Speaker: Rachel E. Meller Rachel’s Aunt Lisbeth was always a reserved, uncommunicative woman, who never spoke about her childhood in Vienna, or her experiences in Shanghai. Lisbeth and her mother (Rachel’s grandmother) fled to the Chinese port in 1940, to join Rachel’s grandfather, who had escaped Austria the previous year. Decades later, Lisbeth unexpectedly bequeathed […]
Speaker: Dr Douglas Palmer By the 1840s, Woodwardian Professor Adam Sedgwick’s collection of fossils had grown so large that the University allocated space in the new Cockerell Building for a Museum of Geology. So, what were the prize museum exhibits of the time before evolutionary theory and the ‘invention’ of the dinosaurs? And which specimens […]
Speaker: Dr Emma Darwin Books about Emma’s great-great-grandparents, Charles and Emma Darwin, are legion, but when she agreed to write a novel about her family, she looked for the stories less often told: as well as polymath Erasmus Darwin, there was Thomas Wedgwood, pioneer of photographic processes; novelist and historian, Julia Wedgwood; composer Ralph Vaughan […]
Speaker: This talk explores practices of participatory film making, which grew in popularity in the 1990s and 2000s, inspired by critical pedagogy, newly affordable technologies and commitments to decolonising ‘development’ initiatives in the global South. This collaborative investigation by historian, Lucy Delap, and film director, Dominique Chadwick, outlines the practical and ethical concerns of feminist […]
Speaker: Helen Ackroyd Helen’s talk will take a look at the history of the Priory (N.B. it wasn’t actually an Abbey) from 1135 until 1536, and then as a private house, from 1609 until 1966. However, the main part of her talk will cover the family history of Lord Fairhaven, especially the source of his […]
NOTE CHANGE OF TOPIC & SPEAKER Speaker: Tim Ewbank Zimbabwe won its independence after a largely forgotten civil war which pitched the government of Ian Smith against the nationalist forces of Robert Mugabe & Joshua Nkomo. This talk follows the progress of the war from its modest beginning to full scale civil war. The international […]
Speaker: Katherine Langrish As a writer of fantasies for children, and academic essays and books for adults on fairy tales and folklore, Katherine has long been interested in the power of stories to influence us for both good and ill. In this talk, she will look at legends and fairy tales, the gruesome urban myths […]
Speaker: Lord Wilson of Dinton (Richard Wilson) This talk will discuss why, unlike most countries, we don’t have a written constitution in the UK; what it’s like in practice working without one; and, what the arguments for and against having one are. It will argue that, although we are in the middle of a period […]