Past Lectures

Tuesday 17th September 2024 at 10.45am

Lecturer: James Taylor

Darling’s daring rescue of steamship passengers off the Northumberland coast in 1838 brought her international fame. Discover more about her bravery and short life and the artistic contribution that has helped to keep her in the public eye. Grace became the ‘poster girl’ of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was the first woman awarded their medal for gallantry.

Tuesday 15th October 2024 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Michael Howard

The well-known crime writer Patricia Cornwell has claimed that the celebrated artist Walter Sickert was responsible for the murders attributed to the infamous Jack the Ripper. This lecture will attempt to untangle the truth of this claim following a trail of murder, mystery, mayhem and paint. Was this much-loved, colourful and enigmatic painter Jack the Ripper – or not?

Tuesday 19th November 2024 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Jenny Scruton

Burton Constable Hall is a large Elizabethan country house set in a park designed by Capability Brown. With its 18^th & 19^th century interiors and a remarkable C18^th ‘cabinet of curiosities’, the rooms at Burton Constable are filled with spectacular collections that survive from when the Hall was the Constable family home.

Tuesday 21st January 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Rev'd Dr Nicholas Henderson

A walk in the country; you come upon the typical village country church. This lecture will help you look at the architecture inside and out, the church furniture, those mysterious nooks and crannies, high and low. How and why did it all come to look this way? This is a fascinating journey through English history unravelled before your eyes. “I can’t make you experts” says Nicholas Henderson, “but I can teach you enough to amaze your friends on that day in the countryside.”

Tuesday 18th February 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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!’

Tuesday 18th March 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Sophie Matthews

Music in Art looks at how the depiction of musical instruments from the Middle Ages to the 18th century evolves, focusing on instruments that Sophie plays, so as well as looking at images by artists such as Bruegel, Bosch and Hogarth she gives musical demonstrations on replicas of the instruments depicted

Tuesday 15th April 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Paul Rabbitts

This really is a fascinating insight into the history of one of our greatest ever institutions - our Great British Public Park. This talk illustrates their origins from the great Royal Parks to the Pleasure Gardens of the eighteenth century, to their Victorian heyday. It discusses what makes a great park, it’s ‘parkitecture’ with examples of lodges, lakes, bandstands, fountains, lidos, palm houses and to their wonderful floral displays, to their great decline in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

Tuesday 20th May 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Louise Schofield 

In Spring 2000 an archaeological drama unfolded on the banks of the Euphrates in Turkey. Archaeologists found a Roman city on the banks of the river, with mosaics
and wall-paintings finer than those of Pompeii. However, just beside it was the almost completed Birecik Dam and flooding the reservoir behind it would take the city under
water. This lecture tells of the extraordinary archaeological rescue excavation that then took place and of the fabulous treasures recovered.

Tuesday 17th June 2025 at 10.45am

Lecturer: Hilary Williams