Susan will provide an intimate look at the fashions of the 1920s at Barkers Department store, Kensington, London. Drawing on an historic album of photographs and promotional material, Susan will paint a picture of the spectacular fashion shows held at the store. Barkers' Chairman, Sir Sydney Skinner, was groundbreaking in building a Fashion Display Hall with a catwalk, unique in its day, to entice customers to view the latest season’s fashions. Celebrity supermodels of the period are pictured in theatrical fashions, which were then promoted in the daily press.

Susan Bishop is a Chartered Marketer and Senior Lecturer. She has Masters degrees in the History of Design and Material Culture and in Fashion Curation. Susan taught fashion retail marketing and consultancy at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, University of Brighton and Surrey University. Amongst other teaching roles she currently lectures in fashion curation on the BA Costume for Theatre and Screen at Wimbledon School of Arts, UAL.  In 2019 Susan gave a series of talks in London and Sussex on her historical research about Barkers department store supermodels in the 1920s, based on an historic Press Book. She continues her research with her latest project based on two press albums from 1930s about Captain Edward Molyneux, the British-born Paris couturier.

Today Gilbert is almost solely remembered as the man who wrote the words for the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. However in his day he was the leading dramatist of Victorian England and led a revolution in the way plays (and indeed operas) were produced. While his enormous output of straight plays has been totally forgotten his influence on British theatre remains to this day.

This is a talk about just one building. It has 60 million bricks, four chimneys and an amazing story to tell.  Planned in the 1920s, the massive power station operated for fifty years but was then abandoned for the next forty years while dozens of ideas were proposed for its use. It is now a Grade 2* listed building and has been brilliantly converted into a landmark development including residential, retail, offices and leisure which all still reflect its industrial heritage. In this sumptuously illustrated talk, Ian will take us on an armchair tour of this famous site.

About Ian Swankie

A Londoner with a contagious enthusiasm for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a freelance London tour guide. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

Most revolutions in philosophy, science or technology like the Renaissance & Enlightenment, have an impact upon art. So why has the Space Race and resultant moon landings – among the greatest achievements of humanity – had so little influence on the arts? Steve suggests why discoveries in the Cosmos had so little effect upon 20th century art, and discovers some hidden gems, especially from Russia. The lecture considers painting, poetry, literature and cinema, concluding with the work of contemporary female artists exploring this theme today.

A light-hearted resume of his life through his favourite architecture and poetry.

About Christopher Chanter

Has led lectures, study days and workshops. Author of articles on restoration, consultant on restoration to the Georgian Group. Chairman of Historic Buildings Committee, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society 1999-2004. Correspondent to the Council of British Archaeology.

With the exception of Munch, it’s only in the last forty years that Nordic art from 1880 to 1920 has made an impression on the wider world. Exhibitions and books have traditionally focused on the supposedly unique Nordic light and evocative national landscapes painted in this era.  But this was also a period of heady experimentation, of vastly different genres and painting styles, influenced by wave after wave of the French avant-garde.

Biography: 

James Vaux is a researcher and lecturer specialising in Nordic arts, culture, design and history. He has presented extensively on diverse topics throughout his career to demanding audiences across the globe, including CEOs and government ministers. His talks now focus on understanding art through its historic, cultural and political context.  

James aims to question conventional art world narratives about painters, designers and movements, to unveil the hidden forces that lie beneath great art.

James took a law degree at Oxford with First Class Honours and qualified as a solicitor before switching career. As a managing director of the international bank Rothschild, he advised governments and corporates worldwide. He set up and ran the bank’s Nordic operations, living and working in Scandinavia and immersing himself in the countries’ arts, culture and history. James then gained an MA (Distinction) at UCL in Language, Culture and History (Scandinavian Studies). His dissertation was on Swedish design, and he specialised in landscapes, the Viking Age, politics and literature. 

He studied interior design and art history at the Inchbald School, Mid-Century Modern at Sotheby’s Institute and electronic music at Point Blank. He has also been a DJ, promoter, record label owner, hosted a local radio show for four years and ran a pop-up community cinema. He is currently chairman of the Oxford University Society of West Sussex.

He now lectures and provides study days focusing on Scandinavian arts and design, Danish landscape painting and mid-century furniture, Norse mythology, Icelandic culture, the Modern Breakthrough in Nordic painting and the role of modernism in the Cold War. 

Click the link to find a list of the names of artists discussed in the lecture plus details of where to see their works and reading suggestions.

JMW Turner was an inveterate traveller, both in Britain and on the Continent. But his journeys were all business trips, made to gather material for engravings, watercolours or oil paintings.  This lecture will look at the aspects of Brighton that fascinated Turner: modern engineering in the Chain Pier, fashionable society in the bathing machines and the Pavilion, shipping struggling against the power of the sea and the effects of sunlight through the clouds and over the water.

About Matthew Morgan

I am a freelance art historian, educator and museum professional. I have spoken on a wide range of topics from Caravaggio to Kehinde Wiley. My first love is the art of JMW Turner and my primary interest is European 18th and 19th Century painting. 

I have spent many happy hours looking at and thinking about paintings, and my career in museums has been dedicated to sharing that pleasure with as many people as possible. I am committed to giving people greater opportunities to have positive engagements with art and creating fun, interesting art experiences.

As a lecturer I have spoken to groups across Britain and Europe in settings as varied as festivals, cathedrals, art appreciation groups and schools. I have lectured at the National Gallery, Royal Collection, Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

I studied History at Cambridge, undertook my Masters in Art History at The Courtauld Institute and my PhD, ‘Mediating Art and Experience: Art Museums in Las Vegas’, is from Birkbeck, University of London. 

As Museum Director, I ran Turner’s House in Twickenham, dedicated to the great landscape painter, JMW Turner. It was one of the great pleasures of my life to bring JMW Turner to as many people as possible.

I have taught for over eight years at Birkbeck, University of London. I was Head of the London learning team at the Royal Collection and have devised, run and delivered a wide range of learning events at the National Gallery. Prior to working in museums I was a Director in the Valuations Department at Christies. 

I have contributed to TV documentaries, podcasts, radio shows and have made a series of short films about paintings with my daughters which can be seen on YouTube. 

When not thinking about art and artists there is nothing I like more than listening to my extensive collection of jazz records with a glass of red wine. 

One of our greatest composers, Edward Elgar was an extraordinary man.  Brought up in a provincial town, his father a piano tuner and the owner of a music shop, Elgar was completely self-taught as a musician, evidence of the strong determination behind his original and unique genius. His path to recognition was hard and bitter.  He had to contend with the prejudices of the British musical establishment, religious bigotry (he was a Roman Catholic) and with the entrenched class-consciousness of late Victorian provincial society.  However, with his wife Alice as his staunchest supporter, from a hesitant start with pieces written for his local music societies, to cantatas celebrating Britain’s history, “King Olaf” and “Caractacus”, he finally achieved national and international success with his “Variations on an original theme (Enigma)” of 1899.  This work demonstrates remarkable technical mastery of form and orchestration and above all an individual and forceful personality.  He went on to create two of the greatest of the 20th century's symphonies, the magnificent oratorio “The Dream of Gerontius” and two concertos, for violin and cello, among the finest ever written. And of course, he expresses a vigorous patriotism in his “Pomp and Circumstance Marches”. This lecture, illustrated with many notable musical examples, explores the development of this contradictory musician, always wracked with self-doubt, and explains how his music expresses a quintessential Englishness.

About Roger Askew

Roger was a chorister at Wells Cathedral School and a choral scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with an honours degree in English. He combined a teaching career with professional singing in London, and after obtaining a further degree in Music became Director of Music at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College in Edinburgh. After retiring in 2003 he returned to the south of England. He is President Emeritus of The Stoke Poges Society.

The Frick Collection, New York, is one of the most superb museums in the world. It was created mostly during the Gilded Age of American connoisseurship, the collection being gathered by the industrialist, Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919). His agents and dealers, Berenson and Duveen among them, were really effective in sourcing great works of art.  This outstanding collection includes fine French furniture, enamels, porcelain, paintings by Bellini, Van Eyck, Holbein, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Rubens, El Greco, Velázquez, Fragonard, Ingres, Renoir, JMW Turner, Constable, Whistler and many others. These are all set within an outstanding mansion in Manhattan. It is topical to reconsider this collection as the Frick has undergone major redevelopment recently and has reopened in April 2025.

About Hilary Williams

Formerly Print Room Superintendent at the British Museum, Hilary is now the museum's Art History Education Officer and works as an Events Manager in its Learning Department. She lectures for the British Museum and the Wallace Collection. She has published on Rembrandt. Hilary has also guided Special Interest Private Tours of the State Apartments at Buckingham Palace.

In 1803, America bought Louisiana from Napoleon, doubling the size of the country overnight. What was in those 900,000 square miles? Who settled it? And how has the behaviour of those trailblazing misfits come to define the “cowboy attitude” of mainstream America through two centuries and the storming of the Capitol in January 2021? “It takes one to know one” as they say. Your lecturer was born in Iowa, in the heart of the Louisiana Purchase. Please leave your guns at the door.

About Charles Harris

Charles Harris has had a life-long career in mainstream advertising agencies around the world, most of it as a Creative Director in global agencies (J Walter Thompson, Bates, FCB, Publicis, Leo Burnett). Responsible for the quality of the creative ideas and finished production of advertising campaigns, his work for many of the world’s great brands including British Airways, Sony, Nestle, Kraft, BP, Heinz, Black & Decker, Gillette, General Motors and McDonalds earned him national and global awards in New York, Hollywood, Singapore and Sydney. When it comes to art with a persuasive purpose, he gives his professional insight into what works, what doesn’t, and why.

In 1965 British music dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the Beatles were blazing a trail across the world. However, in America, the civil rights and anti-war movements were gaining momentum influencing a new breed of writers and musicians; electric folk was born, and album sales started to increase exponentially. This is the story of the second half of the sixties featuring the music of the Beatles, The Rollings Stones and Bob Dylan. 

About Steve King

Steve King has spent 35 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 including. He has also directed over 50 multi-artist events at venues including the Royal Albert Hall, London Palladium and Manchester Arena. His work in the broadcasting industry has been recognised on numerous occasions.    Steve is an engaging public speaker and has produced a series of highly entertaining lectures based on his extensive knowledge of popular music, and his experiences in the radio business. He has lectured at various media conferences, industry events and for several cruise lines.

The arrival of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo in St Ives at the beginning of the Second World War marked a significant moment, both for them and for the artists already living and working in the small Cornish town. These three artists were key players in British modernism and soon challenged the status quo of the existing artists’ colony, established at the end of the 19th century. They inspired and, in Hepworth’s case employed, a younger generation of artists before they too were challenged by new ideas. This lecture will chart the rise of St Ives as a centre for modern art after the war and show that it was not only Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo who achieved international success but other artists such as Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost and Wilhemena Barns Graham. This success led to the town becoming a focal point for post-war avant garde art which led the eyes of the modern art world to focus, for a brief period, on St Ives. One off lecture or part of a study day on The Art of Cornwall.

About Sarah Burles

Sarah Burles studied History of Art at Cambridge University before doing a master’s degree at University College London. She went on to have a career in museum and gallery education, establishing new services in three different museums before working at the Fitzwilliam Museum for many years.   Sarah is the founder of Cambridge Art Tours, which runs tours and courses in and around East Anglia. She is also a Tour Director for a travel company and has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and America. During the coronavirus pandemic, Sarah moved her work online, offering art history courses to audiences all over the world. Sarah became an Arts Society accredited lecturer in 2021 and, since then, has given lectures and run study days for Arts Societies throughout the UK and in Europe. She is delighted to have been invited lecture for the Arts Society in New Zealand in 2024.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is the most isolated piece of permanently inhabited land on the planet, and yet it produced a most extraordinary Stone Age culture: hundreds of sophisticated coastal stone platforms, more than a thousand enormous stone statues, the richest rock art in the Pacific, and a unique writing system. This talk will provide an introduction to the history of the discovery of this culture; to its principal features; and to what archaeology, oral traditions and, more recently, palaeobotanical evidence have combined to teach us about the island’s cultural rise and decline, its environmental crisis, and the lessons all this can teach us about how we look after the Earth as a whole.   

About Paul Bahn

Studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and completed PhD thesis (1979) on the prehistory of the French Pyrenees. Has held post-doctoral fellowships, at Liverpool and London, plus a J. Paul Getty postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities. Devotes time to writing, editing and translating books on archaeology, plus occasional journalism and as much travel as possible. Main research interest is prehistoric art, especially rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic art, as well as Easter Island. Led the team which, at his instigation, searched for and discovered the first Ice Age cave art in Britain (at Creswell Crags) in 2003.

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 was too polite to say in person. She helped him to poke fun at authority in all its forms, from Hitler to traffic wardens and even his employers at the Daily Express, who didn’t trust him and had sub-editors scouring his cartoons for subversive background details. His admirers included 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 great fan of his work. Giles gave us a remarkable picture of a half-century of British life. He was also, as his editor John Gordon put it “a spreader of happiness’ and ‘a genius…with the common touch’.

About Barry Venning

Barry Venning is an art historian whose interests and teaching range from the art of late medieval Europe to global contemporary art. He has published books, articles and exhibition catalogue essays on Turner, Constable and European landscape painting, but also has an ongoing research interest in postcolonial art and British visual satire. He works as a consultant and associate lecturer for the Open University. His media work includes two BBC TV documentaries, radio appearances for BBC local radio and abc Australia, and a DVD on Turner for the Tate. 

Romney quickly rose to prominence in the 18th century, capturing the likenesses of British high society with remarkable skill. His portraits are celebrated for their graceful composition, delicate colouring, and the subtle yet expressive portrayal of his subjects' personalities. Despite his success, he led a somewhat tumultuous personal life. Romney's contributions to portraiture have left an enduring legacy in the history of British art.

About Adam Busiakiewicz

Adam Busiakiewicz is an Art Historian, Lecturer and Lutenist. After completing his Bachelor’s Degree in History at University College London in 2010 he held the position of Head of Historical Interpretation (curator) at Warwick Castle. He left the castle in 2013 after winning a full AHRC studentship to pursue a Master’s Degree in Fine and Decorative Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. He completed his doctorate in the History of Art at the University of Warwick in 2022 and became a cataloguer in the Old Master Paintings Department at Sotheby's where he remains a Consultant.

Adam has been a Lecturer / Educator at the National Gallery and Guide Lecturer at the Wallace Collection, where he has organised several events and courses on Music & Art as well as other subjects. He has also given talks and performances at the Royal Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art. 

Alongside his publications and scholarly articles, Adam is the co-editor of arthistorynews.com, one of the internet’s most popular art history blogs.

The Bank of England sets the leading interest rate for the UK and also regulates the UK’s financial services industry – its actions affect everyone in the country. It has also accumulated, since its foundation in 1694, an impressive range of artworks. Some are easily visible on the outside of the Bank’s City of London building in Threadneedle Street, whilst others are on display inside the building. During his lecture, Tim Kidd will show pictures of the artworks and explain their background. You can expect to hear about architecture, statues, mosaics and, of course, the intricate designs on the banknotes. There will be no free samples!

About Tim Kidd
Tim Kidd has been a London Blue Badge and City of London guide since 2008. He presents Adult Education courses on London for Surrey County Council and the London Borough of Kingston and is on the rotas of guides for Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, Guildhall Art Gallery and Mansion House.

2023 marks the 600th anniversary of the death of the fabled Dick Whittington (c1354-1423).

For many of us, Dick is simply a fictional character from a Ladybird book or the Christmas pantomime. In fact, Dick was very real, indeed one of the major movers and shakers of medieval London. 

In this lecture we separate the man from the myth as we follow in his footsteps through the streets that were not exactly ‘paved with gold…’. Apprenticed to a master mercer, Whittington went on to become one of the wealthiest and most successful textile merchants in the City, bankrolled no fewer than three medieval kings and as a result held the office of Lord Mayor of London no fewer than four times. And what of that famous feline companion; his cat? Well, the church that he built might just provide the answer but the lecture reveals all….

About Simon Whitehouse

Simon is a (recovering) actor, lecturer, presenter, Alexander Technique and voice teacher and award winning London Blue Badge guide.

He has worked as a guide lecturer in house at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Opera House, the BBC and the National Gallery guiding both public and private tours. He is on the faculty of Ithaca College and also lectures for the Blue Badge Guide training course on the performing arts and English literature.

Simon’s specialisms and passions are theatre, literature, fashion and art history but whatever the subject, Simon will weave a wonderful story from it.

Let me introduce you to 19th century palaeontologist Mary Anning and discover how she searched the Jurassic rocks of England's south coast to unearth what where believed to be sea dragons and we now call marine reptiles. We will look the social history and influences of Mary and the 19th century scientists that she would have worked with. We will not only look at these spectacular fossil remains, but also see how palaeontologists have revealed how these ancient extinct animals lived. Our journey will take us into a distant past, from south west England to southern Germany where shallow seas were inhabited by fish lizards, marine crocodiles and floating islands of tree trunks with ancient starfish like animals attached to them. We will finish by looking at the animals that ruled the land for millions of years, the dinosaurs, and how the first palaeontologists discovered, reconstructed and named these amazing creatures from the Jurassic World.

About Aaron Hunter

I am a professional scientist and researcher with the University of Cambridge and a prize-winning London Blue Badge Guide and City of Bath Honorary Major’s Guide. As a palaeontologist, I am an expert on fossils and prehistoric life from the first animals to appear on our planet to the evolution of early humans. I have published research on the origin of marine animals 480 million years to the Jurassic world. After degrees in Geology & Palaeobiology I gained my PhD from the University of London and went on to pursue an academic career working first as a research fellow in France, Germany and Japan and then as a Senior Lecturer in Malaysia and Western Australia. I have a passion for archaeology, history, architecture and history of art. I give lectures that encompass these subjects looking at the interface between the arts and sciences.

There are currently 2,100 miles of canal in the UK but there were more than 4,000 miles in the 1830s. Many canals fell into decline when the railways arrived but their legacy lives on… old buildings with new uses, unusual features which form unexpected landmarks, lost lock flights that resemble Inca ruins... learn about the gigantic Foxton Inclined Plane or the canal that ran right by Alton Towers. And some canals were quite remarkable… the Tamar Manure Canal, the Louth Navigation and the bizarre Somerset Coal Canal. They are all very much part of our national heritage.

About Roger Butler

Roger Butler is a landscape architect and an experienced writer, photographer and lecturer. He has a particular interest in the unique history, architecture and traditions of our canal network and worked on some of the UK’s major canal restoration projects. He has also acted as a consultant to bodies such as Waterways Ireland, Natural England and the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.

He regularly contributes to waterway and heritage magazines and writes and provides images for a range of countryside and outdoor titles. Roger is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society and a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute. He lives near Stratford upon Avon and lectures to groups such as the National Trust, RSPB, U3A, history societies, etc. across the Midlands and further afield.

Almost everyone has played Monopoly at some time in their life.  It is one of the world’s most popular and enduring board games.  But, how well do you really know it?

This talk starts with the original Landlord’s Game of 1903 and its evolution into the game as we know it today.  Based on the classic 1936 London version we then take a photographic journey around the locations on that Monopoly board.   Expect some surprises as we explore the relationships between the various properties, look at the ones that don’t actually exist and uncover the story behind the game we all know so well - or do we?

About Roger Mendham

A keen and accomplished photographer Roger has gained Distinctions from the Royal Photographic Society  and is currently the President of the Surrey Photographic Association. His artistic taste is predominantly 20th century and he is particularly interested in the visual aspects of art.  He has studied the evolution of photography from its earliest days in the early 1800s to becoming a major art form in the late 20th and now 21st centuries. An experienced public speaker, his talks are all richly illustrated with both his own and images from some of the leading photographers in history

From July to September 2024 Paris will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But whilst most onlookers will focus on sport, art and design will also play a part, as they have since the games began at Olympia nearly three thousand years ago. Greek art is replete with representations of athletes on vases, plates and bronzes. Every four years modern day hosts unveil dazzling new architecture, in the form of stadia, arenas, velodromes and swimming pools. The athletes themselves act as torch bearers for ever changing ideals of physical perfection. From nudity to Nike, from sand to synthetics, the Olympic story offers art lovers pure gold.

About Simon Inglis

Writer and historian Simon Inglis specialises in the architecture and heritage of sport and recreation. Since 2004 he has edited the Played in Britain series for English Heritage. Although sport and recreation might seem an unlikely subject for The Arts Society, non-sporty types need have no fear. Simon’s themes are architecture, design, heritage and popular culture. After a history degree at University College London, he freelanced for various publications, including the Guardian, Observer and Radio Times. He has curated exhibitions for the Building Centre and the British Council, been a regular contributor to radio and television, has travelled and lectured extensively, and written a number of books. Two were shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, while another, on British football grounds, was chosen by journalist Frank Keating as the best sports book of the 20th century. A recent highpoint in his work for English Heritage was the listing of a 1970s skatepark in Essex, a world first that made the 10 o'clock news.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was the favourite of King James I - who addressed him as ‘my sweet child and wife’ - and subsequently chief minister to King Charles I. Buckingham was a beauty, and he surrounded himself with beautiful things. He enjoyed exquisite clothes, like the fabulous white silk suit encrusted with diamonds that he wore to visit the Queen of France. He was a superb dancer. When he cut capers during a court masque King James startled visiting ambassadors by shouting out ‘By God, George, I love you!’ He was a discerning patron. Inigo Jones renovated his houses. John Tradescant was his garden designer.  In his great house on the Strand he put together a collection of art works as fine as King Charles’s. 

At the age of 35 Buckingham was murdered. His collection was scattered, but contemporary inventories allow us to reconstruct it. I will show you some of the magnificent paintings he owned - the Titians, the Tintorettos, the Veroneses. But Buckingham was not just a collector of old masters: he was also a patron, commissioning boldly innovative new work. Most remarkable are the portraits of himself that he commissioned from painters including Van Honthorst, Van Dyck and Rubens – images by great artists of a man known as ‘the handsomest-bodied man in Europe’. 

About Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a cultural historian and biographer. Her book on Gabriele d’Annunzio, The Pike, was described in The Sunday Times as ‘the biography of the decade’. It won all three of the UK’s most prestigious prizes for non-fiction - the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Her other non-fiction books include Cleopatra and Heroes. 

She also writes fiction. Her novel, Peculiar Ground, is largely set in the 17th century, and narrated by a landscape designer loosely based on the great diarist John Evelyn. It was described as 'almost Tolstoyan in its sly wit and descriptive brilliance' (The Guardian) and 'full of drama, vivid characters, wit, gorgeous writing and fascinating detail’. (New York Times).  In her short story collection, Fabulous, she retells fables from classical mythology, relocating them to modern Britain.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she has written on books, theatre and the visual arts for publications including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman and the TLS. She was Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize. 

The lecture will trace the story of Banksy’s humble beginnings as a tagger on the streets of Bristol in the 1980s to one of the most recognisable names in the art world.  We 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. 

About Pepe Martinez

Pepe qualified as a London blue badge tourist guide in 2011, graduating at the top of his class. Since qualifying as a guide he has specialised in the graffiti and street art of East London. Prior to becoming a London blue badge, he was a tour manager for 15 years, travelling extensively, all over the world.  

Pepe can organise and arrange lecture facilities in central London. He can also combine a lecture with a walk of street art and graffiti in the East End and can also organise a practical spray session, giving your group an opportunity to have a go at creating their own works. 

Whenever a major museum is robbed of its treasures, the BBC website reports the event under the heading ‘Entertainment’. The implications of this are more interesting than they at first seem. Art thefts have been a constant presence in the news media since the early decades of the twentieth century and Hollywood and international cinema were not slow to catch on to the general public's fascination with these dark developments. This talk seeks to draw connections between three strands — the rise of the international art market from 1900, the theft of major works of art from museums and private houses in the twentieth century, and the emergence of cinema as an art form in the early twentieth century. All three can be seen to feed off one another. Criminals noticed the extraordinary prices being paid for masterpieces and responded accordingly, while cinema latched on to these real-life thriller crime narratives, turning art thieves into glamorous anti-heroes such as Thomas Crown. More recently, art collectors have sought ever more secure locations in which to store their art, with freeport warehouses now holding billions of dollars of the world’s masterpieces. This talk traces the connections between some of the most popular art heist movies and the reality of the art market and reveals one or two little-known examples of early ‘art crime cinema.’

About the Lecturer

Dr Tom Flynn is a UK-based art historian, writer and art consultant. He holds a First Class Honours degree in Art History from the University of Sussex, a Masters in Design History from the Royal College of Art and a doctorate from the University of Sussex. His interests include contemporary art; sculpture history; museology and the history of  museums; art crime; issues in cultural heritage; and the historical development and professional practice of the European art markets.  

He is Senior Lecturer at Christie’s Education, Adjunct Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London, visiting Senior Lecturer at Kingston School of Art, and teaches at a number of other UK and European universities. He has taught for many years on the summer Post-Graduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) in Amelia, Umbria, Italy. A former Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sussex, he has written for numerous international art publications and is the author of The Body in Sculpture (Everyman Art Library, 1998), and co-editor (with Dr Tim Barringer) of Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Routledge, 1997). He has written monographs on a number of British contemporary sculptors, including Sean Henry, Terence Coventry and Charlotte Meyer. His most recent book, The A to Z of the International Art Market was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2016 and published in a Chinese edition in 2019.

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. This is the story of the first five years of the 1960s, one of the most creative and innovative periods in the history of music, featuring all the major artists, important songs and principal musical genres.

About the Lecturer

Steve King has spent 35 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 work in the broadcasting industry has been recognised on numerous occasions. 
 
Steve is an engaging public speaker and has recently produced a series of highly entertaining lectures based on his extensive knowledge of popular music, and his experiences in the radio business. He has lectured at various media conferences, industry events and for several cruise lines.

Investigating the process of creating, through the collaboration between A A Milne and E H Shepard, the iconic images for one of the leading worldwide children's all-time favourite books. This was the first time that author and illustrator worked together feeding off each other’s creative input and reaction to words and pictures – with never previously published drafts and drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.

About the Lecturer

James Campbell has an MA in the History of Art, and a particular interest in the work of the artist, illustrator and cartoonist E H Shepard (1879-1976). He has been lecturing for over twenty years, and has lectured across the UK and overseas to community groups, Literary Festivals, Art societies, military museums, and to private clubs and societies. His books Shepard’s War and The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh were published in 2015 and 2017 respectively. He is currently working on a joint biography of A A Milne and E H Shepard commissioned for the centenary of the Winnie-the-Pooh books.

Dogs walk on hind legs playing bagpipes or donkeys play harps. Knights fight giant snails, there are hares that train bears, attack frightened hounds or drive a captured dog to the gallows. Castles are besieged by mice and a bull is milking a naked woman. Bared bums, either human or simian, abound: being kissed by bishops and priests; posteriors playing trumpets; shot by arrows or poked by a spear. A man gratuitously opens his bowels before both a nun and a nude bishop and monkeys moon at funerals whilst monks give the service. Nuns are depicted suckling a monkey or carried in a wheelbarrow pushed by a naked man, and, most bizarrely of all, picking penises from a tree.  Multitudes of rude, roguish and lascivious monkeys inhabit the pages.

As the austere head of the Cistercian order, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) wrote in his Apologia of 1125:

What is the point of those unclean apes, fierce lions, monstrous centaurs, half-men, striped tigers, fighting soldiers and hunters blowing their horns? In one place you see many bodies under a single head, in another several heads on a single body. Here on a quadruped we see the tail of a serpent. Over there on a fish we see the head of a quadruped. There we find a beast that is horse up front and goat behind, here another that is horned animal in front and horse behind…

His admonishment, however, was readily ignored, even in art and sculpture for the religious establishment.

From the late thirteenth century to about the middle of the fourteenth, in England, Northern France and Flanders specifically, the artists of illuminated manuscripts were to produce some of the greatest and most imaginative works in this genre. Within the margins and borders of religious texts such as books of prayer and psalms and of secular romances and epic poetry we see an astounding assortment of the amusing, absurd, fantastic, the ridiculously obscene and monstrous creations alongside scenes from everyday life and the natural world.

The period was one of increasing wealth and prosperity. Those from the landowning classes of the gentry, nobility and the church, together with the bourgeoisie from the growing towns and cities, became richer. More of the non-clerical population were able to read, stimulating a demand for books that were religious, instructional and entertaining. The increasing taste of these patrons for luxury and worldliness was reflected in the number and contents of the books they commissioned. Apart from the Latin texts of the psalters, bibles, breviaries and missals there were new secular titles in the vernacular such as romances and epic poems. The inclusion of marginalia in these books must therefore have been at the behest and approval of the patron.

These marginalia are not just grotesques and drolleries or simply mysterious and mischievous spontaneous doodles or even just the crude, vulgar and sometimes scatological renderings of a bored scribe. They were purposeful elements of the design that included savage satire and serious social observation but ultimately provided amusement.

The Luttrell Psalter, probably one of the most famous medieval manuscripts, has delightful and informative illustrations of contemporary rustic life that are exceptional in their number and fascinating detail. Commissioned by a wealthy landowner, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, in the first half of the fourteenth century images depict men harvesting and winnowing wheat, women churning butter and feeding chickens, the lord hunting deer; wrestlers, hawkers, bear baiters, dancers, and musicians feature. Elsewhere a wife beats her husband with her distaff.

This lecture discusses the beliefs, inventions and ideas which led the illuminators to produce such strange images, the role of the patrons who bought or commissioned their work, and the social context of the period before the apocalypse of the Black Death from 1348. For us, they can provide insightful commentary about the cultural climate, values and beliefs in the northern Europe of the time.

About the Lecturer

Martin Heard studied History of Art at Manchester University and afterwards spent three years in the editorial department of a fine art publishing company. My later career took detour into the world of information technology, during which time I had the opportunity to work and live for several years in both continental Europe and North America. Having 'retired' from this field of endeavour I now devote my time to researching mainly English eighteenth and late nineteenth century French art and architecture.

James Giles [1718-80] is best-known as a decorator of Worcester porcelain. However, surviving documentation proves that around a fifth of his workshop’s output was in gilded and enamelled glass of the highest quality. He decorated glass of many colours, including blue, green and amethyst, and of numerous forms, from decanters and drinking-glasses to scent bottles and rosewater sprinklers.

The identification of much of Giles’ work on porcelain, applied in hundreds of different patterns to the products of numerous England and European factories, remains the exclusive preserve of experts. However, his glass decoration ranks amongst the most distinctive forms of English Rococo and Neo-classical glassware.

Giles’ shop was in Cockspur Street, London’s most glamorous retail location and he worked for the wealthiest clients, including royalty, Clive of India and the Duke of Northumberland. Yet his financial ineptitude, and the scheming of his rivals, led to him being bankrupted three times and he died a pauper in 1780. However, his ill-fortune had a silver-lining as it left a paper-trail for today’s historians, enabling his name and the results of his extraordinary skills to resonate through the centuries.   

About the Lecturer

Andy McConnell has dealt in antiques since adolescence, but served an apprenticeship in journalism. After working in music, film and television, he returned to writing in 2004 as the author of the acclaimed tome The Decanter, An Illustrated History of Glass From 1650. He followed this in 2006 with Miller's' 20th Century Glass. He writes regularly for journals as diverse as The Times and Glass Circle News and runs Britain's largest antique and vintage glass gallery in Rye, Sussex. He is best known as the distinctly humorous glass specialist on BBC's evergreen Antiques Roadshow.

The remarkable untold story of Carry On actor Peter Butterworth, and his wife, Britain’s first female tv impressionist Janet Brown, best known for her impression of Mrs Thatcher. 

Using classic film and tv clips, personal mementos, and rare photographs and letters from his family’s unseen collection, Tyler reveals the private story behind his parents’ public lives.

It’s a journey that takes in MI9, the building of a theatre in the notorious WW2 Prisoner of War camp Stalag Luft III, nights at Chequers with a Prime Minister, This Is Your Life, and many more moments in their long, shared life in the theatre. 

About Tyler Butterworth

Tyler Butterworth grew up in a theatrical family and spent twenty five years as an actor working extensively in film, television, theatre and radio. He then worked as a development producer in television documentaries and was closely involved with NASA on a landmark commemorative tv series. Now, he works as a voice actor, recording audiobooks, documentaries and voiceovers, and he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe for private clients on whatever subject he’s commissioned to do. They’re just like the audio guides you get in art galleries and museums but they’re out on the street. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.

Napoleon’s Empress, Joséphine de Beauharnais, was a passionate gardener, book collector, patron and art collector. Her reputation in France and abroad for generosity, charm and gentleness of manner was of enormous value to Napoleon as a feminine counterpart to the otherwise military and legalistic tenor of his regime. Countless contemporaries emphasised her sensitivity and her genuine interest in the visual arts – often no doubt in part as a contrast to her husband. This talk will explain the range of her cultural activities, including her acquisition of a large and distinguished collection of pictures, including by far the most important group of works by an entirely new school of painting, the troubadour pictures of beautifully crafted historical scenes. Indeed, as will be explained, among female royal collectors her only superior is the incomparable Catherine the Great. 

About Stephen Duffy

Educated at New College, Oxford, and formerly Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection where he had particular responsibility for exhibitions and nineteenth-century paintings. He has given countless tours of the Collection for visiting groups and many lectures on its art and other related subjects. His latest publication, The Discovery of Paris, is a book on early nineteenth-century watercolour views of Paris by major British artists.

The discovery of the grave of King Richard III in Leicester raised an army of new and fascinating questions. The severe scoliosis exhibited by the skeleton revealed that the twisted physique of Shakespeare’s ‘Black Legend’ was based in fact. But how could a diminutive person, suffering from a significant spinal condition, have become a skilled practitioner of the knightly fighting arts? How could he have worn armour and fought in three major battles? What would his armour have looked like? How might it have disguised the King’s condition, presenting him as a powerful warrior? In the case of a king whose royal legitimacy was questioned by many people, how were the visual trappings of knightly kingship used to solidify his claim? Here we encounter armour as an expressive art-form, designed to radiate messages, justifications, proof of the wearer’s right to rule as a king- a wielder of divine power on Earth.

About Tobias Capwell

Toby is Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London and an internationally-acknowledged authority on Medieval and Renaissance weapons. He is the author of numerous books on the subject of arms and armour, including Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection (2011; Apollo Magazine Book of the Year 2012); The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520-1630, ex. cat. (2012); Armour of the English Knight 1400-1450 (2015; Military History Monthly Illustrated Book of the Year 2017); ans most recently Arms and Armour of the Medieval Joust (2018). Toby also appears regularly on television, most recently on A Stitch in Time (2018; BBC4); as presenter and armour advisor on Richard III: The New Evidence (2014; C4), and as the writer and presenter of Metalworks: The Knight's Tale (2012; BBC4). In 2015 Toby had the unusual honour of serving as one of the two fully armoured horsemen escorting the remains of King Richard III, from the battlefield at Bosworth to their final resting place in Leicester Cathedral.

When Lucy Kemp-Welch’s painting Colt Hunting in the New Forest (now in the Tate Gallery) was first exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1897 it caused a sensation. The Times predicted that the artist would ‘very rapidly become our most successful and popular painter of horses,’ and perhaps the first female Royal Academician in over a century. Born in Bournemouth in 1869, Kemp-Welch studied at the Herkomer School of Art in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and added to her fame with her defining illustrations to the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell’s 1877 novel, Black Beauty. She also made a number of important paintings of the First World War. This lecture explores her life and work, and coincides with both a new biography (written by the lecturer), and two exhibitions curated by him, to be held in Hampshire and East Anglia in 2023.

About David Haycock

David read Modern History at the University of Oxford, and has an MA in the History of Art and a PhD in British History. He is the author of a number of books, including Paul Nash (2002), A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009) and Augustus John: Drawn from Life (2018); he has lectured widely at galleries and museums in the UK, including Tate Britain, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Watercolour Society and Pallant House. He was formerly a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and at UCLA, and was Curator of Maritime and Imperial History at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. He is now a freelance writer and lecturer.

This lecture tells the story of men's tailoring over the past 200 years, told through the lives of the men who commissioned and created and wore it. Tailors, shirtmaker, hatters and other craftspeople in London’s west end, especially around Savile Row & Jermyn Street have shaped the way men dress since the Regency. How did men such as Beau Brummell, The Duke of Windsor, Tommy Nutter, Montague Burton, Alexander McQueen and John Stephen create their signature looks which influenced the mens fashion? This lecture also looks at the wider cultural shifts since the early 19th century to the present day and how they affected the way that men present themselves.

About Russell Nash

Russell trained and worked as an actor, writer, puppeteer and theatre maker for 15 years. In 2015 he qualified a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Around this time he rekindled his love of art and art history. He now regularly guides the major galleries and museums in London such as the National Gallery, Tates Modern & Britain and the British Museum. He has delivered lectures for institutes and museums, as well as numerous U3A groups and other societies. During Covid lockdowns he devised and delivered more than 30 different virtual tours and lectures to groups from the UK and across the globe.

In 2023 the RA will host the first ever UK exhibition on Marina Abramovic and she will become a hotly debated artist. Many only know a little of this incredible woman and so this lecture is an amazing opportunity to learn more. Abramović is the pioneer of performance art and Helen will discuss her 50 year career from its dramatic beginnings to how the artist, now in her 70’s, has developed her work to reflect her changing perceptions of the world. Helen will look at the question of whether performance art can outlive the performance itself; are the photos, videos and re-performances of younger artists just as valid? Abramović has a superbly powerful presence and creates a very intense relationship between the performer and the viewer, more so than is achieved in the theatre.

About Helen Oakden

Helen is the Head of the History of Art Department at St Mary’s School Ascot. She studied at Manchester University and achieved her Masters’ Degree in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Based in London she has previously worked for the Royal Academy and National Gallery, as well as leading specialised art history courses across Italy. 

Mexico has a vast range of festivals. Visually splendid, many feature lavish processions and masked dances with richly decorated costumes. Although some festivals commemorate national events, most are religious in inspiration. After the Spanish conquest of 1521, priests used theatrical representation as a method of instruction. Traditionally, people display elaborate nativity scenes in their homes.

The Christmas story is acted out in towns and villages: adults and children perform as shepherds and shepherdesses, hermits and devils. Other important celebrations include Saints' Days, All Souls' Day, and Carnival. Chloë Sayer's book 'Fiesta' was published in 2009 by The British Museum Press. 

About the Lecturer

Freelance specialist in the art and culture of Latin America. Has lectured in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. Has curated exhibitions, and assisted on TV documentaries for BBC and Channel 4. Has made collections in Mexico and Belize for the British Museum, and is Research Associate in the Department of World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2016 she was awarded the prestigious Ohtli medal by the Mexican government for her long-standing commitment to Mexican culture. Her many publications include Mexican Textiles (British Museum Press, 1990), Arts and Crafts of Mexico (Thames & Hudson, 1990), Focus on Aztecs and Incas  (Watts Books, 1995), The Incas - The Ancient World (Wayland, 1998), Textiles from Mexico (British Museum Press, 2002), and Mexico: Clothing and Culture (Royal Ontario Museum, 2015). Has also published articles in travel guides, newspapers and magazines.

Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high profile UK publications (The Guardian, Radio Times) as well as for countless more obscure titles (British Journal Of Wound Care).

He was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist Of The Year for his Guardian strip Clare In The Community, which he adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom.

In 'The Art Of The Cartoonist' Harry will be tracing the history of his profession with examples from early practitioners like Cruickshank and Hogarth, to more contemporary artists such as Giles and Schulz, bringing events right up to date with cartoons produced fresh on the page that day!

Yes, Harry will be drawing live. Prepare to hear some tricks of his trade, learn where to put eyebrows for maximum effect and discover exactly what the eskimo brothers said in The Funniest Joke Ever (possibly).

About the Lecturer

I graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth with a BA in history, formed a touring theatre company bringing new plays to audiences in rural Wales, was then employed for a year as an actor/writer with the Channel Theatre Company in Ramsgate, Kent, before giving up acting and becoming a cartoonist instead.

I have had work published in the UK and abroad, including the strip Clare in the Community which has been a weekly feature in The Guardian since 1996. In 2016 I was awarded Strip Cartoonist of the Year by the UK Cartoon Trust.

I am also a Sony Award winning writer of radio comedy, including the shows Coach Karen’s Half Time Team Talk and Clare in the Community starring Sally Phillips, currently recording its twelfth series.

For the last ten years I have been performing my cartoon workshop Release Your Inner Cartoonist in its many different guises, to audiences as diverse as schoolchildren, business executives and festival goers.

I can’t draw hands or horses.

The light-filled canvases of Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot capture the pleasures of modernity: fashionable ballgowns, afternoons spent boating on a lake, children playing. Yet, her contemporaries perceived a connection with the eighteenth century. Renoir declared her ‘the last elegant and ‘feminine’ artist that we have had since Fragonard.’ Surveying the 1896 posthumous retrospective of her oeuvre, Paul Girard declared ‘it is the eighteenth century modernised.’ Eighteenth-century art fell from favour following the French Revolution, but was rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century by collectors including Louis La Caze and Hippolyte Walferdin. Morisot copied works by Boucher; she experimented with red chalk, a technique closely associated with Rococo drawings; she also admired the English painters Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney, whose work she first encountered on honeymoon in the Isle of Wight and London. This lecture traces Morisot’s engagement with eighteenth-century art and culture, and highlights what set her work apart from that of her predecessors.

About the Lecturer

Dr Lois Oliver studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, completing an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art and a PhD thesis on The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815-1855. She worked at the Harvard Art Museums before joining the curatorial team at the V&A and then the National Gallery, where she curated several exhibitions and contributed to major re-displays of the collections. Currently Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Royal Academy, Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Notre Dame in London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute, Lois also writes audio and multimedia tours for clients including the National Gallery, Royal Academy, Royal Collection, and Tate, and has appeared on BBC Radio and TV. Also a keen violinist, Lois plays regularly with Kensington Chamber Orchestra and the Endellion Festival Orchestra.

A ‘cracking’ talk.  It will fundamentally change your view of William Hogarth. Pots, crocks and chinaware tumble through Hogarth’s domestic dramas.  His detailed paintings and prints are wittily infiltrated with recognizable ceramics  - earthenwares, stonewares and ‘china’-  in an age drunk on Luxury.  Potters across continents compete with each other, fuelled by the ‘china mania’ gripping the emerging middle classes.  And Hogarth catches them. And in an ironic twist: Hogarth’s own images are themselves translated onto clay. A typical post-talk plaudit: “I shall never look at Hogarth in the same way again”.

About the Lecturer

Since my 1986 debut on the BBC Antiques Roadshow (and all series since), I have spoken widely, within and beyond the UK. With over 40 years of experience in ceramics and other areas, I aim to combine several compelling narratives with enthusiasm and humour.

Born in Copenhagen, I studied Archaeology at Cambridge and joined Sothebys where, as a director and auctioneer (1977-1993), I specialized in Chinese and European ceramics. Today my consultancy devises and curates exhibitions, advises on the acquisition, care and disposal of ceramics and other fields. I also speak a lot: many of my most popular talks concern the vast universe of clay and ceramics as well as the world and works of William Hogarth. For a fuller CV (including lists of past exhibitions, TV and radio broadcasts, publications and further talk/study titles), please visit my website www.tharp.co.uk 

2022 is the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and 2023 marks the 70th Anniversary of her Coronation, events which are unique in the history of our nation.

This lecture celebrates these events and looks at the evolution of the coronation ceremony from Saxon times to that of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It examines the different stages of the ceremony from the Recognition through to the Homage and explains the significance of the different items of the Coronation Regalia.

 Finally, the lecture gives an account of the ill omens and memorable mishaps which have occurred at coronations throughout the centuries and ends with the coronation of Her Majesty the Queen, the first to be genuinely witnessed by the people through the medium of television.

About the Lecturer

Historian and London Blue Badge Guide since 1988. Lecturer, Examiner and Course Director on Blue Badge Guide Training Courses and an acknowledged expert on Royalty and Windsor Castle. The only Blue Badge Guide accredited to guide the Albert Memorial. Has conducted tours for American museums and alumni groups for the past 25 years. 

Since its foundation in 1925, Faber and Faber has built a reputation as one of London’s most important literary publishing houses. Part of that relates to the editorial team that Geoffrey Faber and his successors built around them - TS Eliot was famously an early recruit - but a large part is also due to the firm’s insistence on good design and illustration. This lecture traces the history of Faber and Faber through its illustrations, covers and designs. Early years brought innovations like the Ariel Poems – single poems, beautifully illustrated, sold in their own envelopes. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an emphasis on typography, led by the firm’s art director Berthold Wolpe; his Albertus font is still used on City of London road signs. In the 1980s, the firm started its association with Pentagram, responsible for the ff logo. Along the way, it has employed some of our most celebrated artists as cover illustrators – from Rex Whistler and Barnett Freedman to Peter Blake and Damien Hirst. Slides will range from book covers, advertisements and photos of key individuals, to illustrations of the concepts behind the designs. The talk will also be peppered with personal insight and anecdote. Faber and Faber is the last of the great publishing houses to remain independent. As the grandson of its founder, I grew up steeped in its books. I was managing director for four years and I remain on the board. I am passionate about the firm’s success, and intensely proud of my association with it. 

About the Lecturer

Toby is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has been accredited by The Arts Society since 2012. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. He is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press.

Toby has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; and Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, as well as a novel, Close to the Edge. Of these, only the obvious one is published by the family firm.

Prunella Clough is an important figure in twentieth century art. She was a constant presence in the British art scene from the 1940s through to the 1990s. She never ceased developing new approaches to her art, evolving from her early neo-Romantic style to her own type of postmodernist painting.

We’ll look at her early social realist work depicting fishermen, truck drivers and factory workers, her transition to a form of abstract landscape painting under the influence of Nicola de Stael and Abstract Expressionism and her use of overlooked everyday objects, such as plastic bags, as source material for art.

A constant in all her work is her curiosity about the overlooked, things that are not normally regarded as worthy of attention, but which she utilises as sources in her art. Clough invent new ways of working in order to transfigure the commonplace and widen the vocabulary of art.

About the Lecturer

Colin Pink has a BA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Southampton and a MA in the History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London. He specialises in the interrelationship between the history of ideas and the history of art and has lectured on aspects of modern art at a wide range of cultural organisations: Putney School of Art and Design; the Temenos Academy; APT Studios; Mascalls Gallery; the Museum of Futures, Surbiton; the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings and the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea. He also curates exhibitions and has published two books of poetry: Acrobats of Sound, 2016 and The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, 2019.

Appreciate the astonishing range of signature buildings of faith communities settling in London. New arrivals leave their imprint on a city – nowhere more so than in London where Jews, Muslims, Roman Catholics, Hindus, Methodists, Sikhs, Buddhists and Orthodox Greeks have each added their own layer. Not least, they have all left a remarkable signature. Here are eight faith communities which can each point to a special place they built, not on first arrival, but when numbers and self-confidence had grown in the knowledge they had established themselves for the long term. Crucially, it was when they had the wealth and resources to commission great architecture. So we have a synagogue, a chapel, a gurdwara, a monastery, a couple of cathedrals, a temple and a mosque, permanent markers of the highest quality. Their differences stretch across cultures and 300 hundred years of persecutions and economic crises. But their similarities are also striking.

About the Lecturer

As a London walking tour guide and lecturer, I highlight the social, architectural and artistic history of my home city. It is a city I am passionate about, not least because it has a historic core larger and richer than any other world city. A member of the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association, my talks focus on the forces that have shaped and changed this multi-faceted metropolis and the artistic and cultural heritage that this has given us. After many hundreds of walks and a four-decade long career in housing and regeneration I have absorbed a deep understanding and appreciation of the capital. I’ve had some fascinating vantage points like the seven years build-up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games where I played a role in channelling potential long-term benefits into surrounding East London communities. My publications include Spitalfields: A battle for land.

American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein has captivated the art world since his debut in the 1960s. His paintings, however, remain controversial: executed in a style previously reserved for advertising and comic books, Lichtenstein’s pieces can appear simplistic, tongue in cheek and imitative. And yet the meticulous and monumental works have become ubiquitous and influential. This hour-long talk discusses why Lichtenstein’s works are more complex than they appear – a perspective that Kate has gained after half a decade of working for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and closely examining Lichtenstein’s paintings, sculptures, tapestries and drawings.

About the Lecturer

Dr Kate Aspinall is an independent historian, writer, and artist. Based in London, she focuses her art historical work on British visual culture in the 20th century. She teaches occasionally for the Courtauld and Yale in London and has spoken at a range of galleries and public institutions, including Tate, the Towner and Pallant House, among others. In addition to her art practice, which recently won a grant from the European Commission, she was a long-term consultant for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, and until recently she served as a Trustee of the Association for Art History, representing freelance and independent art historians. She has degrees from the University of St Andrews, the Courtauld Institute and the University of East Anglia. 

The Nutcracker ballet has delighted audiences at Christmas for many decades yet it was deemed a failure at its initial performances. Based upon the current Royal Ballet production by Sir Peter Wright, this lecture takes a close look at how this well-loved ballet now takes its rightful place on stage and how the music of Tchaikovsky along with story-telling, design, dance and a little bit of stage ingenuity all come together to make the most magical escape for young and old alike. Includes several performance video clips.

About our Lecturer:

Nigel Bates has been a performer for more than forty years in and out of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, including seventeen years as Principal Percussionist with the Orchestra and eight years as the Music Administrator of The Royal Ballet.

 He has worked with many of the leading figures in the classical music industry and was also a producer for both the BBC's Maestro at the Opera and Pappano's Classical Voices documentary series. He is a regular contributor to the printed and online content of the ROH.

He has given lectures for over thirty years, including many arts societies and conservatoires in the UK and across Australia.

Opened in 2012, the Susan Weber Furniture Gallery at the V&A houses a world renowned collection of furniture dating from the middle ages and including pieces from Britain, Europe, Asia and America. In this lecture we will see pieces of furniture ranging from chairs, stools, tables, bureaux, chests, cabinets and wardrobes, to clocks, mirrors and screens. We will see pieces from Well-known designers such as Thomas Chippendale, Grinling Gibbons, Robert Adam, Eileen Gray, Charles and Ray Eames, and Ron Arad Dixon together with work from lesser known designers.

About our Lecturer:

Christopher has led lectures, study days and workshops. Author of articles on restoration, consultant on restoration to the Georgian Group. Chairman of Historic Buildings Committee, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society 1999-2004. Correspondent to the Council of British Archaeology.

Please note this month our lecture and AGM will be a week earlier than usual and NOT on 29th September as originally advertised.

At the birth of Indian Independence in 1947, a group of talented and determined artists set out to create a new art for a new country. They drew on ancient artistic traditions but also had a radical view of how Indian art could speak to its audience. This movement, known as the Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, created an art very much for and of its time – acting as witness to a country in turmoil and relating the fascinating story of transition and growth of the new India. This talk offers an exploration of how art in the subcontinent threw off the yoke of colonial influence to create modern masterpieces and a thriving global business.

About our lecturer:

Georgina is an art historian specialising in South Asian art who has lived and worked in the UK, USA and Singapore. Her practice includes lecturing, writing, consulting and collecting and she has developed a network of gallery and artist connections in Europe, the USA and India, which she visits regularly.  

An official tour guide at Tate Modern and Art Historian at the Oriental Club, London, Georgina is also a guest speaker on luxury cruise ships for whom she has developed a series of art talks relating to Asian and Pacific destinations. She has been a visiting lecturer at UK universities, presents talks at leading art institutions including Christie’s Education New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow and speaks at international art conferences, most recently in New York, Paris, London and Lisbon.

Georgina holds a BA in Art History from Southampton University, an MA in Arts Management and Policy from City, University of London and an MA in Art History from SOAS, University of London. Georgina is a Patron of the Contemporary Art Society, has been a Trustee of Salisbury Arts Centre and on working committees at Tate and the Art Fund. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Stop Press!

All being well, we hope to be able to invite some of our members to join us in person for this lecture at the Hove Club. Because of restrictions, places will be limited and we intend to give priority to those members that have been unable to use Zoom. To find out more please contact Jessica Rosenthal at jessica.rosenthal958@gmail.com or on 07919 578968 for more details

About the lecture

The past decade has seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile British designer with his acclaimed Olympic cauldron, the iconic new London bus and designs for a spectacular new HQ building for Google.  Over the last twenty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world.  This talk looks at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded.

About our Lecturer:

A Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul's Cathedral and gives tours around each venue.  He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations.  Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond, West London.  He is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

Jane Austen’s novels are often characterised as lightweight romances dealing in trivialities and portraying a limited social sphere, reflecting the constricted circumstances of the author’s own life.  This lecture offers an alternative reading, suggesting that Austen is not interested in romance but moral challenge, not a mild spinster but a social commentator of contemporary relevance and by no means inferior to Eliot and Dickens by virtue of her limited canvas.  Mary will read and discuss extracts from Emma and Pride and Prejudice, considering questions such as how we should view the tedious Miss Bates to whom Emma is so famously insolent and how we should judge the over-excitable Mrs Bennet. 

About our Lecturer:

Mary is an experienced broadcaster and teacher with particular expertise in literature and drama. She worked for many years for BBC Radio 4 producing some of its most popular programmes including Start the Week and Woman’s Hour before joining the senior management team as a Commissioning Editor. Mary has subsequently worked as a teacher and Director of Sixth Form at a leading girls’ grammar school. She now runs her own company 'Opening Up Literature' which offers literature courses for adults including studies of Shakespeare and Creative Writing. Her most popular course is 'Telling Tales' which explores how writers and artists have reinvented classical stories. She is also a professional bridge teacher and lecturer.

When Cecil Beaton died in 1980, it was not surprising that one of his tailors was telephoned with the news before Buckingham Palace, despite his close association with the Royal Family.  From the moment he arrived at Cambridge University in 1922, wearing evening jacket, red shoes, black-and-white torusers and a large cravat, to his first meeting with Greta Garbo ten years later in 'pristine white kid coat, new white shoes and socks', to his appearance nearly forty years later at Truman Capote's 1970 Black and White Ball, Beaton expressed a flamboyant satorial nonchalance.  Beaton's wardrobe went through many changes during his lifetime, expressing at once his confidence and insurities.  This illustrated lecture traces the story of how he used his clothing to curate personal and professional facades as his international career and fame grew.

About our Lecturer:

Dr Benjamin Wild, FRHistS, is a cultural historian who writes and lectures about the history of dress. He convenes courses for the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and is teacher of history at Sherborne School. He is half of Dress:Fancy podcast (the other half being Lucy Clayton), a weekly show that discusses the prevalence, power, popularity of fancy dress costume. Previously, he was guest lecturer at the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design, London, and consultant lecturer at the Sotheby's Institute of Art, London. He has written for a variety of magazines and academic journals and regularly talks at National Portrait Gallery and Royal Academy.

Benjamin was educated at King's College London, where he studied history. His doctorate, focusing on the material culture of the household of King Henry III of England, was published in 2012. His second book, A Life in Fashion: The Wardrobe of Cecil Beaton, was published in 2016 by Thames & Hudson. His third book, Carnival to Catwalk: Global Reflections on Fancy Dress Costume, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic.

This lecture provides an insight into the origins and evolution of the 2000 year history of Regulated Court Costume, plus dress accessories. The regulations covered the clothing men and women had to wear on formal, and semi-formal, occasions whilst at Court or positioned within Central or Provincial Government. A system that reached the height of sophistication and complexity during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Initial consideration will be given to the origins and evolution of the structure and iconography of formal, mandated, Court Costume, and the dress accessories, worn by the Imperial Clan plus the nine ranks of Civil and Military Officials.

There will be a focus on the Insignia of Rank that were worn to visually indicate the rank and status of the wearer. Specific consideration will be given to the origins and usage of the iconic Chinese Imperial Dragon, the personal emblem of the Emperor, but not for his exclusive use

The lecture concludes with an exploration of the Imperial Wardrobe from State Robes, and regalia, through to informal wear for the men and women of the court.

About our Lecturer:

David Rosier is a Chartered Insurer, and Fellow of the Assurance Medical Society, by profession with a specialization in medical risk assessment.

He has spent in excess of 25 years focusing on business in Asia, and China in particular, and for 14 years he and his family lived in Hong Kong.

During the years in Hong Kong David, and his wife Wendy, created a ‘World Class’ collection of in excess of 500 Imperial Qing Dynasty, and related items, of costume and dress accessories. This collection was acquired, in its entirety, in late 2019 by The Shanghai Museum, Peoples Republic of China.

David is a past committee member of the Hong Kong Textile Society.

Since returning to the UK David has lectured extensively on Chinese Court Costume of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) plus the history, culture and arts of Imperial China Groups visited have been as diverse as The National Trust, Textile Guilds, Confucius Institutes, Art Fund and Oriental focused societies, university departments and museums.

In addition, David is a regular contributor for publications such as China Eye, Oriental Art and a number of textile related publications

David is an Accredited Lecturer for The Arts Society and lectures regularly around the UK and in Europe.

In addition, David has undertaken lecture tours to SE Asia, New Zealand and Australia and leads tours to China that focus on Imperial History, Art and Culture.

The Philippines has a rich and well-established fine art tradition, introduced in the 18th century by resident Spanish Jesuits to provide religious imagery for the devout, and propaganda for the not-so-devout. In the 19th century, Filipino artists working within the Western tradition, such as Juan Luna (1857-1899) and Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo (1855-1913), achieved success in the Salons of Europe, a direct result of access to formal art education at the new art schools of the Philippines. The turn of the century saw American colonisation and led to a hybrid modernism in the artistic culture of the 20th century. Today that culture has resulted in some of the most exciting contemporary art in Southeast Asia. This lecture will include a discussion of some of the leading figures in the Philippine art world, with whom the speaker has worked directly as a curator.

About our Lecturer:

Viv Lawes is a lecturer, curator, author and journalist, with over twenty years’ experience in the art market. She works at several prestigious Higher Education institutions in London, leading the Modern and Contemporary unit of the Asian Art & Its Markets semester course at Sotheby’s Institute and the History of Decorative Style (c.1400-1970) course at the City & Guilds of London Art School. She also lectures for the University of the Arts and IESA (Institut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts), London.  As Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia since 2011, she has co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. Her current project is a book is on themes in equine sculpture, commissioned by the Sladmore Gallery, London.

This lecture will focus on the Buddhist areas of the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas.  The once spiritual domain of Tibetan culture and religion, spanning 2000 miles from Ladakh in the west to Bhutan in the east.  It will explore the kingdoms and principalities of Ladakh, Zanskar, Spiti, Lahoul, Nepal, Mustang, Sikkim, Bhutan and their spiritual heartland of Tibet.  Many of these countries lay on the ancient trade routes connecting India with Central Asia, and although isolated became important centres of Buddhist art and culture, housing vast repositories of sacred art in their remote monasteries and temples.

About our Lecturer:

Freelance lecturer, art consultant and exhibition curator specialising in the art and culture of Tibet, the Himalayan areas and Mongolia.  Initially based at the V&A but also worked with the Central Asian Department of Bonn University, the Orient Foundation, the Royal Academy, Tibet House, the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and Asia House.  In addition to lecturing for The Arts Society, she lectures for museums, universities, Asian art societies and private associations.  Guest lecturer and tour guide on numerous trips to the Himalayas.  Edited Masterpieces of Mongolian Art: Vol 1 and has published many articles in the field of Buddhist art and culture.

The history of this enduring and peculiarly British institution, from its origins in 16th century Italian commedia dell’arte through the influence of 19th century music hall, to the family shows that are still much loved today. On the way we examine the origins of some of the stories used in pantomime as well as such traditions as the (female) principal boy and the (male) pantomime dame. The talk is interspersed with personal anecdotes from the speaker’s years of working (and appearing) professionally in pantomime.

Ian Gledhill has had a very varied career, from designing underground railways as an engineer for London Transport, to appearing in pantomime with Julian Clary. In between he has worked in travel and tourism, music publishing, television, and especially the theatre, where he has been an actor, director, set designer, stage manager and opera translator. His main interests include architecture, history, transport and classical music, especially opera and operetta, and these are reflected in the wide ranging list of subjects for his lectures. He began giving lectures in 1997, and now gives on average around 140 a year. 

What skills did it take for a woman to become a painter in 17th c Europe? Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-1654) was by no means the only woman painter of her period, but she is a rarity, and she also ranks amongst the greatest painters of the 17th century. Her career spanned a time of great change in Italian taste, from the power and earthiness of Caravaggio, to the more elegant classicism of Reni and Domenichino. Her family connections meant that she moved between a number of different centres in Europe - Rome, Florence, Naples and London, and her work reflects the different tastes of these centres. This lecture considers her training in the very male world of the roman studio, and explores her skills in painting in a style which is both individual but which also put her in the forefront wherever in Europe she found herself working.

Chantal has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh, 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.

NB: Christopher Chanter (who was due to give the October lecture) will be visiting us in October 2021 to give his talk about the Susan Weber Furniture Gallery at the V&A.

Please note this lecture will be held via Zoom and not at The Hove Club as originally planned

The history of English garden design can be told in different ways, but rarely can it be told "through the lens" of one garden. The Oxford Botanic Garden was founded at the beginning of the 17th century and its design bears all the hallmarks of 17th century design. Through the next 400 years successive Horti Praefecti (head gardeners) changed the features reflecting the art of gardening, and very occasionally the science of botany. This talk looks at how the art of gardening has changed, or perhaps has not, in four centuries in Oxfordshire and how the Oxford Botanic Garden now reflects garden design at the beginning of the 21st century.  The title of the talk refers to the fact that one of the motivations for garden design remains the desire to create paradise on Earth. The meaning of paradise may now be less rooted in the Biblical account of the rise and fall of man, but there is still a clear vision of what we would like the world to resemble.  

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky is one of the great pioneers of abstract art. This talk examines the gradual development of his ideas about the nature and possibilities of abstraction, and ties them in closely with his intellectualism, his spiritual outlook, and the condition of synaesthesia, a rare perceptual and neurological phenomenon which affected him.  He was also working at a time of considerable political upheaval in Europe, and his travels between Russia, Germany and Paris were to a large extent driven by that background of war and instability.

A link to the lecture will be sent to members on 25th August. Please click here for our guidelines on joining the Zoom lecture.

About our Lecturer:

Linda Smith has two first-class degrees in Art History. A broad knowledge of art historical subjects, but specialises in British Art and twentieth century art. Experienced lecturer and guide, especially at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Has lectured to a wide variety of audiences in different venues, including school and university students, and independent arts societies in the UK and overseas.

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.

A link to the lecture will be sent to members on 28th July. Please click here for our guidelines on joining the Zoom lecture.

About our Lecturer:

Elizabeth Gowing studied at Magdalen College Oxford before training as a teacher and working in Lambeth, Hackney and Islington. Moved to Kosovo in 2006 and there worked with the Ethnological Museum in Prishtina and co-founded ‘The Ideas Partnership’, a charity working on education and cultural heritage projects. Speaks fluent Albanian and has translated two books (the unauthorized biography of Yugoslavia’s longest-held political prisoner, Adem Demaci, and the memoirs of one of the leaders of the 1912 uprising). Also the author of four books about Kosovo – Travels in Blood and Honey; becoming a beekeeper in Kosovo (2011), Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo (2013); The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife; an unlikely friendship in Kosovo (2015) and The Silver Thread; a journey through Balkan craftmanship (2017). Regular contributor to Radio 4 (Saturday Live, Excess Baggage, From Our Own Correspondent) and the BBC World Service.

One of the most extraordinary Spanish artists from Valencia; Joaquin Sorolla has become better known more recently. He lived from 1863 to 1923 and created a world full of light and colour which delights the senses. Sometimes a social painter he was more concerned with capturing light falling on bodies and sea-scapes and his wonderful technique will be considered in this colourful lecture. His final Visions of Spain now in New York will also be shown.

A link to the lecture will be sent to members on 23rd June. Please click here for our guidelines on joining the Zoom lecture.

About our Lecturer:

Jacqueline is Managing Director of an art tours company, running residential courses in Andalucía, Southern Spain in the art and culture of the region. Jacqueline is a course director and lecturer at the V&A and also lectures at The Royal Academy, Christies Education, The Art Fund, The London Art History Society and has recently toured New Zealand for The Arts Society and Australia fror ADFAS, where she will return next year. Her specialist field is Spanish Art, but she also lectures on European Art 1790-1950. She has recently published A Taste of Art, London (Unicorn Press 2019). Jacqueline films her lectures and is currently delivering lectures, study days and courses online.

This presentation will give a personal account of preparing the music for The Queen's Birthday Parade from music selection, rehearsals and the big day itself, including an insight into how it all works.  This presentation will also look at the relevance of music for such an event; is it really relevant in today's modern world?

About our Lecturer:

Dr Graham Jones MBE started his professional life as a musician in the British Army and over a glittering career spanning nearly forty years he retired as the Senior Director of Music, Household Division and Director of Music, Coldstream Guards a position unequaled throughout military music in Great Britain.  During his illustrious career he has recorded over 40 albums and been responsible for the largest commissioning programme of wind band music in recent history commissioning over 30 new works for wind band.  He pioneered a music education programme with the University of Salford for military musicians resulting in a new Master of Music in performance degree.  Graham was made a Member of the British Empire by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace for outstanding service to military music in 1993.

Having retired, at the start of 2012, from military service Graham is enjoying a second career as a guest conductor, adjudicator, guest speaker, lecturer, clinician, recording consultant and educator.  He is also the Artist Director of London International Bank Week, music consultant to Henley Music Festival, resident conductor of the British Imperial Orchestra, visiting conductor in residence at Troy University, Alabama, USA and guest lecturer on cruise ships.

Graham's charitable work includes event planning in support of the Royal British Legion and sitting on the London fundraising committee of the Army Benevolent Fund - the Soldiers Charity, Graham in married to Susan and resides in Worcester Park, Surrey.

An introduction to the world's first fan museum and its extraordinary collecitons:

Occupying a pair of early Georgian townhouses nestled in historic Greenwich, the story of how The Fan Museum came to fruition is interwoven with the fascinating biography of its founder whose personal collection forms the basis of the Museum's holdings.  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 collection of 5000+ fans dating from the tenth century to the present day.

Having obtained a postgraduate degree in Fashion Curation from London College of Fashion in 2010, Jacob Moss took up a position at The Fan Museum, Greenwich, the UK’s only Museum dedicated to the history of fans and craft of fan making.  As the Museum’s Curator, he is responsible for co-organising the temporary exhibition programme. 

In May 2018 he was awarded an Art Fund Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant in support of a collections management project to be launched later this year in collaboration with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

Big Ben is one of the most iconic buildings in the world – it identifies the UK and democracy in the Western world. But there is a lot more to this tower than the beautiful external gothic architecture; and Tim will prove this to you. Using stunning images, he will take you on a virtual tour of the interior, saving you the effort of climbing 334 spiral stairs. He will explain the historical background and discuss the friction between the often controversial personalities involved in the building and designing of the tower. Tim will then take you behind those magnificent clock faces; show and explain the workings of the enormous clock mechanism; before finally taking you into the belfry and presenting before you – Big Ben, the most famous bell in the world!  After all that excitement Tim will ensure you safely descend the stairs ready for your well-earned cup of tea!

Tim spent his earlier career as a detective in the Metropolitan Police, working on murder, kidnap and anti-corruption investigations as well as in covert criminal intelligence. He finally retired as a Detective Superintendent and as the first police adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. During his career Tim often gave presentations to large audiences, either for operational briefings or at conferences.

On retirement Tim decided on a complete change of direction, becoming a City of London tour guide and working for a London tour operator, specialising in tours around the UK. He then used the knowledge gained to become a guide within the Palace of Westminster, specialising in tours of Big Ben. His many guests on tours of the clock tower have included people such as Michelle Obama, Bill Gates and members of both houses of parliament. He also appeared in UK and overseas documentaries of the tower. Big Ben is now closed for a lengthy refit but Tim still guides people on tours around parliament and continues to talk on many aspects of history and stories relating to parliament.

Armour was equipment for war and costume of a profoundly impressive kind.  Iron and steel can be sculpted into whatever extraordinary form the artist can imagine.  As the heroes and monsters of Classical antiquity proliferated in the Renaissanace psyche, noblemen began to self-identify in thos terms, casting themselves as the descendants and heirs of Hercules, Hector, Alexander and Caesar.  On the front line of this movement, armourers tasked with proving those claims, and they met the challenge with some of the most magnificent expressions of their art.  Italian armourers, led by Filippo Negroli of Milan, mentioned y Vasari as "the greatest every sculptor in steel", transformed their patrons into living sculptures - the Greco-Roman ideal of physically perfect supermen or, conversely, scaly, reptilian monsters out of some medieval nightmare.

Toby is Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London and an internationally-acknowledged authority of Medieval and Renaissance weapons.  He is the author of numerous books on the subject of arms and armour, including Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection (2011; Apollo (Magazine Book of the Year 2012); 
The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520-1630, ex. cat. (2012); Armour of the English Knight 1400 – 1450 (2015; Military History Monthly Illustrated Book of the Year 2017); and most recently Arms and Armour of the Medieval Joust (2018). Toby also appears regularly on television, most recently on A Stitch in Time (2018; BBC4); as presenter and armour advisor on Richard III: The New Evidence (2014; C4), and as the writer and presenter of Metalworks: The Knight's Tale (2012; BBC4). 

In 2015 Toby had the unusual honour of serving as one of the two fully armoured horsemen escorting the remains of King Richard III, from the battlefield at Bosworth to their final resting place in Leicester Cathedral.

"Some said my life was a lie but I always knew it to be the truth; for like the truth it was rarely pure and never simple":
Oscar Wilde, 3 days before his death - Oscar Wilde was one of the great personalities of his age. As paradox was the motive force of his wit, so it was the defining motif of his life. ...

Oscar: A Life - The Rise & Fall of Oscar Wilde:
Matthew Sturgis is a writer with a deep knowledge of the late Victorian cultural world.  He is the author of acclaimed biographies of the artists Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert, as well as Passionate Attitudes: The English Decadence of the 1890's.  He has contributed book reviews to the Times Literary Supplement, art criticism to Harpers & Queen and football reports to the Independent on Sunday.  He is on the editorial board of The Wildean, The journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.  His new book 'Oscar' is the first major account of Oscar Wilde's life in thirty years.

Oscar: A Life (Head of Zeus, published Otober 2018) is the first major biographical account of Oscar Wilde's Life - in it Matthew Sturgis draws on a wealth of new material and fresh research to place the man firmly in the context of his times.  He brings alive the distinctive mood and characters of the fin de siècle in the richest and most complelling portrait of Wilde to date.

NOMINATED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2019.

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR.

'Simply the best modern biography of Wilde ... A terrific achievement' Evening Standard.

'Page-turning ... Vivid and desperately moving. However much you think you know Wilde, this book will absorb and entertain you' Sunday Times.

'Wonderfully exciting ... Sturgis's great achievement is to take on board his great flurry of contradictions'Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday.

'[Sturgis] is a tremendous orchestrator of material, fastidious, unhurried, indefatigable' Observer.

'Oscar Wilde is more fashionable than ever ... Sturgis's account of the hearing at the Old Bailey is as gripping as it is grim' Guardian.

'The Book of the Year, perhaps of the decade, has to be Matthew Sturgis's Oscar which captures the wit, the love-ability, the dramatic genius, the insane self-destructiveness, the originality of Wilde ... [Sturgis] is the greatest chronicler of the 1890s we have ever had' TLS, Books of the Year

The human body has long been a subject for artists and art historians. Looking at nude imagery from Classical Greece up until the present day, this lecture explores the roles of female nudes and male nudes in art. Is the female nude always an object of desire? Are male nudes always symbols of power? What has conditioned us to believe these notions? Are there artists who challenge the conventional gender roles? This talk will investigate these topics and look at how the nude reflects the social attitudes of the time.

Stella Grace Lyons gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol and her MA in History of Art at the University of Warwick.  She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence and three months studying Venetian art in Venice.  In addition she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H Cecil studios in Florence.  In 2017 Stella was selected by The Arts Society to lecture at the launch of 'Drawing Room Discussions' in association with ROSL ARTS, hosted by Guardian arts correspondent Maev Kennedy.  Stella runs her own art history courses and she is also a regular lecturer in the UK and Europe for the Arts Society, Contemporary Arts Society Wales (CASW), Classical Education Forum, WEA and several travel companies.  Stella also works as an artist's model for the internationally renowned figurative artist, Harry Holland.

For a historian, there can be little to match the excitement of discovering a forgotten treasure. Dr Griffiths’s eventful research across Russia to unveil the Romantic figure of Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), composer and concert pianist (previously known only as ‘Stravinsky’s piano teacher’), offers the perfect example. Kashperova’s re-discovered music establishes her as the earliest-known female Russian composer of international stature. (Rimsky-Korsakov’s affectionate nickname for her was ‘Snow-maiden’.) Kashperova’s lyrical music and Griffiths’s research were selected by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) for inclusion in their 2018 celebration of ‘Five Forgotten Female Composers’. This presentation offers narrative, images and musical performance at the piano (*) illustrating ‘what it takes’ to recover the life and works of a composer whom History has completely forgotten. Until now.

Graham Griffiths:  Lecturer, conductor, pianist, composer. Music Research Fellow (City, University of London). DPhil., Musicology (Christ Church, Oxford, 2008), PGCE (Cambridge), BMusHons (Edinburgh). 

Musical Director Grupo Novo Horizonte de Sao Paulo (featured on BBCR3); lectures, concerts, and recordings (UK, Denmark, Brazil, Russia); Guest of The British Council; University lecturing (UK) at Bath, Bristol, Canterbury (Christchurch), City (London), Oxford.

Author: Stravinsky’s Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language (Cambridge, 2013/2015; ‘Kaschperowa, Leokadiya’ in Instrumentalistinnen-Lexikon-online (Bremen: Sophie Drinker Institut, 2018).

Editor: Stravinsky in Context (Cambridge, 2020); Contributor to The Stravinsky Encyclopedia (Cambridge, forthcoming); Strawinsky Abécédaire (ed. Marie Strawinsky) (Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 2018).

Recordings: Latin American Sacred Music of the 18th and 19th centuries; Brazilian contemporary music; the piano music of L.A.Kashperova.

Composer, film: Voyage of the Vikings: Hurricane! Hurry! (dir. Camille Bontemps: Edwards Films, 2018).

Guest appearances at ‘St Petersburg International Conservatoires Festival’ performing lost works by Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940) re-discovered by Griffiths. This research featured in the BBCRadio3/AHRC celebration Five Forgotten Female Composers on International Women’s Day (8 March 2018). Griffiths’s work has been featured by public service broadcasters in several countries.

Standing in the nave of Ely cathedral when I was 14, I stopped listening to the guide saying how long and how high and started wondering how on earth ordinary human beings created sky-scraping, dizzyingly high buildings on which even the top-most parts were delicately decorated. How, why and for whom were my questions. For God, for personal redemption and to make a living are the answers to the last two of those, but the "how" was harder to fathom.

In this lecture we meet the Master Masons who both designed the buildings and ran the site. They commanded everything whether it was sourcing the vast quantities of wood and stone, recruiting the workforce or knowing enough about their various trades to be able to create heaven on earth out the cacophony of thousands of chisels and hammers. These men were charismatic leaders, but they were continually checked by their fellow Master Masons in the interests of making a building as strong as possible - we only see their successes, after all. They were real people who got into trouble with the law, who occasionally cheated on contracts, who liked to start a job but not to finish it. On the other hand, their creations remain to this day, some breathtakingly beautiful in their exquisite detail causing us, centuries later, to stand in a nave and wonder.

Imogen Corrigan:  After nearly 20 years in the British army, Imogen went to the University of Kent to study Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art, graduating with 1st class honours degree and now works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe as well as lecturing on small cruise ships and running study tours on land.

Originally designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, then transported to Sydenham and rebuilt and enlarged, the Crystal Palace was Joseph Paxton’s masterpiece, and was the largest iron and glass building ever constructed. It dominated the south London skyline for over 80 years until its tragic destruction by fire in 1936. This is the history both of the Great Exhibition and the building that housed it, and the on-going artistic legacy of both.

Ian Gledhill has had a very caried career, from designing underground railways as an engineer for London Transport to appearing in pantomime with Julian Clary.  In between he has worked in travel and tourism, music publishing, television and especially the theatre where he has been an actor, director, set designer, state manager and opera translator.  His main interests include architecture, history, transport and classical music, especially opera and operetta, and these are reflected in the wide ranging list of subjects for his lectures.  He began giving lectures in 1997 and now gives on average about 140 a year.

A CARPET RIDE TO KHIVA - EXPLORING THE REVIVAL OF 15TH CENTURY TIMURID CARPET DESIGNS FROM PERSIAN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS

This is a narrative approach to the revival of 15th Century carpet designs from illuminated manuscripts in Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan.  Illuminations on vellum, containing the only surviving representations of textiles from this era, flourished despite the Islamic prohibition on representative art.  The lecture will examine the traditional role of carpet weaving and embroidery in the social lives of Central Asian women and how social and political influences led to the decline of textile production.  How do the constraints of gender-inequality, corruption and the sourcing of natural dyes from neighbouring Afghanistan continue to challenge attempts at reviving the rich textile heritage of Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand?

Christopher Aslan Alexander was born in Turkey and grew up in war-torn Beirut.  After university he moved to Central Asia. While writing a guidebook about Khiva, he fell in love with this desert oasis boasting the most homogenous example of Islamic architecture in the world, and stayed.

He is currently back in Central Asia. He has moved from the High Pamirs of Eastern Tajikistan where he worked with yaks, training their herders to comb the cashmere-soft down which will then be processed and hand-spun into luxury fair-trade knitwear.  For more details visit: www.yakyakstory.com

Chris now has his sights set on starting a sustainable wood-carving workshop in the village of Arslanbob, Kyrgyzstan; a place with his name on it.  Arslanbob is nestled between soaring mountains and the world’s largest natural walnut forest. Alexander the Great’s army is reputed to have made it this far East, bringing Arslanbob’s walnuts back with them and introducing the walnut to Europe.

Great Lengths - on the art and architecture of Britain's historic swimming pools and lidos

Swimming is Britain’s second favourite form of physical recreation (after walking). Almost everyone has memories of visiting their local baths. But whilst not all these memories might be positive – drooping knitted cozzies anyone? – for many swimmers the baths themselves are cherished. Some, particular those built in the late Victorian and Edwardian years, are rich with decorative tilework, stained glass, polished wood and terracotta detailing. This sense of municipal pride continued into the 1920s and ’30s, when Art Deco and Modernist lidos became the urban beaches of their day. In this lecture, Simon highlights the treasures of aquatic art that survive, and considers how the pools of today compare. 

Simon Inglis:  Writer and historian Simon Inglis specialises in the architecture and heritage of sport and recreation.  Since 2004 he has edited the 'Player in Britain' series for English Heritage.  Although sport and recreation might seem an unlikely subject for The Arts Society, non-sporty types need have no fear as Simon's themes are architecture, design, heritage and popular culture.  After a history degree at University College London, he freelanced for various publications, including the Guardian Observer and Radio Times.  He has curated exhibitions for the Building Centre and the British Council, been a regular contributor to radio and television, has travelled and lectured extensively and written a number of books.  Two were shortlisted for the Williams Hill Sports Book of the Year, while another on British football grounds, was chosen by journalist Frank Keating as the best sports book of the 20th Century.  A recent highpoint in his work for English Heritage was the listing of a 1970's skatepart in Essex, a world first that made the 10 o'clock News.

How the Advertising Industry has exploited Fine Art - 

Fine Art has provided advertisers and their agencies with a great deal of material to use in their creative campaigns.  Tony describes some of the processes by which these advertisements have been created and why the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo have been a particularly rich source.  From the Renaissance through to the present day fine art continues to provide opportunities to enhance Brand imagery with admiration, humour, satir and irony.

Tony Rawlins was educated at Highgate School, starting his career in advertising in 1965 as a mail boy in J.Walter Thompson. He graduated through the training system there to become an account director and subsequently worked in a number of agencies before setting up on his own in 1985. There he handled primarily Guinness advertising in Africa and the Caribbean, where he produced many commercials and print ads for them over a period of 15 years. He remains active as a consultant in the industry, but now concentrates on more philanthropic projects - producing a film in the rural villages of Nigeria for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More recently he has completed a sanitation project in Haiti after it was devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  

He has been a member of The Arts Society for many years. His earlier lecturing experience includes presenting to client groups, sales conferences and students of creative advertising in the UK and overseas. More recently he has been lecturing to Arts Societies in the UK and Europe.

Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor are amongst the most well known sculptors working in Britain today and have both had major commissions for public works of art.  With a wide range of inspirations and motifs, the work of these two artists provides an interesting insight into contemporary views and preoccupations in Britain.  This lecture will look at examples of both artists’ work, exploring the common ground between them, and the differences, in style, technique and themes. 

For the series "Downton Abbey" Andrew was commissioned to make many jewels for the main characters and this inspired him to create a talk based on Downton and the changing styles of jewels and fashion portrayed.

Jewellery and Fashion are often seen as two entirely spearate and distinct fields of design, but this is very far from the case.

In his talk, Andrew guides you through the extraordinary periods and events between 1890 and 1929 where the great Couturiers collabrated with the finest of jewellers to produce jewls of outstanding quality and glittering opulence.

Along with this, he discusses the clients and patrons who commissioned the jewels and shows how they were worn with sumptuous gowns.

Leonardo da Vinci, painter and draughtsman of the High Renaissance was an artist whose works were informed by scientific investigation.  Leonardo observed the world closely describing, nature as his teacher, studying anatomy and physiology in order to create convincing images of the human form.

He understood that science was the systemic study of structure and function as representatives of human gesture and expression.

Science and art are different paths that lead to the same destination.

This talk reviews Leonardo’s approach to linear perspective, human proportion, emotion, light and shade together with the fashion in which his scientific investigations influenced his art

Where Rembrandt meets Picasso:  Join us for a free glass of wine and nibbles before the Lecture:

Is a small piece of canvas worth as much as the world’s largest super yacht?  In the last few years, plenty of buyers think so. The sums are astronomical, but these are top class works and this lecture is an excuse to examine some beautiful and varied art. We’ll include Picasso, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Leonardo, Modigliani, Klimt, Bacon Gauguin and others. All held together by the common thread of changing hands for at least $100 million each.

In the lecture we’ll look at the art, the artists, the stories behind the sales, the buyers and the sellers. I’ll try to answer the question “Are they really worth it?”

In recent years, the concept of 'plant blindness' has been coined to identify our tendancy to overlook plants.  Yet plants are the dominant aspect of the natural world around us, few of us notice London Plane trees on our way to work.  Conversely, we often talk of our own cultural identities in terms framed by language referring to plants - thus the 'English' oak is a symbol of national endurance and steadfastness.  Or we use motifs based on plants such as Acanthus to decorate our public spaces or Convolvulus to embrace a picture in a frame.  The plants we place around us denote our emotional state of being, white lilies for mourning or laurel for celebrations of victory.  We are plants.

The Royal Academy has an illustrious history that spans from the mid 18th century through to the 21st century.  We contemplate its past and review its various homes before settling on its current location in Burlington House.  We consider its impact on the British and overseas art scenes as well as the influence of world- renowned Royal Academicians. 

The hellish scenes painted by the Early Nether- landish painter Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) may strike us as weird.  Yet to his contemporaries Bosch was a highly respected artist whose work inspired many, including Pieter Bruegel.   Looking at Bosch’s art within its historical and cultural context will help us gain a better understanding of this intriguing artist. 

Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor are amongst the most well known sculptors working in Britain today and have both had major commis- sions for public works of art.  With a wide range of inspirations and motifs, the work of these two artists provides an interesting insight into con- temporary views and preoccupations in Britain.  This lecture will look at examples of both artists’ work, exploring the common ground be- tween them, and the differences, in style, tech- nique and themes. 

Poet, playwright and theatre entrepreneur, William Shakespeare became one of the wealthiest celebrities of the Elizabethan age.   He also wrote some of the most brilliant plays the world has ever known.  
Giles Ramsay examines how theatre moved into the modern era. 

This Lecture chronicles not only the life of arguably Austria's most feted artist working within a Viennese society renowned for a heady mix of decadence, opulence and paranoia, but also the emergence of the ensuing Secessionist Movement.

To help celebrate our last Lecture of 2017 we are offering a complimentary glass of wine and mince pie. 

Eric is a leading authority on 19th and 20th century decorative arts, as well as on European and Oriental ceramics from the 17th through to the 20th century, together with the glass of Tiffany and Lalique.

He first earned fame as a ceramics expert on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, together with appearances in such programmes as Going for a Song; Going, Going, Gone;  Noel's House Party; Call My Bluff and 20th Century Roadshow. 

He has presented Restoration Roadshow on the BBC and is the adjudicator on BBC Two's Antiques Master, assisting host Sandi Toksvig. Eric has also been a frequent contributor to Homes and Antiques magazine and a regular antiques expert on the BBC Radio Jimmy Young Show.  

"How we perceive and interpret art; understanding what we can learn from it".

John Ericson was formerly a lecturere at the University of Bath and Director of Studies in the School of Education, he has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant.  As well as the talks he has developed from his professional background, he offers presentations on an eclectic range of topics from antique corkscrews to Norman Rockwell - these derive from his diverse interests and enthusiams.

This lecture chronicles not only the life of arguably Austria's mosted feted artist working within a Viennese society renowned for a heady mix of decadence, opulence and paranoia, but also the emergence of the ensuing Secessionist Movement.

We live in an increasingly visual environment. Images are all round us, not just in art galleries and museums but from the media and the world in general. But how well and how accurately do we interpret our visual world? When we view an image we make two assumptions: first, that what we see is what others see and second that what we see is the way it is! Both of these assumptions can easily be shown to be wrong! In this lecture John explains how we can improve our perception and appreciation of what we choose to look at.

The history of art is peppered with first rate bust ups: between the great early Renaissance artists, Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, between Constable and Turner in the early 1830s, between Salvador Dali and the Surrealist leader, Andre Breton in the 1930s and, most recently, between the graffiti artists Banksy and ‘King’ Robbo, who painted out and amended each other’s works. Join popular lecturer and art historian, Barry Venning to find out about the world's greatest artistic feuds, rows and quarrels!

ABOUT THE LECTURER - MR BARRY VENNING

An historian of British art with a particular interest in the work of JMW Turner, on whom he has published widely, including the volume on Turner in Phaidon's Art & Ideas series, and several catalogue essays for exhibitions in the UK, Germany, Italy and Poland. He was the BBC's script consultant on Turner's Fighting Temeraire and has recently taken part (2013) in a BBC documentary called The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution. He has also published a study of John Constable's paintings. His interests and his teaching extend from medieval architecture to contemporary British art. He is currently Associate Lecturer with the Open University and lecturing on a freelance basis for The Arts Society, Christie's Education and other organisations.

Please note change of date for this Lecture:

Wednesday 21st June - ESDFAS AGM followed by -

Alexandra Epps Lecture on 'Inspiration - Artists and their Onconic Muses'

The complex relationship between artists and muse and the inspiration for some of the most significant works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be explored in this lecture.  Among those discussed will be the 'stunners' of the Pre Raphaelites, Picasso's various wives and companions and the Dalis, muses as different as the artists themselves.

By profession Alexandra Epps is a graphic designer running a consultancy for a wide range of sectors including the arts over many years.   She is also a guide and lecturer at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern as well as NADFAS.

Wednesday 26th April 2017

Lecture by Dr Geri Parlby
Harems, Hookahs, Odalisques and Ottomans:
A passion for the oriental in 18th and 19th century art

The exotic lure of the Orient has inspired European artists for centuries.  In this lecture we will be taking an artistic journey across the Near and Middle East to see how Western artists brough the mysteries of 'The Other' to the fashionable salons of Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Wednesday 31st May 2017

Sculpture in the Landscape:  The two art forms - Sculpture and Garden Design.

Dr Laura de Beden was born in Rome and attended school in Milan surrounded by gardens.  After becoming a qualified landscape gardener she settled in Kew where she has her own practice.  She is also a University Lecturer and author of gardening articles in Italian and English.  She is also a Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture (since 1993) and Course Director in Garden Design (since 2001) at Kingston University, School of Architecture and Landscape.

This lecture will looking through the eyes of the aesthete, the historian and landscape architect.

Trained at the Royal Academy in the tradition of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Turner rose from humble origins to enjoy instant stardom and early election as an Associate of the Royal Academy, then a Royal Academician three years later.  Influence of the Old Masters and his Continental travels led to increasing fame and success.  In his final decades, despite poor health but with his imagination and energy as active as ever, Turner produced some of his most beautiful and significant works.  Eighteen months before he died The Times suggested that he'd lived his life backwards, having "possessed in youth all the dignitiy of age, only to exchange it for the effervescence of youth when old".

Mark Hill - co-author of Miller's Collectables Price Guide and expert on Antiques Road Show:

Undressing Antiques
“Antiques. I don’t understand them and they’re beyond my budget. Nobody even collects anymore. They’re not for me.” A persuasive introduction to buying antiques and integrating and using them in today’s homes. The state of the antiques market and the different meanings of the word value are considered, and we take a look at what current and future generations of collectors are buying, why they are buying it and how they are displaying it.

copyright 'Lansdowne Club 2013' by Julian Bray. 

The current art collection at the Lansdowne Club highlights the fascinating architectural, social and political history of Lansdowne House, now home to this private members’ Club. Through 18th century prints, oils, photography, modern silkscreens, lithographs and mixed media works, the image and history of this Grade II building comes to life.

Located in Mayfair, central London, the internal fabric of this important building beautifully fuses 18th century neo-classical architecture with the highly fashionable Art Deco style and serves as an eye-catching home for the current modern British art collection. The talk will examine the original floor plan as designed by the celebrated Scottish architect, Robert Adam and the changes thereafter by renowned architects George Dance the Younger, Sir Robert Smirke and TH Wyatt. This fully illustrated presentation will also highlight key works in the modern British art collection by artists such as Nigel Bengstrom, Jennifer Dickson RA, Michelle McKinney and Richard Heep, demonstrating how current commissions and acquisitions can complement the heritage of this historic building.

As former home to a past British Prime Minister, Lord Shelburne (1st Marquis of Lansdowne) and to Harry Gordon Selfridge, the department store magnate, Members will also be regaled with stories of intrigue and passion as reflected in the art collection.

As this is our last Lecture Meeting before Christmas we start the evening off with a complimentary glass of wine and mince pies starting at 6.45 pm followed by the Lecture at 7.45 pm.

In his lecture, Bertie Pearce reveals a Dickensian Christmas with readings, biographical details and conjuring tricks!

He is a performer par excellence and his lectures are theatrical events. Bertie Pearce graduated in Drama from Manchester University; he studied at the Ecole Internationale du Theatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and he is a Member of The Inner Magic Circle . He became an accredited lecturer for NADFAS in 2009 and this is the 4th time he has lectured to us in Hove. 

In previous visits he has lectured on The Art of Illusion, The Punch and Judy Show and three years ago Now You See it, Now You Don't - The History of Magic through Art and Pictures.

The Stars of Today's Architecture

 "Santiago 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 as yet the universe.  Their practices are vast and vastly cosmopolitan.  Their creations are 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 came they?  

Who was the first Starchitect? Le Corbusier? Frank Lloyd Wright? And are we about to see the last of them as personality implodes into team anonymity and explodes into a mass of initials? Who knows...?"

The lecture examines almost 70 years of the life and work of one of Britain's 20th Century Artists.

From his early finely-painted, almost hyper-realist, portraits to his more recent heavily-impastoed expressionistic ones, Lucian Freud has always had the power to disturb and shock.

Architecture, Music and the Invention of Linear Perspective

In his dissertation on architecture, Leon Battista Alberti – the original ‘Renaissance man’ – wrote: ‘We shall therefore borrow all our rules for the fixing of proportions from the musicians’. It is not surprising that the question of proportion should be an important theme in Alberti’s book, but how did the musicians get involved? It turns out that there is a mathematical link between visible proportions and audible proportions, or harmony, and that Renaissance architects were well aware of this link. They saw it as proof that their architecture could participate in the harmony of the whole cosmos. One of them, Filippo Brunelleschi, took the idea further in his invention of ‘linear perspective’ and thereby, incidentally, revolutionised western painting.

One of our most accessible contemporary artists regarding modern life.

The title "Pots of Art from Grayson Perry" is a play on words - he has produced "lots" of work in a wide range of art forms and during the lecture we look at his vases, drawings, sculptures, tapestries and his 
"House for Essex".

Grayson Perry became famous in 2003 when he won the Turner Prize.  Ten years later he was awarded the CBE for services to contemporary Art.  His Channel 4 series "All in the best possible taste" won a BAFTA aware and lead to the production of six tapestries "The Vanity of Small Differences" which have attracted a great deal of interest.

In October to November 2014 he became the first artist to present the Reith lectures which were warmly received.

He has curated a very popular exhibition at the British Museum of around 30 of his own new works alongside around 170 objects by unknown men and women throughout history.  In 2015 he has had an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery based on another Channel 4 series "Who are you?"

He is an excellent subject for a lecture, because he has lived a very interesting life so far, he is such a flamboyant character and an excellent communicator and he has produced such a wide range of art.
 

Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist, historian and author.  She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster and a senior archivist at The National Archives at Kew.  

She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society and has appeared on national TV and radio and reviews books for The Spectator. Her first popular history book, The Day Parliament Burned Down, won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013. 

Masterpieces of Medieval Westminster :
In the middle ages, Westminster was as much a tourist attractive as it is today.  Drawing both on The Day Parliament Burned Down and on her doctoral research into Edward III's court, this gorgeously-illustrated lecture will take you on a tour of the principal buildings of the medieval Palace of Westminster:  among the wonders of medieval Europe.  This talk will explore Westminster Hall, St Stephen's Chapel and its cloister, the Jewel Tower and the glorious Painted Chamber - their construction, decoration, history and use - and will reveal what remains of them today, and where you can see them.

The Cumberland Art Gallery opened in November 2015 to showcase paintings from the Royal Collection. The works are situated in the apartments design by William Kent for a Georgian Prince – the Duke of Cumberland. The rooms themselves are fascinating – as are the historic scenes they have witnessed over the years.

The Georgians seemed to have made a tradition of actively disliking their eldest sons and George 11 was no different. The Royal couple disliked their eldest son Frederick to such an extent that he became known as ‘poor Fred’ and their third and youngest son William Augustus quickly became their favourite.

Linda was employed by the Historic Royal Palaces for more than 20 years before becomin an independent lecturer and lecture organiser.  She holds a BA(Hon) in Early Italian Art, an MA in the works of Georges de la Tour and a Diploma in French Language & Culture.

From the scandal of the painting of Madame X to the trials, tribulations, and triumph of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, discover the rise, the fall and rise again of John Singer Sargent, the leading portrait painter of his age - the age of elegance.

Alexandra Epps is BA Saint Martins School of Art, and MA London College of Printing. By profession she is a graphic designer running a design consultancy for many years for a wide range of sectors including the arts, financial, government and professional services. She is a Guide and Lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern and an Official Guide to the City of London, offering lectures and walks about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. She is also a Member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association and  Co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015).

The Rise of the Renaissance in Rome.  This talk will allow us to trace the development of theology, philosophy in Rome in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century alongside the emergence of the High Renaissance in art. The talk will focuse on bright, intelligent frescoes by Fillipino Lipp and Raphael as well as a sculpture of breath-taking brilliance by Michelangelo.

John has recently retired from the University of Bath where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education.  His wide ranging career in education and training has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world.

His new lecture 'Art Inspired by Wine' explores how there are paintings of wine being made and being consumed in celebration since the time of Noah, and also the contribution that 'wine art' makes to our colourful world.

Who has not marvelled at the creativity and beauty of wine labels?  Of these it is perhaps the labels of Mouton Rothschild, that are of most interest in this context.

East year since 1945, the Rothschilds have invited celebrated artists, as diverse as Chagall, Salvador Dali and Picasso to contribute an original painting for the label of that vintage.  On a lighter side who could forget the wonderful artwork of Ronald Searle that adorned Oddbins' catalogues for many years.

The lecture also draws upon many other illumating images, wine cartoons and literary quotations:

'Life without art is like dinner without wine, why bother?' Thomas Arvid

FROM TRADITION TO AVANT GARDE: THE GLOBALISATION OF CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART by Jasleen Kandhari

This lecture will explore dynamic representations of pop art and culture from Asia including India, Tibet, Indonesia and China. It will include the current exhibition of the Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei on display at the Royal Academy of Arts. 

NADFAS accredited lecturer, Jasleen Kandhari is an Old Roedeanian, Lecturer and Tutor of Asian art history and textiles for Oxford University's department of continuing education. She is an expert in the artistic heritage of Asia and as well as working in curatorial and research positions in leading museums, she has extensive lecturing experience at first-class institutes including Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum and the British Museum. From next year, she will lecture on the Royal Academy of Arts tours to India: Treasures of the Punjab and 'Little Tibet'.

Since the end of the 15th century, when Wynkyn de Worde set up England's first printing press and after 1702, when the first newspaper, the Daily Courant, moved in, the term "Fleet Street" has been synonymous with newspaper journalists.  In this lecture we will be looking at the ups and downs of this notorious "Street of Shame" via the art that illustrated its stories.
 

Juliet Heslewood is a writer and lecturer. She has degrees from London and Toulouse Universities and has lived in France for over 25 years devising and leading art study tours. Her books include "The History of Western Painting".

Three different artists portrayed the Great War in different ways, according to their own experiences of it. The Lecture reveals the work of Lady Butler, Paul Nash and Otto Dix.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING commencing at 7.15pm followed by the lecture. Chloë Sayer is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and is a specialist in the art and culture of Latin America. She is the author of several books on the art and crafts of the Inca and Aztec civilisations.

For most societies in South America, gold had a spiritual importance: its brilliance evoked the Sun - the gold disk that nourished the Earth. The ancient goldsmiths of Peru and Colombia produced some of the most spectacular treasures of South America. Europeans, by contrast, saw gold as a commodity - the ultimate sign of wealth. After 1492 the search for precious metals in the Americas prompted colonial expansion by major powers. Gold was the magnet that lured Spanish conquistadors deep into the heart of Peru and Colombia.

Mrs Mabbutt is a decorative artist and was trained in wood graining, marbling, gilding, paint finishes and interior design. She is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and a Freeman of the City of London.

The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers – the colourful history of one of the City of London’s oldest Livery Companies. The Paynters and Steyners came together in 1502 to form the Painter-Stainers’ Company and for over the 700 years have decorated Royal palaces, coaches and barges, heraldic banners and arms, churches, theatres and buildings (interiors and exteriors), decorations for Midsummer Shows and Lord Mayor’s pageants, funeral banners, portraits, landscapes, clocks, organ pipes, and structures for Court and civic ceremonies. Involved in the forming of the Royal Academy, the Company has supported education and training of both fine art and decorative painted craftwork for centuries.

Leslie Primo hold degrees in Art History and Renaissance Studies - he offers lectures and guided tours at the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.

In an age of discovery where science and industry went hand-in-hand, 18th century England saw not only the flowering of the Industrial Revolution, but also that of the self-made man; who came not from money but from industry. It was a time of gentleman’s clubs or societies, where like-minded men would meet and discuss; engineers and so-called ‘natural philosophers the latest innovations of the day. One man above all would document in art the extraordinary individuals associated with one of these clubs, that man would be Joseph Wright of Derby, and that club that would become synonymous investigation and discovery would become known as The Lunar Society.

Royal and Historic Jewels, from Tsars to Maharajahs, to the Kings and Queens of Europe. Maharajah of Kapurthala, Jagatjit Singh 1927 wearing the Cartier headdress.

Kings and Queens, Tsars, Emperors and Maharajahs have all displayed their status, power and wealth through owning and wearing some remarkable gemstones and jewellery. We will journey through time to discover how diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds have captivated and inspired many explorers to travel the four corners of the world to seek out these precious gems. Royal dynasties throughout history have desired these gemstones because many believed them to have divine or magical powers. Maharajahs of India would not be seen without being bedecked in sumptuous gems. From Catherine the Great to Russia’s master goldsmith Carl Fabergé we will conclude with one of the world’s most famous royal collections that are kept firmly under lock and key at The Tower of London.

We welcome back Mr Andy McConnell to lecture us on Lalique

Mr McConnell has a distinguished history in antiques and writes regularly for journals as diverse as The Times and Glass Circle News and he runs Britain's largest antique and vintage glass gallery in Rye. He is best known as the distinctly humorous glass specialist on BBC's Antiques Roadshow, recently completing his 6th series.

Hilary Hope Guise is talking about some new exciting evidence regarding the Star of Bethlehem, she lectures widely in this country and in the USA, has worked for the Art Fund, taught courses for Cambridge University and been a guest lecturer on cruises. She trained as a painter at Central St Martins and exhibits abroad, most recently in Berlin and in France.

Ian Kelly is an actor and writer and the author of three internationally acclaimed biographies. His life of Antonin Carême was Radio 4 Book of the Week and led to Ian's series on the history of food for Richard and Judy. His Beau Brummell 'biography as good as it gets' (The Times) was adapted as a major TV film and shortlisted for the Marsh Commonwealth Biography Prize. His Biography of Giacomo Casanova was met with universal acclaim in 2008 and named Biography of the Year by the Sunday Times. In a lavishly illustrated talk, that spans every major city in Europe in the 18th Century, Ian Kelly will narrate not only Casanova's epic life, but also address the expression of romance and sensuality in art and literature in the period. Casanova, for instance, was one of the first serious food-writers, and his memoirs, taken with works of contemporary artists, help bring to life his own era - one which parallels closely our own.