhenaten; and the shrine of the Nubian pharaoh Taharqa, the only monument of its kind in the UK.

Up until the early 19th century Russian painting consisted almost entirely of academic styles and subject matter dominated by the west, Paris in particular. Artists such as Alexey Venetsianov, encouraged by Czar Nicholas I’s promotion of ‘national trends’ began to change the focus towards more home grown themes, such as the status of the Russian peasant. Already by mid century the class system and village structure, dominated by landowner and the orthodox church was under more critical scrutiny, led by artists such as Vasily Perov, but it wasn’t until the pioneering work of the group known as 'The Wanderers' that Russian society was put more fully under the microscope. By then the serfs had been liberated, in many cases ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of their new found freedom, as were their masters who suddenly found themselves with vast estates and a much reduced workforce. This lecture reveals the fascinating insight into this moving story afforded by the paintings of more than a dozen superb artists, yet whose work is still relatively unknown in the West.

The Blaue Reiter artists in Munich reacted against academic art, regarding it as shallow and materialistic, and chose instead to paint a spiritual attitude to nature and humanity. Their art was considered an affront to good taste, or at best the work of madmen.

The German Expressionists in Dresden and Berlin reacted against industrialization and chose to paint utopian visions of the Good Life: men and women living freely in nature. Their art was considered ugly and technically bad.

The New Objectivity artists, George Grosz and Otto Dix, having experienced the national humiliation of World War One, reacted against the Self-Expressionists, painting technically good pictures but with ugly subject matter: corrupt capitalists and bankers in brothels.

The Dadaists rejected the pleasure of beauty in art, and instead celebrated “bad” art, an aesthetic that confounded the middle classes.

Then Hitler damned the lot of them, classifying them all as Degenerates and instead promoted bad Neo-Classical kitsch.

Wool, cotton and silk have each played a crucial role in the fortunes of Central Asia. Wool created the clothing and housing needed by the great nomadic cultures to dominate Middle Asia. Silk was more valuable than gold and used as currency, creating a network of trading routes that led to the first outbreak of globalisation. Cotton was the cause of Russian and then Soviet  Colonisation and continues to cause controversy today. The felts, carpets, embroideries, robes and veils of the Silk Road stratified wealth, displayed religious and political entrenchments and changed the fortunes of this fascinating part of the world; a meeting place between Mohammed and Marx.

When Augustus John died in 1961 he was described in The New York Times as ‘the grand old man of British painting and one of the greatest in British history.’ He was only in his mid twenties when, in the early 1900s, he was widely acknowledged as one of the most talented and promising young British artists – a Welsh rival, perhaps, to Gauguin or Picasso. This lecture explores John’s extraordinary life, including his early achievements, his position as one of the most exciting and outrageous young British artists before the Great War, his slow decline after it, and his troubled status as ‘the last Bohemian’.

The most beloved American illustrator of the 20th century always portrayed life as he wished it would be. And so it was that Norman Rockwell was most at home portraying the ideal family Christmas often with direct connections to Dickens and the English Yuletide Tradition. A bounty of Christmas posters, magazine covers, cards and even Norman Rockwell Christmas gifts will keep you entertained throughout. Your American-born lecturer shares his own experiences of the ideal American Christmas from sleigh rides and ice-skating in the woods to trimming the tree and wondering how Santa got down the chimney. Light and lively Christmas fair!

This is the story of the epic rivalry between the two giants of British art, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. As unlike in background and temperament as their paintings were in style, these two creative geniuses transformed the art of landscape. This lecture sets them head-to-head and examines their differences, their similarities, their battles and their shared triumphs. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter? As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides an enjoyable overview of the British art world during the nineteenth century. 

In his tribute to Shakespeare on the publication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, Ben Jonson addresses him as ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’ , ‘Thou Star of Poets’ and ‘Not of an Age, but for all Time’. 400 years after Shakespeare’s death his words still have the power to thrill, to move, to uplift the soul. In fact, it’s said that a Shakespeare play is being performed somewhere in the world every minute of every day. In this lecture we explore what is known about his life in the turbulent and often dangerous world of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and look at the development of English Renaissance theatre. We will also focus on some of the portraits purporting to be of Shakespeare and examine the theories behind them.

The Nazis looted over 20% of Western Art during World War II and the effects of Nazi looting are still evident today. This lecture will cover the following topics: setting the scene in Germany, the Fuhrermuseum, Nazi art repositories, Post War restitution and the Monuments Men, contemporary restitution issues and current international recovery efforts. I will also discuss several important cases involving Nazi loot. These will be tailored to the country in which I’m speaking, but there are landmark international cases that I will discuss in detail, including Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the stash of looted art found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s flat.

This lecture explores the fascinating story of how dyes were discovered, made and used, focusing on some of the social implications of colour at different times in history. The lecture takes us from pre-historic man to the middle of the 19th century and geographically from Europe to the Middle East, India, Turkey, north America, Mexico and Peru. It is a story of exploration, invention, war, the church, money, power and sex.

Modigliani remains of the most popular artists of the 20th century. I discuss his short life in some detail looking at his early development and his arrival and life in Paris from 1906 to his death in 1920. Modigliani was at the centre of Bohemian Paris and was a close friend of Maurice Utrillo, Picasso, Max Jacob, Moise Kisling, Chaïm Soutine and many other painters and writers who made up Bohemian Paris. I discuss the influences on his painting and sculpture including Cézanne, African art and Cubism and show how he developed a highly individual style of his own. I look at his haunting portraits and sensual nudes while exploring the Bohemian life of Montmartre.

Lights, Camera, Action!- inside stories of the art and artifice of the early decades of Hollywood. This lecture covers the work of stills photographers, costumiers, publicists, actors and actresses and the movie moguls who made it all happen.

Pop art arose simultaneously in the UK and USA. Perhaps Andy Warhol was right when he said everyone was reading the same comics. While British Pop art was heavily influenced by the consumer boom and the films and music of the USA, it had its own identity, which was often ironic and self-reflective.

American Pop art had the superstars including Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, who simply used the formats of advertising, mass production, magazines and comics, to play back to the public what the public was already eating, watching or thinking. This lecture will use a collection of Pop art paintings to explain the differences between British and American Pop art, and why some British artists, after trying it, distanced themselves from it.

The lute holds a special place in the history of art: painters of the Italian Renaissance depicted golden-haired angels plucking its delicate strings, evoking celestial harmony; in the sixteenth century, during the rise of humanism, the lute was a becoming pastime of educated courtiers, as depicted by the likes of Holbein and Titian; throughout the seventeenth century, the instrument continued to play a key role in emphasising the intimate, debauched and transient pleasures of interior scenes by Jan Steen and portraits by Frans Hals. This lecture looks at the lute, and other musical instruments, as devices to express various aspects of the human character throughout the ages. 

London's Tite St was one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A staggering amount of talent thrived in this one street and throughout it's turbulent history ir remained home to innumerable artists and writers. This lecture ties together the lives of its inhabitants to form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue.

The cartoonist, Carl Giles, once said that he loved his creation, Grandma Giles - that fearsome, black-clad, gambling, drinking battleaxe - because she allowed him to say things through his cartoons that he had was too polite to say in person. She helped him to poke fum at authority in all its forms, from Hitler to traffic wardens for subversive background details. His admireres include Prince Charles, Sir Malcolm sargent and Tommy Cooper, and it was no surprise when he was voted Britain's best-loved cartoonist in 2000. Few people realise, however, that this likeable and humane satirist was also a war correspondent who witnessed the horrors of Belsen, where he found that the camp Commandant, Josef Kramer, was also a fan of his work.

Anne Sebba Historian

For the last five years she has been researching her new book, Les Parisiennes, about women in Paris from 1939-49. There are stories in it about resisters, collaborators, spies, writers and actresses, couturiers and jewellery designers, housewives, concierges and prostitutes. It was published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (on July 14th – Bastille Day 2016) – and in October by St Martin’s Press in the US. She has always been fascinated by French History and the reverberations from this period are still being felt in the country today. Although she loved writing the story of Wallis Simpson (and she even has a cameo role in this book) she wanted to write a book of history this time and move away from biography for a change.

Les Parisiennnes: How Women Lived loved and Died in Paris

Les Parisiennes is a story about women’s lives during the dark years of Nazi occupation and beyond and includes British and American women caught in Paris as well as native born resisters who were eventually sent to camps, couturiers and jewelers, some of whom flourished in wartime, as well as actors, singers, night club dancers and housewives.

The lecture opens with a magnificent circus ball held by Elsie de Wolfe at the magnificent Villa Trianon, a chateau in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles; many of the guests could not believe that war was imminent and ends with Christian Dior’s lavish new look in 1947 as well as a perfume, Miss Dior, named after his sister Catherine, a resister, who had only just survived a prison camp and never wanted to talk about her experiences.

Michelle P. Brown is Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She was previously (1986-2004) Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library. She has been a historical consultant and on-screen expert on several radio and television programmes. She has published on the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Luttrell Psalter, and the Holkham Bible

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts; Makers and Users

This illustrated lecture surveys the chronological and regional development of medieval manuscript production, from the late Roman Empire to the Renaissance. It explores stylistic and technical developments and introduces some of the colourful personalities of the craftspeople who made them and the patrons who commissioned them.

Elizabeth Gowing is an experienced public speaker with regular speaking engagements at branches of The Arts Society, the WI, the U3A, English Speaking Union, Rotary Clubs, and schools. The last few years have also brought speaking engagements at the Albanian Presidency at the invitation of the First Lady, in London at the Royal Anthropological Institute, at the London Book Fair and Orllan and Ilkley Literary Festivals, at RHS Wisley and the American Embassy, Prishtina, a lifeboat station and a jazz club. 

The Silver Thread: Silver Filigree and Traditional Arts in Kosovo

From the early Kosovan silver mines which are mentioned in Dante, through the twentieth century politics over Kosovo’s mines which resulted in both a war and a golf course, a silver thread winds through Kosovo’s history. Its most intricate tanglings are in the country’s cultural capital, Prizren, where a seventh generation of filigree artisans use ‘filum’ and ‘granum’, zigzags, ‘mouse-tooth’ designs and other twists and turns to magic lacy creations from dull sticks of raw material. The results – in boxes, buttons, jewellery, religious ornamentation and the talismans of superstitition – are a fine narrative of Kosovo’s history and traditions.

Only one American, Mary Cassatt, exhibited with the Impressionist group in Paris but, by the mid 1880s American Impressionism had become an important art form in the U.S., inspired by, but not imitating the French prototype.  Artists such as Childe Hassam successfully blended their academic training with the vitality of Impressionism, which they had encountered on their European travels, to produce paintings that conveyed the dynamism of the new country and its rapidly expanding cities; especially New York.  Simultaneously, painters like Theodore Robinson, who had been inspired by Monet at Giverny, based themselves in artists’ colonies on the east coast of America.  Here they found subject matter for paintings with a sense of nostalgia for a way of life that was fast disappearing as the traditional industries of fishing and agriculture were supplanted by the influx of tourists.  Meanwhile John Henry Twachtman drew on diverse influences to produce wonderfully evocative winter scenes.  Impressionism remained popular with American artists until the 1920s, although by the early 20th century the style had been supplanted in status by the new urban realists.   American Impression embraces many superb artists who are barely known on this side of the Atlantic.  This visually exciting lecture seeks to redress that situation.   
 

From Paris to New York: The Story of American Impressionism

Only one American, Mary Cassatt, exhibited with the Impressionist group in Paris but, by the mid 1880s American Impressionism had become an important art form in the U.S., inspired by, but not imitating the French prototype.

Artists such as Childe Hassam successfully blended their academic training with the vitality of Impressionism, which they had encountered on their European travels, to produce paintings that conveyed the dynamism of the new country and its rapidly expanding cities; especially New York.

Simultaneously, painters like Theodore Robinson, who had been inspired by Monet at Giverny, based themselves in artists’ colonies on the east coast of America.  Here they found subject matter for paintings with a sense of nostalgia for a way of life that was fast disappearing as the traditional industries of fishing and agriculture were supplanted by the influx of tourists.  Meanwhile John Henry Twachtman drew on diverse influences to produce wonderfully evocative winter scenes.

Impressionism remained popular with American artists until the 1920s.

Brian’s chief interests lie in photography, architecture and history and he combines all three in his lecturing career. He has lectured at University College London since 1997 and for over 10 years has proved a highly-successful speaker with the Arts Society. He is a member of the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography and an exhibition of his own photographs has been staged at UCL. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the skills of some great photographers of the past he works with a pre-War Leica camera as used by, among many others, his great hero Henri Cartier-Bresson. Brian is an engaging and amusing speaker who seeks to entertain as well as inform his audience.

Women Behind the Lens

The work of women photographers has often been unfairly neglected. This  lecture seeks to correct that by examining the contribution of three  outstanding British practitioners; Julia Margaret Cameron, a Victorian pioneer;   Jane Bown, a brilliant portraitist; and Fay Godwin, who excelled in landscape  photography. We also explore the work of two highly influential Americans:  Dorothea Lange, who produced brilliant documentary images and Annie  Leibovitz, who continues to both surprise and delight her audience

Deborah Lambert lectures on fine and decorative arts and art history with a specialism in furniture. She is the curator of the Schroder Collection, one of the most important collections still in private hands. Between 1978 and 2005 Deborah also worked with Christie's Education department, becoming international academic director for London, New York and Paris. She has been with the Antiques Roadshow since 1991.

This story has a plot worthy of Agatha Christie.  The cast includes Walter Gropius, Mrcel Breuer and Laszlo Maholy Nagy, refugees from the Bauhaus in Germany, Henry Moore the sculptor, the writers Nicholas Monsarrat and Agatha Christie herself as well as numerous others.  The setting is The Lawn Road Flats, a radical new housing concept for young professionals: but was there a darker side to this lively bohemian environment?  It was, in fact, also home to a next of Soviet spies, including the recruiter and controller of the Cambridge 5.  The is the story of a ground breaking building, now Grade 1 listed and of the rich and complex lives of its residents.

Indians, Buffalo and Storms: the American West in 19th Century Art

Artists were never far behind the explorers who opened up the west of America in the 19th Century. Sometimes they painted what they saw. Sometimes they painted what they wished they saw. Either way, painters like Alfred Miller, Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt have left us a powerful, if romanticised, record of the country and people that the settlers found. Now we can use their pictures to chart the history of the opening of America’s west - the arrival of the railroad, the confinement of native Americans into reservations, and the extermination of the buffalo.

This is a story on a big scale and it seems appropriate that among the pictures illustrating the lecture are some of the largest and most grandiloquent paintings of the era. After a period of deep neglect, they are now very much back in vogue, but whatever one thinks of their artistic merits, we hope audiences will agree that they are, above all, great fun.

Sarah read Art History at Reading University, gaining a first class BA and followed this with an MA in World Art Studies at UEA and a PhD in Architectural History at Reading. The subject of her doctoral thesis was the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Sarah retains active research interests in Italian art and architecture and continues to publish in this field.

Sarah has been teaching and lecturing on a variety of art and architectural subjects since 2001 at Universities and adult education organizations. She is passionate about her subject and believes that learning about it should be both engaging and enjoyable for students.

Qualifications: 

·  PhD in Architectural History, University of Reading

·  MA in World Art Studies, University of East Anglia

·  BA in Art and Architectural History, University of Reading

This lecture informs us how the infrastructure of travel has inspired many architechtural treasures and associated artworks.  From automobiles to zepplins and from poster design to car park design we examine the unusual and fascinating artworks and buildings created to assist travellers to get from A to B.

Mark is an author, publisher, TV presenter, and the leading specialist dealer in postwar Czechoslovakian glass. He has been an expert on the BBC Antiques Roadshow since 2007, and co-presented four primetime TV shows on antiques, collecting and interiors for BBC2, including two series of Collectaholics.

Mark lectures widely and is an Arts Society (NADFAS) accredited lecturer, a member of The British Antiques Dealers’ Association, and a Freeman of the City of London.

This is a persuasive introduction to buying antiques, vintage and modern design and integrating them in today's homes  The meaning of the word 'value' is considered and we take a look at what current and future generations of collectors are buying.

Jane has been working at the Theatre Royal in Bath for over 25 years. In her role as Special Events Organiser she runs daytime events which are usually associated with book launches. Over the years her guests have included many politicians including two previous Prime Ministers - John Major and Edward Heath and numerous actors including Alec Guiness, Peter O'Toole and June Whitfield to name but a few.

She has also been a Theatrical Landlady for over a quarter of a century and has entertained a whole variety of actors and stage management in her Georgian town house including Danny La Rue and Hinge & Bracket.

She has many first hand theatrical anecdotes as a result.

Also in connection with the theatre she has written articles for theatre programmes and newsletters.

She has been a Blue Badge Guide for over thirty years and regularly accompanies groups of all kinds from students to senior citizens around Bath and the West Country. In addition she has worked as an adviser and guide for several TV companies in Bath when they have been filming period dramas.

Her earlier career and the reason for moving to Bath in the late 60's was as a Home Economist with a particular interest in period food and dining habits. As a result she recreates Georgian meals in her Regency home during the annual Jane Austen Festival which attracts visitors from around the world

Dr Claire Walsh previously worked at the Victoria & Albert Museum and lectured for the University of Warwick.  She now lectures for the Open University. She has lectured widely in Britain; at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum and Museum of London amongst others, and to specialist groups including the NACF, the Ceramics Society, the Costume Society and the Ancient Monuments Society. She has also lectured in Europe, the USA (including Yale and the Huntington) and Canada and has numerous publications in academic journals and edited volumes.

Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman and Frida Kahlo.

Despite the constraints & prejudices, women over the centuries, have earned recognition as artists, becoming members of academies & receiving honours. Some have shocked society in doing so.

The lifestyles & achievements of these four very different artists will be discussed, alongside their paintings, which ensures a fascinating lecture.

What do we mean by jewellery? What does it mean to different societies across time and across the world? This lecture takes a number of themes in order to expand the concept of jewellery and examine the different reasons why people wear it. Everyone decorates the body, but there are different notions of how to do so and which parts to decorate. In many societies jewellery serves as vital protection against evil spirits. It can be a powerful vehicle of communication, indicating the wearer’s preoccupations, their religion or ethnic group. It can be a keepsake of a loved one, or a memorial to the dead. And it can also be a work of art in its own right harnessing all the .skills of the goldsmith, gem-setter, or enameller. Based on the collections of the British Museum, where the speaker has worked for 40 years, this new thought-provoking lecture reveals how jewellery has been worn and used, and takes you from ancient burial ornaments by anonymous masters to the big names of the modern world. 

Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère of 1882 is one of the most treasured possessions of the Courtauld Collection. Here we are invited to engage with a young barmaid at work in a fashionable Parisian establishment. A gentleman waits to be served whilst in the background spectators watch the night's entertainments. All seems to be well-but is it? Is this a straightforward representation of the Folies-Bergère or is it Manet, often called the godfather of Modern Art, playing with our expectations? This lecture examines the work of Edouard Manet and delves deeper into the many facets of this iconic and endlessly fascinating painting

“The utmost fulfillment of Leonardo the scientist is seen in his artistic creations. These reveal the most amazing and inseparable affinity of his scientific and artistic concepts”- Ludwig Heidenreich 1958 Leonardo would say nature must be his guide and that art was based on a scientific understanding of everything depicted. He used his powers of draughtsmanship and astute sense of observation in his scientific drawings, making an incredible contribution to our early understanding of anatomy, aeronautics, warfare, cartography and water engineering to name but a few. It would take centuries of science and technology to catch up with his thoughts.

This talk follows Leonardo's pursuit of these investigations whether they be on his own initiative, his pursuit of remunerative employment or in response to a particular set of circumstances in his life.

2016/2017 will be the 600th anniversary of the birth of Piero della Francesca so the perfect opportunity to revisit the work of this enigmatic painter.  His grave solid fgures set in a timeless landscape and lit by a clear light, encapsulate the harmony of man and his world that was at the heart of Italian Renaissance thought.  But they are, in fact, a perfect fusion of the influences of North and South, of light and logic, which reflects his native countryside while yet conveying a spirituality that reaches out over time and boundaries. Whether working in the service of the church or of his patron Federigo da Montefeltro, his paintings radiate a serenity and timelessness which will take us far beyond this anniversary.

Santiageo Calatrava, Terry Farrell, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers:  all these are starchitects.  Starchitects are stratospheric. Their buildings straddle the world, if not yet the universe.  Their practices are vast and vastly cosmopolitan.  Their creations hailed as iconic and cutting-edge.  Cities have been energised by them. Design has been stamped by them.  Perhaps.... But what about the quality? And whence they came?  Who was the first starchitect?  Le Corbusier?  Frank Lloyd Wright?  And are we about to see the last of them as personality impoldes into team anonymity and explodes into a mass of initials?

Born in Hong Kong in 1884, Betty, the daughter of the Colonial Secretary, went on to run one of the leading furniture and interior design companies in the inter war years in London. Her list of clients and contacts was incredible, from the Queen Mother, Lord Mountbatten, and Sir Winston Churchill to eminent surgeons, hotels, factories as well as taking in visits to Paris where she met Gertrude Stein, Picasso's great friend and collector. The talk discusses her life and work, and focuses on the few remarkable survivals in London, Nottingham and Harrogate.

How was Napoleon such an excellent self-promoter? What was it that drove him? What on the other hand drove his wife? And what was it that made Napoleon and Josephine one of the most followed couples in history? These questions can be answered giving a true insight into their characters by exploring the collections at Chateau de Malmaison. The estate, which was bought by the couple as their private retreat, was made into a National Museum in 1905 amassing a huge collection of their possessions. Paintings, personal objects, complete room layouts and some magnificent pieces of porcelain are just some of the things on display.

Rome, September 1531: Cardinal Salviati has just hosted a magnificent feast at which astonished guests were served a new culinary sensation, desrcibed by the agent of the Duke of Mantua who was present as "a kind of Indian peacock". This is one of the earliest mentions of what we today call the Turkey. This lecture describes the introduction of this exotic bird to our tables and in our art, offering an insight into the rich traditions of centuries past, cultural and culinary.

Artists often talk about their art in terms of cooking and when we look at a painting, we often do too. This lecture will be a feast for the eyes and taste buds and will be a veritable inspiration for your cooking! It will feature the art, anecdotes and recipes of artists who loved their food. It will discuss Toulouse Lautrec, famous in his day for his fabulous meals and cookbook, Renoir who introduced Paris to Provençal peasant cooking, as well as Monet, Cèzanne, Picasso and many others. Recipes will be posted on the internet or bring a pen.

Nelson's victory at Trafalgar is probably the most famous of all British naval victories. The battle is full of surprises, but why was both it and Nelson deified? This lecture reveals the secrets of Nelson's leadership and how artists helped to create the legend.

Cleopatra’s Needle stands serenely on the Victoria Embankment in London but it begs many questions. What are obelisks for?  Where did this one come from? Was it really Cleopatra’s?  Who brought it here? Why? How?

Clive Barham Carter will tell the story of an extraordinary artefact on an extraordinary journey from the sands of the Nile to the banks of the Thames.

Begun in 1220 the cathedral at Salisbury was completed in 38 years. The spire and tower were added in 1315, the spire reaching just over 400 feet and is the tallest in England. The glory of the building was captured by Constable and turner just as it was being unsympathetically restored by James Wyatt, 'The Destroyer'. The building was re-restored to it's Medieval glory by George Gilbert Scott after 1860. This lecture explores the different phases of the Cathedral's history focusing on the 18th and 19th century restoration and the controveries generated.

The merchants of seventeenth century Holland filled their houses with paintingsdepicting subjects of everyday life and behavior both good and bad. However these upright Calvanist citizens rejected Catholic Baroque melodrama. They wanted nothing to offend the in-laws and guests or corrupt the children. Instead, innocent objects hint at adult themes: lap dogs and plucked chickens, lutes and virginals, oysters and artichokes, foot and bed warmers.