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

Lecturer Biography:

Egyptologist who has worked in museums and on excavations in Egypt, but these days mostly lectures. Former Honorary Research Associate at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, and Lecturer in Egyptology at several UK universities. Works at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London. Leads tours to Egypt. Former Director of Bloomsbury Summer School at UCL, Chair of the Friends of the Petrie Museum, and Trustee of the Egypt Exploration Society. Publications include Egypt: gods, myths, religion. Happy to bring both laptop and digital projector if required. Happy to lecture online from home.

Image - The Amarna princesses (Akhenaten & Nefertiti's daughters), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The international art market is today dominated by four British auction houses, all founded in the 18th century, their record prices sensationally reported by the world's media. But what is it like behind the canvas? How do auction houses function? What goes on behind the scenes and what is required for a successful sale to take place? With an historical overview and the inside stories behind the rise of the four leading international salerooms, based particularly in London, New York, Paris and Hong Kong, this partly interactive lecture, given by an auctioneer and specialist with almost forty years' experience in Sotheby's and Bonhams, reveals all.

Lecturer Biography:

Leading international specialist, author, auctioneer and lecturer in British and European Glass, now retired. Formerly Managing Director (Bonhams Europe) and Director of European Ceramics and Glass at Bonhams Auctioneers, London (2007-2023). Formerly Head of European Ceramics and Glass at Sotheby's, where he was also a Director and auctioneer (1990 to 2007). He is responsible for numerous landmark auctions of European Glass both at Sotheby's and Bonhams. After studying History at University College Cardiff and the University of Washington and holding a postgraduate diploma in Museum and Art Gallery Studies from Manchester University, he began his career as a senior curator of ceramics, glass and silver at museums in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Glasgow (1979-1990). He is Hon. President of the Glass Society, Fellow of the Guild of Glass Engravers and a Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

Image: Simon Cottle at work at Bonhams (Simon Cottle copyright)

Featuring several pieces of English rococo silver for audience handling and examination, this illustrated lecture will take a look at the Huguenot influence on this most decorative period, where new silversmithing techniques fused with new designs. We will look at methods of manufacture and its social context, cover the interpretation of engraved heraldry and discover some adventures of its owners and makers.

Lecturer Biography:

Ralph has had a long standing interest in English silver and aims to entertain as well as inform his audience. He was a schoolboy member of the Wine Label Circle, a society devoted to the study of silver decanters labels, and went on to be its President. He is a long standing member of the Silver Society. He has given talks to the Art Fund, Sheffield Assay Office, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Historic Houses and small charity raising events. He brings pieces from his own collection for the audience to handle and examine while he is discussing design, social context and makes revelations about the original owners he has identified from the heraldry.

This scandalous and sometimes vicious painter produced work with cinematic compositions and intensely visceral details. His downfall is the stuff of a film not yet made and despite dying prematurely his canvases influenced a generation that followed.

Lecturer Biography:

Dan is an educationalist with a passion for all things Italian. Dan is a Housemaster and Teacher at Cheltenham College, a full boarding and co-educational independent school established in 1841 and was formerly Head of History of Art at Wycombe Abbey School. He has been lecturing since 2001, and spent 9 years working as a senior lecturer, tutor and tour guide for Art History Abroad. He was voted the British winner of the World Guide of the Year Awards in 2008 and alongside his lectures and special interest days he also leads educational study trips for groups of friends to a range of destinations in Italy.

Image: The Supper at Emaus by M Caravaggio (courtesy CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The seventeen Le Corbusier buildings, spread over seven countries, now under UNESCO protection are a testimonial to the invention of a new architectural language that attempted to meet the needs of ‘modern man in the machine age’. Lauded for his iconic buildings, Le Corbusier’s roots lay in painting. Rejecting the confusion of Cubism, Swiss born Le Corbusier collaborated with painter Amédée Ozenfant to establish Purism, which sought to restore order. In a series of experimental buildings, Corbusier attempted to put his theories into practice. Le Corbusier’s architectural work is said to mark the birth of three major trends in modern architecture: Purism, Brutalism, and Sculptural Architecture. Quite a legacy.

Lecturer Biography:

With a first degree in archaeology and a PhD in English, Anne was a senior lecturer in Art and Design History at Southampton Solent University for 14 year. She has curated four national exhibitions, including Ancient Landscape, Pastoral Visions: Samuel Palmer to the Ruralists (2008), The Truth About Faeries (2009-11), Under the Greenwood: Picturing the British Tree (2013) and Beyond the Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy (2019-20). Her book on The Perseus Series accompanied the Edward Burne-Jones exhibition (2018, Tate Britain).  Anne has also published over a hundred academic papers.  She has held several prestigious fellowships including Fellow of the Huntington Library, CA (2008-09 and 2018-19) and Fellow of the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Library and Museum (2009/10). Currently a guide and lecturer, Anne specialises in Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts art tours. Her career as an international speaker has taken her all over the world, including Jersey, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.  She undertook her sixth lecture tour for ADFAS/ArtsNational Australia in 2024. 

Image - Notre Dame du Haut, UNESCO site at Ronchamp, France - Courtesy CC BY-SA 3.0

The lecture will explore the classical origins of botanical art and the great innovations of the Renaissance artists and botanists to the further development of the subject in the work of 17th and 18th century artists to modern times. Among wonderful examples are the paintings of Pedanius Dioscorides, Martin Schongauer, Maria Sibylla Merian, Georg Dionysius Ehret, and Pierre-Joseph Redoute to 19th and 20th century artists, such as Marianne North and Rory McEwen. Before photography, this was the only way for plants to be identified and recorded for many purposes from medical science to the recording of new plants from the voyages of discovery and the viewer's sheer delight in visual observation.

Lecturer Biography:

Honours degree in History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London. Regular commitments include Centre for Lifelong Learning, London University, National Gallery, V&A Museum, WEA, Morley College, the City Literary Institute, the Art Fund and National Trust. Study tours abroad.

Image - Bouquet by Henriëtte Geertruida Knip 1820 Rijksmuseum (public domain)

The first European writers and artists who visited Tahiti in the 1760s came back talking about an island paradise. The artists who accompanied Captain Cook, William Hodges and John Webber, helped create an enduring image that lasted 150 years. This image was prolonged by writers such as Herman Melville (best known today as the author of Moby Dick), Robert Louis Stephenson, Pierre Loti and Somerset Maugham and by artists such as
Charles Giraud, John La Farge and of course Paul Gauguin. What was it about Tahiti, the time it was 'discovered' and the popularity of certain writers and artists that made Tahiti seem so special and unique?

Lecturer Biography:

A graduate of Durham University, Simon was Head of Politics and Director of Model United Nations at Royal Russell School for 25 years. He now works as a writer, researcher, and lecturer. His first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel was published in November 2022, and he had also written articles for The Church Times, The History News Network, The Beresford Family Society Magazine, The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, and Genealogy Today. He is a regular speaker at events run by The Arts Society, Western Front Associations, U3As and Family History Societies. 

Image - View taken in the Bay of Gaile Peha (Vaitepiha) Otaheite (Tahiti) (Tahiti Revisited) RMG L9867 William Hodges

For a great many members of The Arts Society, the cartoonist Carl Giles was as much a part of the festive season as the Christmas tree, crackers and the Queen’s Speech. So popular were the Giles annuals as Christmas presents that they helped to make him Britain’s best loved, most successful and wealthiest cartoonist. The talk looks at Giles’s life and work with a particular emphasis on his seasonal cartoons, particularly those featuring Grandma and the Giles family. They include some of his funniest cartoons but, as the art historian William Feaver pointed out, they also demonstrate that he had few equals when it came to representing Britain in Winter.

Lecturer Biography:

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. 

Photo: Grandma sculpture Giles Circus Ipswich (public domain)

When the Wallace Collection was bequeathed to the British nation in 1897 it was believed that the museum had twelve paintings by Rembrandt. Later, however, most of these pictures were re-assigned to other artists, to the extent that a hundred years later it was thought that there was only one genuine work by the great Dutch master - a wonderful portrait of the artist’s son Titus. Since then further research has suggested that in fact four of the other paintings are also wholly or partly by Rembrandt. But who decides things like this, and how do they make their decisions?

Lecturer Biography:

Formerly Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection where Stephen had particular responsibility for exhibitions and nineteenth-century paintings. He has given countless tours of the Collection for visiting groups as well as many lectures on its art and other art historical subjects at home and abroad. His most recent publication, The Discovery of Paris, is a book on early nineteenth-century watercolour views of Paris by major British artists such as Girtin, Turner and Bonington. He has written many articles and reviews for art magazines.

Photo: Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1637, The Wallace Collection, London.

“Now, my dears,” said old Mrs Rabbit one morning, “you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr McGregor’s garden. Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor.”

A light-hearted talk that takes this extract as its starting point to explore the essence of Beatrix Potter’s humour: subtle, elegantly constructed, sophisticated, ironic and understated and based on the domestic happenings of everyday life. However, it is also unsentimental, dispassionate and dark - essentially, it is gallows humour.

Lecturer Biography:

Emma is an experienced and energetic lecturer with a passion for telling stories to diverse audiences, both large and small.  She has lectured widely in the UK for various heritage organisations, at conferences and exhibition openings, and as a visiting lecturer at universities.  She has also presented talks overseas, including in the USA, Canada, Japan and South Africa.  

As the Frederick Warne Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum for over 20 years, Emma managed the Museum's collections of children's books (about 100,000 dating from the 16th century) and book illustrations, including the Museum's important Beatrix Potter Collection of around 5000 drawings and manuscripts.  She curated exhibitions of Beatrix Potter's art for many years, including a major V&A exhibition, "Peter Rabbit: the tale of The Tale" (2010).  Her V&A career culminated in co-curating the international touring exhibition, "Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic" (2017) and co-authoring the accompanying book (V&A Publishing, 2017).  

Emma relocated to Devon in 2018 but has continued her interests in Beatrix Potter, co-authoring the V&A's recent exhibition monograph, Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature (V&A Publishing, 2021), and publishing research on Beatrix Potter's connections to the West Country.  In 2024 she accepted an invitation to be President of the Beatrix Potter Society, an international charity dedicated to promoting the life and work of Beatrix Potter.  

Emma is an Associate of the Museums Association, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.  She was Director of Collections and Research at the Devon and Exeter Institution from October 2019 to December 2021 before moving to her current role as Cathedral Librarian at Exeter Cathedral.  She works freelance for the Libraries of the National Trust and am a Trustee of Topsham Museum.

Major publications:

Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature (London: V&A Publishing, 2021)

Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic (London:  V&A Publishing, 2017)

Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain: a facsimile of the original manuscript of the first edition of 1936 (Tokyo: Kohumasha, 2011)

Photo: Studies of Frogs (public domain via V&A website)

How did jewellery respond to the fashions and colours of the 1920s and 30s? The years between the wars saw an explosion of creativity and innovation. This talk looks at the glamour, invention and style of the Art Deco period through the creations of the great jewellery houses of Cartier, Lacloche, Chaumet and the modernist jewellers like Marchak or Raymond Templier. We will also look at some of the fabulous jewellery made for society heiresses like Daisy Fellowes.

Lecturer Biography:

Rachel Church developed a love of history as a student in Cambridge. After a Masters in Museum Studies, she went on to work as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She became an expert in jewellery by cataloguing and researching the collection, and as part of the team which redisplayed the William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery in 2011. Her books Rings (V&A / Thames and Hudson, 2011 and 2017) and Brooches and Badges (V&A / Thames and Hudson, 2019) look at the human stories behind some of our most beautiful jewels. She lectures on V&A courses, for the Goldsmiths company and many arts societies. Her website www.thelifeofjewels.com explores stories behind jewellery and its history.

Photo: Advert for the jeweller Janesich in Gazette du Bon Ton, 1920

A fully illustrated talk with in excess of 60 images exploring the relationship between the making of an image and the way in which it is perceived by the viewer. Further discussion around the eye and the brain being an extraordinary double act made up of visual references and intellectual interpretation.

Lecturer Biography:

Charlie Waite is firmly established as one of the world’s leading landscape photographers.

He was born in 1949 and worked as an actor in British theatre and television for the first ten years of his professional life. Throughout this period, he became fascinated by theatrical lighting and design. Gradually, the landscape and the way it can be revealed to us through light and shade stole him away from the acting profession.

His style is unique in that his photographs convey a spiritual quality of serenity and calm. He has established a worldwide reputation for his particular approach to his work. His photographs are held in private and corporate collections throughout the world.

Over the last thirty-five years, Charlie has lectured throughout the UK, Europe and the US. He has held numerous solo exhibitions all over the world, including in London, Tokyo, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, New York and California. Charlie has provided and continues to provide tuition to amateur, professional and aspiring photographers of all ages from the UK, Australia, Europe and the US which he hugely enjoys.

In 2016, he received an invitation by the Royal Academy of Arts to exhibit in their Summer Exhibition.

In 2014, Charlie was awarded a direct Fellowship by The Royal Photographic Society. The Millennium year saw him being awarded the prestigious Honorary Fellowship to the British Institute of Professional Photographers, and in early 2007 he was presented with Amateur Photographer’s Power of Photography award, which is given to a photographer whose work is deemed to effectively demonstrate the powerful and memorable images of which photography is capable.

Charlie is frequently seen on British television discussing the finer aspects of landscape photography. In September 2005, he completed filming for a six-part television series on landscape photography. He has worked with numerous distinguished authors including Adam Nicolson, Jan Morris, John Julius Norwich and A.N. Wilson. 

Charlie is the owner and founder of Light and Land, the UK’s leading photographic workshop and tour company. For over 29 years, Light & Land has been running photographic tours, courses and workshops that are dedicated to inspiring photographers and improving their photography, both in the UK and worldwide. This is achieved with the help of a select team of specialist photographic leaders, all at the very top in their field. 

In 2007, Charlie launched the UK Landscape Photographer of the Year, an annual international photography competition (now in it’s 16th year) to find the UK’s ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’, which ties in perfectly with his desire to share his passion and appreciation of the beauty of our surroundings through photography.

Photo: Valensole II Provence France lr copyright and by kind permission of Charlie Waite

The mansions built during America’s “Gilded Age” came in all shapes and sizes, but a significant number of them were inspired by - some may say copied from - a varied selection of classic English houses. They were all resurrected and lived in by an eclectic mix of millionaires, all with their own aims and ambitions staked within. Through the splendour of the architecture on both sides of the Atlantic we’ll dive into the characters, quirks and stories behind these truly international treasures; and, we’ll discover that in almost every case - though centuries apart and unbeknownst to them - the builders of the English and the American houses shared remarkably similar backstories.

Lecturer Biography:

Mark is the founder of HouseHistree.com and lectures regularly in Europe and the United States, notably at the New-York Historical Society. After leaving Stowe School, Mark worked for twenty years as a plumber in London. However, his real passion has always been history, and he delights in 'telling a story,' not 'giving a lecture'. Packed with facts and laced throughout with humour, he takes a particular joy in bringing to life the stories behind the people that shape houses; and, his area of special interest lies in the great American houses and American social history, from pre-revolution to the end of the Gilded Age. 

Photo: The Breakers, Newport. Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 3.0

Founded in 1824, the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square houses one of the world’s finest collections of European paintings, including such favourites as Jan Van Eyck’s “Arnolfini Marriage”, Sandro Botticelli’s “Venus and Mars”, John Constable’s “Cornfield” and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”. In contrast to its peers, however, this institution did not begin its life as a royal collection: the Gallery was founded by parliament and remains reliant on public funding. This lecture uses highlights from the NG’s collection to show how our vision of the “ideal” art collection has evolved over time, along with ideas of the kinds of people the Gallery was supposed to serve.

Lecturer Biography:

Jonathan is a historian and author with a wide range of interests, particularly the history of great museums and collectors. All his talks draw on his own research, allowing him to give audiences insights into the work that goes on behind the scenes in museums and archives, the gaps and dead-ends, as well as the surprise discoveries. In 2023 he was asked by the National Gallery to write their official bicentenary history, and Jonathan's history of the Metropolitan Museum (New York) will appear in October 2024. Previous books include a biography of the oil baron and art collector Calouste Gulbenkian and a comparative history of Paris and London. These books were widely reviewed, including by the "Sunday Times", "Daily Mail", "Spectator" and other mainstream media, praised for their readability as well as their research. Alongside lecturing for Arts Society groups, he also teaches, as Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton. Born in New York, he studied History and Modern Languages at Oxford, subsequently moving to the Courtauld Institute and Cambridge for my MA and PhD. 

Photo: The National Gallery facade (public domain)

While opera may have had its roots in the artistically fertile soil of Italy, it quickly became central to the musical and cultural lives of the German speaking peoples. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Strauss, Schoenberg and Berg were all drawn to the lyric theatre and all created masterpieces that are still heard regularly today. So impactful and so popular was opera in Germany and Austria that those countries are now the proud possessors of more than 100 opera houses between them. The works of the composers mentioned above not only challenged audiences and musicians alike, but set new standards in performance that did much to shape today’s performance climate. Using film clips, recorded sound examples and other performance artefacts, this lecture will introduce the history and impact of German opera, and will provide a fascinating overview of the genesis of the genre as a whole.

Lecturer Biography:

Born in Australia, Professor Raymond Holden AM studied at Sydney, Cologne and London and is both a critically acclaimed and a multi-award winning writer, conductor, broadcaster and lecturer. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Emilia Romagna and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, and has been published regularly by Oxford, Cambridge and Yale University Presses, the Royal Academy of Music Press, Hans Schneider Verlag (Vienna) and by ICA, EMI and Warner Classics. Professor Holden has appeared on BBC Television and Radio, Servus TV (Germany), RAI Television and Radio, ABC Classic FM, 3MBS FM, Vision Australia Radio, SRF (Switzerland) and Classic FM (South Africa), and has spoken at many of the world’s leading music and literary festivals, universities, conservatoires and research institutes. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and is currently Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Photo: A Savin Wikipedia, Free Art License

There is no place like Rome. Throughout its long, long history, its many changes in form and fortune, Rome has always been a tourist centre – a place that people have visited. In every age – Classical, Christian, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, Modern – people have flocked to look at its wonders. What they have chosen to look at – the pictures, buildings, statues, artefacts – has varied with each age. This is partly because Rome itself has varied – it has risen and fallen and risen again – but it is also because tastes and priorities have changed with each age.

Lecturer Biography:

Matthew Sturgis is the author of acclaimed biographies of three of the great cultural figures of the late nineteenth century: Oscar Wilde, Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley. (His biography of Oscar Wilde was shortlisted for the 2019 Wolfson History Prize.) He has also written a history of the English Decadence of the 1890s. A.N. Wilson - writing in the Times Literary Supplement - described him as ’the greatest chronicler of the 1890s we have ever had.’ His historical and cultural interests also led him to write a book - When In Rome - chronicling the history of how Rome has been visited, and the artworks tourists have admire there, over the millennia - from Classical and Medieval times, via the Renaissance and the Grand Tour, to our own era.  

Photo: A Sporting Contest on the Tiber (Claude-Joseph Vernet).  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives 4.0 International

On Ernest Shackleton’s third Antarctic expedition in 1914, his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and eventually crushed in the pack ice. After camping for five months on the ice, Shackleton’s men rowed to the remote Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton sailed for help to South Georgia over 800 miles away. Over three months later he returned to rescue the crew of the Endurance. Frank Hurley, one of the great photographers of the 20th century, was the expedition’s official photographer. His photographs are a visual narrative of an epic journey which capture with great artistry new and amazing landscapes within which a remarkable human drama is played out.

Lecturer Biography:

Mark was born on the Isles of Scilly and educated at Truro School, Cornwall, and Birmingham University. His career has been spent in education and training at home and abroad. He has lectured at Exeter College on Medieval and Tudor history, St Mark's & St John's University College, Plymouth, and at Bath University on Anglo Saxon and medieval England. Currently runs two small companies providing training and study breaks.

Photo: The Endurance under full sail, held up in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica, 1915 (public domain)

Ideal for Christmas time!  This tour ranges from Dickensian Christmas stories to traditional Victorian Christmas activities and the inspiration for ghost stories at Christmas.

Photo credit: Public Domain

By the end of the Nazi occupation of Paris, the French couture industry lay in tatters, its reputation shredded and its very existence threatened by restrictions, bureaucracy and Germany’s elaborate plan to relocate Haute Couture to Berlin and Vienna. This fascinating lecture will examine how the phoenix of Parisian fashion rose once again from the ashes of war to swiftly and decisively reclaim its long exalted dominance on the world stage. The talk  ‘Le Théâtre de la Mode : Paris Haute Couture’ will explore how Paris’s avant-garde created a post war renaissance that fused theatre, ballet, fashion, modern art and opera into one ingenious production and how it became a sensationally powerful economic driver that would bring Paris fashion back to a global audience whilst raising over 1million French Francs for War Relief in 1945 alone.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Watercolourist, muralist, ceramicist and wood-engraver, Eric Ravilious was one of the most distinctive young British artists working between the two World Wars; he is also an artist who is of increasing interest and popularity, as recent exhibitions and sales of his work have revealed. This lecture explores Ravilious’s career, looking both at his place in the long tradition of watercolour painting in England, as well as within the social and cultural context of England in the 1920s and ‘30s, leading up to his untimely death as an official war artist in Iceland in 1942.

Photo credit:  Public Domain

Ask the average citizen to name a famous American architect and you can bet that their answer will be Frank Lloyd Wright.   Wright gained such cultural primacy for good reason: he changed the way we build and live.   Designing 1,114 architectural works of all types — 532 of which were realized — he created some of the most innovative spaces in the United States.   With a career that spanned seven decades before his death in 1959, Wright’s visionary work cemented his place as the American Institute of Architect's “greatest American architect of all time.” Innovator and traditionalist, Wright was one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. His houses, conceived as ‘total works of art’, included the design of all fixtures and fittings, including furniture, coloured glass windows and lights and are exquisitely made.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

This lecture is in celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the birth in 1874 of Gustav Holst.

“The Planets” by Gustav Holst is one of the most popular and most recorded work in English music.  Yet, apart from the tunes for the hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and the carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”, most of Holst’s other music is neglected, unjustly so.  Holst was an unconventional man who led something of a double life.  He was a vegetarian and spent most of his working life as Director of Music in a girls’ school, but he embraced Hindu philosophy and taught himself Sanskrit.  One holiday he lived in a street of brothels in Algiers and cycled into the Sahara Desert.  He believed that music should be available for everyone and was appointed conductor of a Socialist choir and Director of Music in Morley College, an institution set up for the educational benefit of working men and women.  He championed the amateur musician and famously said, “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly”.  In fact he was a talented conductor and produced performances of real quality. After the success of “The Planets”, first performed in 1917, he never wrote a similar orchestral work, and dedicated himself mainly to vocal and choral music, much of which was based on Sanskrit texts for which he provided his own translation. He was also working at a time when musicians were beginning to wake up to the huge wealth of English folk music, and many of his compositions are imbued with that folk-song quality which gives them great charm. 

This lecture will examine Holst’s life, the creation of “The Planets” and will explore many of his other works, including his ‘Oriental’ suite “Beni Mora” which was inspired by hearing a flute-player in Algiers, his “Choral Symphony”, a marvellous piece which sets poetry by Keats, and the settings of the Rig Veda, some of the most important Hindu texts.  His so-called serious orchestral works do not follow convention.  For example, his concerto for oboe and flute suddenly breaks into a nursery rhyme. It will be a surprising and revealing lecture, which is richly illustrated with musical examples.

Photo credit:  Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication

In 1924 an exhibition in London of Canadian landscapes moved the critic C. Lewis Hind to celebrate them as ‘the most vital group of paintings produced since the war - indeed, this century’. These landscapes of Canada’s northern lakes and rugged backwoods, painted in a boldly Post-Impressionist style, had been produced over the previous decade by a collective of Toronto-based painters known as the ‘Group of Seven’, whose aim was to forge a national school of landscape painting. This illustrated lecture introduces the painters - including their talismanic colleague Tom Thomson, who died in 1917 - and examines how they stormed the conservative bastions of Canadian art to establish themselves on the international stage as practitioners of a distinctive avant-garde.   

Photo credit:  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 imported

Wonderful before WWI old photographs. Then the same buildings after destruction and the same now taken very recently. No library shots used, only original material including the lecturer's own photographs used.

While universally familiar as a designer, artist, poet and pioneer social reformer, William Morris has a greater claim to enduring fame as the father of the Arts and Crafts movement. This talk considers Morris’s role as the primary  inspiration for this creative and philosophical movement that impacted upon architecture, design and the decorative arts in late 19th century Britain. Thanks to Morris and his followers the style and look of Britain’s domestic architecture and interior design was radically changed by a movement that also influenced garden design and attitudes towards the countryside, and  established a way of living that continues to affect Britain today.

Photo credit:  Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal

Four humble Liverpool lads who conquered the pop world. Discover how. Their legacy remains here, there and everywhere. A fully illustrated talk with musical examples and excerpts of the exceptional moments of the fab-four's extraordinary career. This talk highlights the many unsung heroes, without whose involvement the Beatles would not have been the band we know today. Their success and legacy remain unrivalled by any other pop band in the world. Re-live their greatest moments and their greatest music. Some pop groups are not just of their time; some are for all time. 

Photo credit:  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Country houses are often full of historic portraits, but for today’s visitor it is not always clear who the sitters are, why they are there, or why they mattered. Visitors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, would have immediately known how to ‘read’ the portraits and understand their visual cues. Focusing on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century portraits, in this lecture we will look closely at clothes, poses and accessories, and learn how to decode them. Through this, we can understand how they were used to communicate status, networks and identities.

Photo credit:  Public Domain

The legendary Paris circus, from its beginning as the Cirque Fernando in 1875 (it was renamed the Cirque Medrano in 1897) until its closure in 1963 was an integral part of Parisian cultural life, attracting many writers, painters and poets who have created many works inspired by the Circus. Many painters of the 19th and 20th centuries captured the magic and sparkle and sometimes the hardship of circus life. The performers have been immortalised on canvas by Renoir, Degas, Lautrec, Seurat, Picasso and Leger among others. An intriguing look at the history of a circus through the eyes of the painters of the Montmartre.

Photo credit:  Creative Commons CC0 1.0

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

Photo credit: Creative Commons CC0 1.0

From the early sixties, when he left the Royal College of Art more famous than his teachers, Hockney's paintings have shown a charm and humour that sets them apart from others of his generation. A naturally gifted draftsman, his love of ingenious visual devices has led him to experiment with a whole range of techniques, from stage design to coloured paper making. From the early abstract expressionist images, through his famous Californian scenes of swimming pools to the photo-montages of the mid eighties, this lecture follows the career of an artist whose wit and imagination has never faltered.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

You may not have heard of her but from the early 1960s a young student called Margaret Calvert began working with designer Jock Kinneir and their work utterly transformed the entire face of modern Britain. They designed the road sign system from the typeface to the colours and shapes. They created the look of British Rail. Their signage was used by every hospital and NHS building. They created the yellow and black wayfinding system of British airports. And all of their ideas were copied around the world. Celebrate Calvert & Kinneir in this revealing lecture and you’ll never look at the UK the same again.

This lecture explores the fashions of previous centuries, and includes a recent personal discovery of national importance within the C15 guildhall of Stratford Upon Avon that became Shakespeare's schoolroom. 

Paul Nash was one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century, and one who united the pastoral and mystical tradition embodied by English artists such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer, with the modern European movements of Futurism, Surrealism and Abstraction. Based on the lecturer’s books Paul Nash (2002) and A Crisis of Brilliance (2009), this lecture explores Nash’s life, from his discovery of the English landscape as a young boy, through his artistic education at the Slade, to his experiences as an official war artist in both World Wars

Just over fifty years ago, many of us were captivated by the 1972 exhibition of Tutankhamun’s Treasures at the British Museum. 2022 was the centenary of the discovery of those treasures by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon and 2023 celebrates the anniversary of the opening of the tomb for the first time in 3,000 years. The darkness revealed vast riches from antiquity which amongst other influences, spear-headed the design iconography of the emerging art deco movement, lifting the depressed spirits of the inter-war years. Tut-mania affected everything from jewellery and fashion, to architecture and design.

In life, Tutankhamun ruled for just a few years during a chaotic period of upheaval and was so unimportant that he did not even make it onto the famous list of Kings created less than a century later. Yet, in death, his 5,000 precious objects crammed into the smallest royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, have become some of the world’s most iconic works of art.

The 1951 Festival of Britain was an inspiring event designed to put Britain back on its feet after the ravages of the Second World War.

Marc looks at its legacy and effect on post-war Britain through the development of design, architecture and art.

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

The hand has been an underestimated but nevertheless central component of visual art. Leonardo stated that the hand could be as expressive as the face and acknowledged that the structure and function of the hand was the organ through which an artist expresses himself. His remarkably accurate drawings of the six layers of anatomy of the hand are testament to his pursuit of detail. He used this knowledge in the narrative of the Last Supper. In Leonardo’s version of the Vutruvian Man the hand is used as the unit of measurement to demonstrate the concept of divine proportion. This talk reviews the way in which Leonardo investigated the form and function of the hand. His paintings and narrative art are reviewed to demonstrate how he used this knowledge to depict the hand as a form of expression.

The final part of the story of British Musical Theatre, this talk looks at the development of the modern musical after the Second World War, beginning with the ground-breaking Oklahoma of 1943 through to Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running Phantom of the Opera, one of the most successful shows in theatre history. Illustrated with musical examples.

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) is widely admired for his oil and watercolour paintings but is less known for his longstanding interest in architecture. The lecture recounts how he designed his own rural retreat called Sandycombe Lodge, an architectural treasure near the River Thames in Twickenham, south-west London. 

After suffering decades of neglect Sandycombe Lodge has undergone major restoration. We’ll explore Turner’s interest in architecture as revealed in his paintings and hear the story behind Sandycombe Lodge, including unexpected revelations made about his intentions during its rescue.

As the word ‘impressionism’ was first used in painting as a term of abuse, so the first recorded use of the word in connection with music – in 1887 regarding Debussy’s Printemps – was derogatory as well.  However, by 1905, the term was applied frequently to musical compositions and it was Debussy himself who maintained that music was able to put impressionist’s theories into practice more fully than painting was able to do, since music could represent the play of light fluidly, where as painting could only present it statically, and therefore unnaturally.

This new lecture & study day examines some of the great works of Debussy (Preludes, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune) as well as key works by Fauré and Ravel, side by side with the world of late 19th century French art (Monet, Degas, Renoir, Manet) to determine whether or not there is a link between impressionism in music and impressionism in art.

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

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, satire and irony.

In an entertaining and informative lecture Tony uses a wide range of visuals and video to show examples of the original works, the creative process and the (not always entirely successful) advertisements that are the end result.

From Greek Mosaics in the second century, through weddings in the Bible, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, sixteenth century peasant parties out of doors, eighteenth century harlequins, to the celebratory styles of twentieth century painters, the depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art. 

Alice Foster traces the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour.

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

Within ten years Laura Knight (1936) and Dod Procter (1942) were both elected to the Royal Academy - the first female RAs in a century. Amazingly, they didn't just know each other but had lived and worked side by side in Newlyn, Cornwall. Both had lost their father early in life, both married talented (and supportive) artists, and both challenged convention by painting the female nude. Both of course were hard-working and determined, but otherwise they were very different. While Laura was popular and outgoing, relishing her public role as a Dame of the British Empire, Dod (christened Doris) was clever and caustic. At her peak she was the best there was, but it was Laura who became a national treasure. This lecture tells their stories.

The beauty of the Alhambra of Granada, built by the Nasrid dynasty in the 13th and 14th Centuries, speaks for itself – or does it? Many visitors, while stunned by the exquisite architecture, are unaware that the walls, covered in Kufic script, are talking directly to them.

This lecture begins with an overview of the structure of the monument and the way in which it was used, as well as the broad decorative programme of the interior of the two remaining palaces within the complex. It then takes a closer look at those inscriptions, some of them an endless repetition of the Nasrid dynastic motto, but many also consisting of lyrical Arabic poetry and even lines where the wall itself is boasting of its own beauty and significance

During the Art Nouveau era, Émile Gallé was Europe’s supreme glass master. Born in 1846 in Nancy, Lorraine, Gallé took over the family business during the mid-1870s and transformed it into one of the world’s leading art manufactories. In addition to glass, Gallé produced art pottery and innovative furniture for his creations to stand on. He was first and foremost a chemist, constantly perfecting new techniques. First there was enamelling on clear glass, then hand-carved and acid etched cameo glass and his ultimate technique ‘glass marquetry’ perfected for Paris 1900. In 1901 Gallé spearheaded the foundation of l’Ecole de Nancy, or the School of Nancy, a confederation of manufacturers, which numbered Majorelle and Daum Frères. The city of Nancy was transformed as houses, banks, shops, and cafés, many of which still survive, sprang up in the Art Nouveau style. Although Art Nouveau declined in many other centres during the opening years of the new century, in Nancy it thrived up to the First World War and aspects of the movement can still be traced in the post-war years. Émile Gallé firm closed in 1936, a victim of the Depression but Daum Frères is still a leading manufacturer of Art Glass.

This lecture will examine how the peculiar geniuses of these two very different men, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, came together under the guiding hand of the impresario, Richard D’Oyly Carte, to create one of the most individual and enduring forms of theatrical entertainment. The Savoy operas, with their gentle satire, celebrate the quirks and foibles of the British nation, and are as alive today as in the 1880s. The lecture is fully illustrated with musical examples. 

The riverbank adventures of Mole, Ratty, Badger and the incorrigible Mr Toad have now taken their place among the earliest memories of at least four generations of children. The beauty of Kenneth Grahame’s prose is widely acknowledged but the story is so full of wonderful imagery that it almost demands to be illustrated - despite this, when first published in 1908 it was without pictures. The book has been in print ever since but what is less well known is that it has now been illustrated by more than ninety artists – making it the most widely illustrated book in the English language! 

‘The Wind in the Willows’ is notable for its mixture of adventure, camaraderie, morality and mysticism. It is however a far more thought provoking and interesting book than its popular and often young audience might appreciate. It deserves recognition as a novel in which adult readers will find not just humour and entertainment but wisdom and meaning. Quite intriguingly, academics continue to argue as to whether it is a book for children or for adults – a theme I shall expand upon. 

In this evocative presentation we will revisit the story through the eyes of famous children’s illustrators such as E H Shepard, Arthur Rackham, Robert Ingpen, Inga Moore and Val Biro among others. Where appropriate I will compare and contrast the same scene as depicted by different artists – a study known as ‘comparative illustration’. We will also explore how the story came to be written for Kenneth Grahame’s son Alastair and the interesting but ultimately tragic life of Kenneth Grahame.

Horace Walpole said, in 1783, that ‘No man ever went to the East Indies with good intentions’ and George Chinnery was certainly that man. Running away from debt and his wife, who he charmingly described as ‘the ugliest woman I have ever seen’, he settled in India for 23 years before running away from debt again to China. This talk covers his portraits of many of the leading figures of the East India Company, most notably Colonel James Kirkpatrick, his 14 year old Indo-Persian wife and their children, key figures in William Dalrymple’s White Mughals, as well as his beautiful scenes of everyday life and landscapes.

Most of us carry something that can take pictures and many of us like to snap images wherever we are, but are we looking or seeing?

This presentation showcases a set of images from my own professional travel that illustrate the things we see along the way, by chance and in passing. I want to show how, with just a little thought, these casual scenes can actually be strong visual images. We all have our own interpretation of what we see, and in so doing have our own window on the world, whether that is places, events or people.

It has never been easier to save and store images but if we stand a little longer and look a little deeper, we might see something astounding.

Jim Holmes is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a professional documentary photographer that specializes in worldwide humanitarian and environmental assignments from his base in Chester. Before this UK existence he lived in South East Asia for over 20 years; in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and has travelled in over 50 countries for work.

Akhenaten (c1352 – c1336 BC) is probably the most controversial of all the Egyptian pharaohs. He made extraordinary changes to the religion and art, all the more striking when we consider how conventional the ancient Egyptians tended to be in these respects. He replaced the traditional polytheistic religion with the worship of one solar deity, and the art is unlike that of any other pharaoh’s reign. His wife was Nefertiti arguably the most famous queen of pharaonic Egypt. Her bust displayed in Berlin is iconic. Together they continue to fascinate.

The work of the controversial artist Eric Gill is woven into the fabric of our lives - in the typefaces on our computers, in the lettering on our rail network, in the images on our Christmas cards, and in the sculpture on public buildings such as the BBC. This illustrated lecture by his great-niece Caroline Walker explores how Gill's family background, friendships and passions influenced his work and attempts to explain how this poor clergyman's son came to be regarded as one of the greatest artist-craftsmen of the twentieth century.

What does Renaissance art ‘mean’? The paintings, sculptures, and architectural forms of the 15th to 17th centuries were never ‘art for art’s sake’. Art was doing a job of work: communicating messages about a new world order that was coming into being. Art was expressing the conflict of traditions and values that powered the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

By focusing on a selection of representative artists and artworks, this lecture will unpack the ferment of ideas implicit in Renaissance art. We will range from Michelangelo’s Rome to Shakespeare’s London to Rembrandt’s Holland, but our survey will demonstrate that art was the common language of an age of turmoil, and a way of thinking about a changing world.

If you think of St Pancras International or New York Grand Central you imagine long romantic journeys. You know they are special places promising excitement and adventure. But there are dozens of other glorious stations in the UK and abroad. We will take a journey around some of the most evocative and splendid stations in the world. We will look not only at the magnificence of the architecture and the brilliant engineering but will discover numerous artworks within the stations and examine many depictions of stations in art – like Claude Monet’s Gare St Lazare or William Powell Frith’s Paddington. It may sound a bit anoraky, but it’s definitely not. It’s lavish, colourful and fun.

Famously, every morning of his adult life, Beethoven measured out exactly 60 coffee beans for his breakfast.  A man who is capable of such discipline over a cup of coffee, can surely apply that exactness elsewhere in his life; and in Beethoven’s case, it was applied to his compositions.  In fact, the detail found in his music is often so subtle, that most people don’t even know it’s there.  The lecture/study day explores Beethoven’s genius as a writer of music, at the same time setting his extraordinary story against the backdrop of 19th century warfare, revolution and dramatic social changes.  Beethoven was 250 years old on 17 December 2020.

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.  

This lecture is about the status of COLOUR and SUBJECT MATTER in the history of western art, and the notion that  subject-matter invites viewers to think about art, whereas colour elicits a more subjective feeling-response to it. In Renaissance Florence, several artists maintained that the most important part of an image was its subject matter (which could be caught in a black-and-white print or drawing) and that colour was merely an ‘enhancement’. The Venetians disagreed; they proposed that the drawing of a picture was just its ‘body’, but that it was colour that gave it a ‘soul’. The debate flared up at the French Royal Academy in the seventeenth century when advocates of drawing gathered under the flag of Poussin and colourists sided with Rubens. You would think that the debate might come to rest when colour perception was elevated to the level of a science by Newton at the beginning of the 18th century. But it didn’t; it resurfaced at the beginning of the twentieth century when the monochrome paintings of Picasso and the Cubists competed with the exuberant colourism of Matisse and the Fauves. This lecture will explore this eye-opening debate.

What does it mean to improvise? How has group playing changed over the century? How should we be listening to jazz?

This lecture takes us on a jazz-journey through the last century to explore these questions, among others. We will examine how developments in the social and cultural context have not only affected how jazz is played, but also how this art-form is listened to. The lecture will be illustrated with recorded music examples which, in addition to well-known American tracks and albums, make particular reference to the distinguished British history of the music. Guidance will be given to illuminate the listening experience of what is often considered to be ‘difficult’ music, and how to ‘find your jazz’ – the particular styles of the music that appeal to you. Participants will receive a bibliography and discography to inform further reading and listening, as well as access to a specially created Spotify online playlist of key tracks.

The relationship of art to advertising has an early start. Sir John Everett Millais’s painting of Bubbles (1885) was sold for £2,200 to help sell bars of soap. In this lecture we will trace how the advertising industry became so successful and in particular why advertising in the UK is often thought of as art. From posters to the fifteen second television adverts, we explore some of the most successful adverts and unpack the psychological and cultural context behind them. Award winning adverts by Guinness, Silk Cut and Nestle will be subject to a detailed analysis.

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

So many of our historical references for musical instruments can be found in works of art. Not only can these windows into the past show us what the instruments lookd like but also the social context in which they would have been played. Music and different instruments also play a strong role within symbolism in art. Sophie explores the instruments in sleected works and then gives live demonstrations on replicas of the instruments depicted.

The importance of the role played by Byzantium as a link in the great chain of world history is an important theme. With its roots firmly in the Ancient World of Greece and Rome the Byzantine period – AD 330 -1453 – spans the medieval centuries. While much of the West was in deep decline Byzantium, mistress of the Mediterranean and centre of Christendom, was a symbol of wealth, power and cultural ascendancy. It was here, in the eastern Mediterranean that Christianity took root and spread, giving us the architectural forms and imagery that are still a part of the faith. We look at mosaics, frescoes and icons, opulent liturgical vessels in gold and enamel, silks, ivories, manuscripts and the centrally planned domed churches, designed as microcosms of the Universe. A study day has a wider coverage, including, Venice, Sicily, the Balkans and Russia.

Discover the eclectic collection and awesome seaside home of Sir Merton and Lady Annie Russell-Cotes situated on the East Cliff of Bournemouth. Funded by their ownership of the Royal Bath Hotel and astute art dealing they acquired remarkable Victorian and Edwardian artworks partly inspired by their world travels. After their deaths in the 1920s curators acquired Modern British Art, and additional paintings from the C19th including Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s masterwork Venus, Turner of Hearts. In fact, the museum features an exceptional range of female subjects that underpin this talk.

In this talk that follows on from Downton to Gatsby, Andrew shows how the rise of Cinema and Hollywood had such an important impact on fashion and jewellery design.

From Dietrich to Grace Kelly, he guides you through the Screen Goddesses and how they were portrayed.

He discusses that with the development of advertising, labour saving machines and leisure time, people had more opportunities to enjoy themselves and spend money on the finer things in life and later how political events influenced what was worn. He also shows how the Edwardian and Art Deco styles did not in fact end with the outbreak of the Second World War, rather, they slowly combined to finally flower again in the late 1940s and 1950s with Christian Dior’s 'New Look'.

Deborah Devonshire, the youngest of the Mitford sisters and wife of the 11th Duke of Devonshire, was hefted by marriage to one of Europe’s greatest treasure houses, Chatsworth. In the second half of the 20th century, in partnership with her husband, she imbued it with a spirit, elegance and sense of welcome that transformed it from being the worn-out survivor of decades of taxation, war and  social change into one of the best-loved, most-emulated and popular historic houses, gardens and estates in the country. With responsibility for Lismore Castle and Bolton Abbey as well, no wonder her passport stated her profession as ‘housewife’.

Along the way, she became a best-selling author and sell-out speaker, champion of the countryside, its skills, traditions, livelihoods and food, trustee and patron of numerous charities, businesses and good causes, and the most famous poultry keeper in the country. She met Hitler and Churchill, was a trusted confidant of the Prince of Wales, played her part as the steady heart of the Mitford sisters’ melodrama and was friends with a dazzling array of some of the brightest and most fascinating of her contemporaries, including President Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar de la Renta, John Betjeman, Lucian Freud, Tom Stoppard, Neil MacGregor, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Alan Bennett.

She said herself that charm was the hardest quality to describe in another person; hers lived in her unique turn of phrase, her stoic Mitfordian perspective on life’s challenges, her curiosity about everyone she met, her stylish beauty, quick wit and delight in all that life offered her. Debo had a lasting impact not just on Chatsworth but on everything she touched and everyone she met; I was lucky enough to work for and with her over more than 20 years and in this lecture I pay tribute to an astonishing life.

In the days before photography we are reliant upon the art of the engraver to show us the factories, workers and products of the Industrial Revolution. Such images tend to be confined to ephemeral sources which, by and large, did not find their way into institutional collections. The Industrial Revolution relied upon an efficient means of communication both to transmit information and to market the product.  

The history of this enduring and peculiarly British institution, from its origins in the 16th century Italian comedia dell’arte through the influence of 19th century music hall, to family shows that are still 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.

Who does the housework? Who gets the glory? Successful artists tend to be driven and dare one say it, egotistical, so what happens when two of them set up house together? Focusing on 20th century British art, this colourful lecture explores the lives and careers of notable artistic couples, including Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth and Julian Trevelyan and Mary Fedden. It will quickly become clear that where artists are concerned there are few rules. Love inspires creativity but so, sometimes, does the fading of love. One artist may begin in the ascendant only to see the other achieve greater success. The private lives of artistic couples are often startling and never dull. The paintings and sculptures on show here are glorious.

Hampton Court is best known as the main surviving palace of Henry VIII, but how much of it did he really create? The king had lost the principal medieval royal seat of Westminster to a fire in 1512, three years before Cardinal Wolsey began Hampton Court. Over a decade later, in 1528, Henry took it for himself. This talk explains the European cultural and political background to Wolsey’s magnificent creation. It shows how and why it was set out, presents reconstructions of lost interiors and how much of the credit for Hampton Court was due to the ambitious Cardinal before his reputation was shattered and his achievements defaced by the infamous king he served.

We look at some of the exquisite creations of fantasy, made at the House of Fabergé, from the Imperial Easter eggs (with their surprises concealed within), made for the Russian Tsars, to the appealing hard stone animals and naturalistic flowers designed for the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).
Novelty, originality and superb craftsmanship contributed to his success, whether it be spectacular jewellery or the more affordable artefacts sold in the Fabergé shops.
His enamelling (145 different colour variations) and the working of coloured gold has never been bettered. Inextricably linked to the ill-fated Romanovs, Fabergé collapsed with the Russian revolution and the great goldsmith died in exile in Switzerland.

Marc is a freelance Art and Antiques journalist, writer, and broadcaster based in Wiltshire. He is shortly to begin his twentieth year as a specialist on the BBC Antiques Road Show. He has appeared on numerous television and radio programmes.He also runs a Fine Art Valuation and Consultancy service. His interests range from pre-history to modern design and he is a self-confessed collectaholic.

Food and Art through the Ages is a whistle-stop tour of the history of food as an artistic medium; starting with 16th century sugar sculpture and venturing all the way up to 3D dessert printing and beyond. The exploration into the realms of dessert as a visual treat includes an accompanying display

It probably comes as a surprise to tourists to find so much culture in the Los Angles area, with three world-class museums and one of the finest groups of Arts and Crafts Houses in the world. Not only do these institutions house remarkable collections, including Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Lawrence’s Pinkie at the Huntington and works by Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Moore and Hepworth at the Norton Simon, but also the museums themselves are works of art.

This talk celebrates the 200th anniversary of the births of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who were first cousins and born just three months apart in 1819. Their shared enthusiam for art and music lasted throughout their marriage. They demonstrated their love through works of art and jewellery they gave each other for birthdays. Christmasses and anniversaries.

There was a partnership of patronage by a monarch and her consort which is unique in the history of the British monarchy.

In this talk, Giles romps through the Edwardian period, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Space Race and the Information Revolution.  He shows how, in this age of extrems, the show stillwent onand continued to tell us our own story.

The moving image has been a powerful source for imagination from the first moment a magic lantern flickered into life in the 17th century.

In this lecture we looking at how the Motion Picture industry first developed throughout  the late 19th and early 20th centuries how it was inspired by and inspired in turn some of the greatest artists of the early 20th century.

Calligraphy, geometrical patterns in Islamic architecture combine to reach unparrelleled height in the 17th centuryin a series of highly decorated palaces and mosques in Isfahan, at that time one of the largest cities in the world. Throughout centuries of occupation, it has been the resected poets who have kept the traditions of the Persian language alive, particularly Sufism. Saadi is the Persian equivalent of Shakespeare and with his successor Hafez, both have ornate mausoleums in Shiraz.

There's more to the world of sreet art than Banksey. Hidden canvasses is a beginner's guide to the biggest art movement since pop art. From train writing in New York to interactive technology that brings murals life, the concept of uncommissioned public art has changed drastically in recent years.

William Cobbett (1763 - 1835) was the greatest journalist of his age. He attacked political corruption and nepotism and was imprisoned for his outspokenness.He wrote Rural Rides (still in print) and was the founder of Hansard.

James Gillray (1756 - 1815) was the foremost political cartoonist of the early 19th century and produced savage caricatures of leading politicians and royalty. He was paid by the government to attack Cobbett in a series of cartoons. These will feature in the talk, as willcartoons on subjects (such as elections) which involved Cobbett.

When Capability Brown refused a fee of £1000 to work in Ireland because he "had not yet finished England", it marked the high tide of the English Landscape Movement.  His birth in 1716 signalled the end of the Baroque Age  and his death in 1783 heralded all the excesses of Romanticism. The intervening years witnessed the great contribution Britain has made to art.

The histories of France and Britain have been closely entwined over many centuries.  French taste and style have greatly influenced British architecture and art collecting.

Windsor Castle was originally built in 1070 using French designs. Later George IV greatly admired French taste and he sought to outdo theirs when he made great changes   to the castle.  The exterior of Buckingham Palace followed French models, too.

The British royal art collection contains much French art, including furniture, porcelain, clocks, bronzes, silverware, paintings, drawings, watercolours, miniatures and books.

The story of Geoffrey Chaucer's grand-daughter, Alice de Pole and her husband William, Duke of Suffolk.

An account of how the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk created a chantry trust in 1437 with the blessing of Henry VI.The lecture will look at the way in which they reordered an Oxfordshire church, built a school and almshouses and an extraordinary palace, later frequented by Henry VII and Henry VIII. It will also tell the story of how Alice retained her power and estates during the Wars of the Roses and almost secured the throne for her son.

It will discuss the wonderful alabaster tomb  of Alice with its rare cadaver figure, thought by many to the finest example of its kind in Europe.

Ceramics are partof everyday life, from the cups,saucers and plates that we use to other less obvious, but equally useful vessels. But the flawless and uniform products of modern industry are just the final development of a processthat started in Britain six thousand years ago.

How the women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s. There are stories in it about resisters, collaborators, spies, writers and actresses, couturiers and jewellery designers, housewives, concierges and prostitutes.

Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, journalist and former Reuters foreign correspondent. She read History at King’s College London and her first job was at the BBC World Services in the Arabic Department.

As adults we carry in our heads a huge number of images from childhood and some of those most deeply etched come from illustrations in books we have read as children. Images of 'Tigger' and 'Toad ' drawn by E.H.Shepherd will probably remain with us for ever. In addition many of us will carry in our mind's eye pictures from children's classics such as 'Black Beauty'-- or even 'The Tiger Who Came for Tea' that we might have discovered and read to our grandchildren.

This is the amazing story of a talented and beautiful woman. She was a pupil of Faure and a noted concert pianist.Bonnard, Vuillard and Toulouse-Lautrec painted and drew her. Renoir declared his love for her. Ravel dedicated "La Cigne" "La Valse" to her. In 1908 she stsrted a close relationship with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. She met Coco Chanel in 1917 and they were inseparable in their later years.

This lecture tells the story of the outstanding artistry and craftsmenship that rescued key examples of our architectural heritage.  We open with an account of how the great dome of St Paul's Cathedral was found to be close to collapse in the 1920s and why

Explore the mysterious world of the ancient Egyptian afterlife through the art on the walls of their tombs. The tombs of the New Kingdom period (c.1500 - c.1000BC) when Egypt was at the height of its power and prosperity under Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The nearby tombs of their high officials and the small but colourful tombs of the artists responsible for all the funerary art on the west bank at Luxor during this time. We will be introduced to the stunning array of funerary goods with which they chose to be buried - both feast for the eyes and of much religious significance.

Nowadays many people are familiar with Mackintosh's striking and innovative designs: his high backed chairs and white painted furniture. Yet in his day, at the turn of the twentieth century, only a handful of British clients recognised the outstanding talent of this Scottish architect and designer. On the Continent however, and particularly in Austria and Germany, progressive designers marvelled at his work and considered him a hero.

This lecture traces Mackintosh's career, looking at his major architectural commisions and interiors, such as those for the Glasgow School of Art and The Hill House in Herlensburgh. Welook at the tragic damage of the fire of the Glasgow School of Art in 2014 and how its restoration  has been addressed.

We finish with his lesser well-known but exquisite watercolour paintings.

What is the fascination with ivory? It has been carved for forty thousand years. It has been used by cultures worldwide, funded wars and been connected to the slave trade. Today most ivory bearing animals threatened by extinction. The talk will look at some of the uses of ivory around the globe and how to recognise ivories from different species, for example, elephant, walrus and whale. It will look at fakes and why real ivory is so highly valued. Mention will also be made of the current trade bans covering ivory.

Scandinavia became one of the leading countries for 'progressive' design in the twentieth century. This lecture looks at the interiors of Karl Larsson and the metal work of the Dane Georg Jensen. Swsedish and Danish designers of glass and ceramics such as Orrefors, Rorstrand and Copenhagen are included. Currently Ikea has globalised Scandinavian Modern. Many today have embraced its founder's ethos as itsuits their busy lifestyles.

​Picasso told his biographer John Richardson, 'my life is like a diary, in order to understand it you have to see how it mirrors my life'. Indeed, one needs the living man - driven, ruthless, charismatic - as one encounters the artist, but how many Picassos are there? First the prodigously talented child, then the dynamic young artist in Paris whose post-impressionist early works turn blue and then pink, culminating in the shocking fright masks of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a work which in turn leads to the great innovation of Cubism. But it doesn't stop there - his restless exploration of his art unfolds in response to his shifting relationships with the many women in his life and against a backdrop of cataclysmic world events.

With our complicated relationship with the Near East in sharp focus again today, this talk examines the artists and their subjects as they travelled to the Near East from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. Political intrigues, Western fantasies, rackety men and extraordinary women all play their part. The artistic legacy of our fascination with the subject is seen in paintings, books and architecture and is used to illustrate this talk.

Hepplewhite's name is probably as familiar as Chippendale's and yet he was an obscure cabinet maker of the 1780s about whom very little is known. His fame derives from his book of designs, published and "improved" after his death by his wife Alice. This gives us a wonderful stylish summary of the more "democratic" interpretation of Robert Adam's aristocratic Neo Classicism popular at the time.

Tibet as a geopolitical space no longer exists, as it is now part of China. Yet the art being produced today by Tibetan artists explores contemporary issues - personal, political and cultural- by integrating the centuries old prescribed spiritual art of Buddhism with modern influence and media. The Buddha really goes "BANG".

This lecture places artists like Van Eyck and Memling in their turbulent context, and reveals the part played by some Italian bankers in promoting art across Europe. It's a tale of intrigue and high drama.

2016 sees the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.  This talk will look at his life, the influence of the Renaissance Age and how his work has impacted on the global stage.

We look at some of the exquisite creations of fantasy, made at the House of Fabergé.From the Imperial Easter eggs(with their surprises concealed within), made for the Russian Tsars, to the appealing hard stone animals and naturalistic flowers designed for the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).

Novelty, originality and superb craftsmanship contributed to his success, whether it be spectacular jewellery or the more affordable artefacts sold in the Fabergé shops. 

His enamelling (145 different colour variations), and the working of coloured gold has never been bettered. The story of the House of Faberg é, inextricably linked to the ill-fated Romanovs,collapsed with the Russian revolution, and the great goldsmith died in exile in Switzerland.

With her Anglo-German roots, artistic background and years of research, Angela is in an ideal position to give insight into Germany's on-going efforts to find artistic  forms for the remembrance of the victims of one of history's darkest periods.

This lecture explores the different phases of the Cathedral's history through the centuries and focuses on the 18th and 19th century restorations and the controversies they generated

The term Elgin Marbles is generally used to refer to those sculptures, inscriptions and architectural features that Lord Elgin acquired in Athens between 1801 and 1805. They were purchased by the British Parliament from him in 1816 and presented to the British Museum.Today they are in the Duveen Gallery.

A celebrated and prolific American painter and illustrator whose work has probably been seen by a larger audience than any other artist in history!

The rise and fall of the Roman Empire as you have never seen it before - through the eyes of the Roman people themselves and the contemporary mosaics they created.

Thomas Heatherwick is an exciting young inventor and designer and one of the most original British talents for many decades. The flaming cauldron of the opening of the 2012 Olympics was his creation.

The Christmas tree is arguably the most iconic aspect of our midwinter celebrations, yet how much do we know about its origins and history? Peter Medhurst delves into the past - as far back as the Book of Genesis - in order to tell the story of this remarkable "toy" as Dickens described it. The talk is illustrated throughout with music.

The shocking new style of Impressionism is discussed.We review what men were painting at the time.Berthe Morisot was considered to be the greatest woman impressionist but she was constrained by her gender and social position in Paris. The American Mary Cassatt, however, a friend of Degas, was free to paint at social gatherings and is best known for her studies of women and children.

The Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington House is a familiar place to many NADFAS members. Its Summer Exhibition and others draw in crowds of visitors. The courtyard is a haven of peace in the bustle of central London. Have you ever wondered how this institution began,what was its purpose and who were its founder members?

Seago was an English Post - Impressionist who painted in both oils and watercolours. His work also includes seascapes and portraits. He advised on camouflage during the 1939 - 1945 war. He was an official coronation artist in 1953. In 1956 he accompanied Prince Philip to the Antarctic. Some of his best paintings hang at Balmoral

The contrasting views of the conflict are presented by British and French artists including J.M.W. Turner and J - L David.Less elevated art forms ranging from ladies' fans illustrated with the latest military news,to full re enactments of naval battles out on real water at Sadler's Wells Theatre are also explored. A major exhibition marking Waterloo will be held at the Royal Academy in Autumn 2015.

This lecture looks at the life and work of Denys Lasdun including other buildings he designed, but focuses on the National Theatre. He pleads for an appreciation of the austere beauty of this architectural masterpiece.

From the Renaissance until the late 19th century, art and science existed as one culture.Artists were scientists and scientists were artists. Drawing on examples from 600 years of art history including Michelangelo, Joseph Wright of Derby and William Morris, this lecture offers a new perspective on how art can illuminate aspects of science

Lalique created stunning pieces 0f jewellery from gold, horn, glass and enamel. He designed for Cartier and Boucheron. Production was extended to vases, tableware and lamps. He died in 1945 but his company is still going and his glass is regarded as some of the finest ever created

2015 marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. In this birthday year, Dr Shenton, the Director of the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster, will take you on a journey into this Great Charter that is the cornerstone of our constitution.

An entertaining and richly illustrated insight into a trade for which Britain has a worldwide reputation and long heritage. This lecture gives a series of stories of Saville Row clients of both sexes. Garments which really tell some great tales.

Michelangelo famously declared himself to be "no painter". He sought to define his identity by and through his activity as a sculptor and in particular, to represent the human form. One of the most beguiling aspects of his work is the varying degree of finish in each piece. The talk asks to what extent the unfinished nature of Michelangelo's sculpture result of circumstances or the outcome of personal choice.

Not only have artists recorded their impressions of war, but they have also noted the uncertainty, pain and opposition felt by those caught in the crossfire. Picasso tellingly remarked "painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war". The lecture considers somne of the ways in which visions of the "heroic" have changed over the years.

This lecture traces the story of the 1869 painting of Mary Seacole, Britain's "Greatest Black Woman", by Tom Beaumont James' great uncle, Albert Challen. It places Challen and his family, friends of Mary Seacole, within a Bohemian family of painters, sculptors and scientists. Based on private archives, this remarkable story follows the portrait from the Royal Academy to a car boot sale and onwards to the National Portrait Gallery.

Whether you have an interest in architecture, landscape gardening, Freemasonry, New Age Ideas, scandalous family histories or just in what prompts people to make interesting shapes, "Up too a Point" will surprise and inspire you.

Shah Jahan is best remembered for building the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Based on the finest Islamic manuscript in the Royal Library at Windsor, the Padshahnama, the unique official history of Shah Jahanwho ruled India from 1628-1658.Illustrated with 44 of the most beautiful Mughal paintings in the world. They tell the story of court intrigues , the coronation, royal weddings, bloody battlesa nd include hunting scenes. The Padshahnama was given to George 111 in 1797 by the ruler of the Indian state of Oudh.

An insider's view of how Terence Conran's vision and determination changed the way we lived then and the way we live now.

The Shakers,exploring their beginnings, what they believed and how they lived their lives.Examining examples of their wonderful furniture.

An hour of true blue sky thinking. From the lapis lazuli mines of Afghanistan to the indigo dyers of Africa and the studios of Titian and Vermeer. It concludes with contemporary artists. James Turrell's "Skyspaces", Bill Viola's videos and Ann Hamilton's blue jeans installation.

A light heated look at sexual morality throughout the ages. The careers of some of the most notorious mistresses and courtesans including society's attitude to the working girls lower down the scale.

The Great Twelve Livery Companies are a group of trade associations which were originally guilds regulating trade, from the time of Henry VIII. They are now more correctly known as charitable and social organisations and have a long history of cultural patronage.

The Medici were a political dynasty, a banking family and, later a royal house of Tuscan origin. They produced four popes and two queens of France during their time in power.

JMW Turner was perhaps, the most famous English romantic landscape artist. He was known as the 'Painter of Light'. He began his career painting watercolours - entering the Royal Academy Schools at the age of fourteen.

The celebration of the great mid-winter festival, known to the Romans as Saturnalia. Wassail bowls and bobs, boarsheads stuck with apples, carolling, mumming and riotous parties, all presided over by the Lord of Misrule.

How cathedrals can give us insights into the past by way of art, architecture, furniture and superstitions of those times. A window on the world of the past which would otherwise be lost.

The development of a vast trading company, bringing spices, tea, silks, porcelain and other exotic goods, to grace British homes, from the time of Elizabeth I until Victoria's reign.

Early in the 20th century, Arthur Evans rediscovered a Bronze Age ciicilisation that arose on Crete and flourished from 2700BC to 1600BC. Their name was unknown. Evans coined the name 'Minoan' after King Minos.

The London Skyline viewed from across the Thames.How Londinium has grown from a thriving Roman port, with the Forum dominating, to the tall buildings such as the Gherkin and The Shard, dominating the South Bank.