Speaker: Victor Lucas, U3AC member, and former High Sheriff Synopsis: The Office of High Sheriff is the oldest secular Office in the United Kingdom, and dates from Saxon times. The word ‘Sheriff’ derives from ‘Shire Reeve’. 27 clauses in Magna Carta relate to the Sheriff. This talk examines the history of this ancient Office, The […]
Speaker: Rosemary Hayes, Author and Writing Workshop Educator Synopsis: In 1685, Louis XIV, revoked The Edict of Nantes which had protected French Protestants (Huguenots) for nearly 90 years. While many bent under the pressure, and converted to Catholicism, others fled, 50,000 to England. What skills did they pass on, and where did they live and […]
Speaker: Professor Mark A Girolami, Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering, Cambridge University Synopsis: Our digital era is hallmarked by breathtaking transformations and disruptions in all that we experience. The names of those at the forefront of this age include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and, further back, Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, […]
Speaker: Tom Douglis, Marketer for the Olympics, who has attended all Games in the last thirty years Synopsis: With the 2024 Olympic Games scheduled for Paris this summer, here’s our opportunity to host a highly visual, fast-paced presentation exploring the life of Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the visionary founder of the modern Olympic Movement. […]
Speaker: Dr Matt Bothwell, Public Astronomer, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge Synopsis: Around a century ago, Edwin Hubble made one of the most important discoveries in astronomical history: the Universe is expanding. Today, astronomers are faced with a puzzle: why do different experiments disagree about how fast our Universe is expanding?
Later Life as Adventure: Changing the Narrative of Ageing Professor Emeritus William L. Randall, Department of Gerontology, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, N.B., Canada Synopsis: In this lecture, Emeritus Professor Bill Randall will draw on nearly 30 years of teaching gerontology to explore with us the possibility of later life as an adventure—counter-intuitive though the concept […]
Speaker: Dr Shushma Malik Shushma is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Onassis Classics Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has published on Roman emperors and imperial historiography, as well as classical receptions. Her monograph, The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Her […]