In this lecture, we look back at the creation of the BBC.  We investigate the invention and use of radio at the start of the 20th century and explore how the medium was first used as a form of mass communication. We look at the early days of the BBC, and some of the people who were vital to the success of the new company. We explore its relationship with the Government and the worries about the power of this radical new form of communication. 

Nick Salmond is a London Blue Badge Guide and a lecturer in History and the Arts. He qualified as a London Blue Badge Guide in 2019, winning the award as Guide of the Year. In 2021 he gave the annual Katrine Prince Lecture to members of the Institute of Tourist Guiding. Before guiding he joined the BBC where he worked for over 30 years in both television and radio. He helped cover some of the great events of History from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the terrible events of 9/11, from the fall of the Thatcher Government to the celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

It’s said in our theatrical history that there was a Golden Age of British Comedy. It ran from the 1970’s to the 1980’s and occurred as we started to drift away from theatres and radios, and found ourselves living through a wonderfully rich period of television comedy. Some say this period has never been bettered.

In this unashamedly affectionate and entertaining lecture, and sharing my personal, family connection with this world, I will go back and revisit those wonderful comedy programmes and the people who were in them. 

I will unravel the formula for tv comedy success, and how it made us laugh like we did.

And I’ll look at how the world of Variety was kept alive by the comedians and the double acts who managed to leap successfully from the stage into our televisions. 

This is a lecture that will bring back many fond memories as we revisit a key part of our country’s theatrical heritage.           

illustrated :   Dad's Army

Tyler Butterworth grew up in a theatrical family and spent twenty-five years as an actor working extensively in film, television, theatre and radio. He then worked as a development producer in television documentaries. Now he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe for private clients. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.

Few dynastic families in western Europe wielded such power in the late Middle Ages as the Dukes of Burgundy.With territories stretching as far as the low countries, theirs was a sumptous court to rival all others, where every aspect of the arts blossomed. But they would prove dastardly as well as dazzling and nothing would stop them from their ultimate goal.

illustrated Presentation by Rogier van der Weyden

Carole Petipher, an experienced guide/lecturer in France, who has lived and worked in Burgundy, will follow their rise to glory and creation of their own superpower and consider the associated trappings of such a flamboyant lifestyle; such as art, fashion and jewellery and gastronomy

The life of Lee Miller, told with reference to those with whom she exchanged creative inspiration – Man Ray, Roland Penrose, Pablo Picasso, David E. Scherman, her father Theodore Miller and her son Antony Penrose. A definitive view by her son and biographer, this presentation has been acclaimed for its ability to embrace many different levels of the history of art and photography, social commentary and emotional connection with the subject. It gives an accurate and lasting portrait of a talented and courageous woman who was a free spirit and a trail blazer.

illustrated: Lee Miller

Antony Penrose For the past 47 years, Antony has conserved and disseminated the work of his parents, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose.  With his daughter Ami he is the co-director of The Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection at Farley Farm House in Sussex and has seen his parents' work featured in major exhibitions at the V&A, National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial war Museum London, Manchester Art Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Whitworth.  He has lectured at museums and universities around the world and made documentaries for television. Publications include The Lives of Lee Miller, Lee Miller's War(editor), The Angel and the Fiend, The Home of the Surrealists, Roland Penrose the Friendly Surrealist and The Boy Who Bit Picasso. The movie titled LEE starring Kate Winslet is based on his book The Lives of Lee Miller and for ten years he has been heavily involved with its production and release.

The Forbidden City, situated at the heart of modern Beijing - the city once-known as Peking - is China’s awe-inspiring Palace Museum, housing a collection of almost two million works of art. It is magnificent yet mysterious with massive courtyards and ancient palace buildings tiled in golden-yellow arranged in accordance with cosmic symbolism and concealed behind high vermilion walls. For almost 500 years, it was the home of two dynasties of Dragon Emperors who ruled their vast country as the Sons of Heaven and enjoyed lives of extraordinary opulence whilst attended by thousands of eunuch servants. Access to the palace was forbidden to all but a few – the Emperor, his household, entourage and officials. The innermost private residential quarters were veiled in additional layers of secrecy. In winter as the sun goes down and tourists depart, it is possible to imagine the lives of silk, ceremony and splendour enjoyed by the Emperors and their concubines. The courtyards and imposing pavilions convey a sense of grandeur and evoke imperial China’s ancient ritual ceremonies.

Anne  Haworth has been a lecturer and guide at the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2003. She is an accredited lecturer for the Arts Society and has lectured in many museums in London and for the Royal Collection Trust. Since 2008, she has been an adjunct faculty member of Eckerd College in Florida at their London campus, teaching students about the history of painting in Britain. She lived in China from 1995 to 2002 following a career of 14 years as a specialist in ceramics at Christie's and Bonhams in London.

In 1936 Dame Laura Knight became the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in London, 168 years after its establishment.  In her extraordinary career she painted landscapes, portraits and seascapes, as well as scenes from the circus, the ballet and the theatre.  She was the only woman to be given War Commissions in both the First and Second World Wars and the only British artist to cover the Nuremberg Trials of 1946.  This lecture provides an overview of her fascinating career and some of the remarkable achievements of her long life.

illustrated : Laura Knight On the Cliffs 1917 Private Collection

Rosalind Whyte has a BA and an MA from Goldsmith’s College and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College.  She is an experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The Royal Academy and Greenwich. She lectures widely at The Tate and to independent Arts societies and on cruises.

Manderley, Wuthering Heights, Howard’s End, Brideshead – just a few of the  fictional houses that feature in some of our favourite novels.   But these houses are more than just bricks and mortar buildings for fictional characters to live in – they are living, breathing presences in the stories they inhabit – forbidding or welcoming, hiding secrets, haunting dreams, reviving memories of long ago…  Some houses are so important, their authors give them starring roles and name their books after them.  

This lecture will reveal the secret lives of some famous fictional homes; it will uncover their real-life inspirations and their importance not only in the lives of their fictional residents, but also in the lives of their creators.   Above all, it will explore how these houses have an uncanny ability to haunt readers’ imaginations and dwell in our memories long after we have turned the final page.  

Annalie Talent
Following a career in teaching, Annalie spent several years working on education programmes at museums and literary houses across the UK, including the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere; Wordsworth House in Cockermouth; Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire; and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.   She has also worked with the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and Chawton House Library in promoting Austen’s work to young people.  

Annalie’s lectures focus on aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature.  She uses her knowledge and personal experience of literary houses and their collections to offer unique perspectives on writers and their works.  

This lecture is built around a series of fundamental questions about colour and how we are able see it!

Our appreciation of colour is at very core of our common interest in art and the arts but …...

What is colour?

This is not as simple as it seems. Is it the object itself that has colour, a banana is yellow

because it is ‘yellow’? Or is colour something that only exists inside our heads?

This lecture is devoted to an exploration of colour. Itis built on the premise that our appreciation of colourand how we see it, is at the very core of our commoninterest in art and the arts. Sometimes colour is referredto as ‘the secret influence’ as we are often unaware ofhow it significantly affects the choices we make everyday. But what is colour? Do we all experience colour similarly? What is a colour scheme andwhy do some colours go well together and others not?

John Ericson

Formerly a lecturer at the University of Bath where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education with responsibility for the professional development of teachers. He has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant and this has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world.

Over the last decade he has been a popular speaker on the Arts Society circuit in the UK and Europe as well as a frequent visitor to the societies in Australia and New Zealand.

In his professional life he has developed a particular interest in presentation skills including the role of pictures in learning and the appropriate use of PowerPoint. This coupled with his ability to relate well to people of all ages and backgrounds makes him an impressive and confident public speaker.

As well as the talks he has developed from his professional background, he offers presentations on an eclectic range of topics that are derived from his diverse interests and enthusiasms such as, Pub Signs, Children’s Book Illustrations and the Shakers of North America. All his talks are entertaining, highly informative, very well illustrated and presented with warmth and humour.

2027 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough was unquestionably one of the greatest portrait painters that Britain has ever produced. His ability to capture the inner lives of his sitters, his dramatic use of paint and his remarkable approach to colour set him apart from almost all of his contemporaries. Yet, although he was regarded in his lifetime as one of the preeminent portrait painters of his day, the genre that he truly loved was landscape. In this lecture we will look at the life and work of this unique artist, his experimental technique and his fraught relationship to portraiture, the genre in which he excelled. 
 

illustrated Thomas Gainsborough. Self Portrait

Dr Matthew Morgan is a freelance art historian, educator and museum professional. He has been the Museum Director of Turner's House, and an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. He has worked in the heritage sector for over 10 years, including at the National Gallery and the Royal Collection, and has lectured widely including at the Courtauld Institute, the Wallace Collection and the V&A as well as across Britain and Europe. Prior to that, he was a Director in Christie’s Valuation Department. He has contributed to TV documentaries, podcasts, radio shows and made a series of short films which can be seen on YouTube.

TBA

Exactly mirroring the years of the German Weimar Republic, the short-lived Bauhaus introduced a new curriculum for art students emphasising collegiality, experimentation and an end to the traditional division between fine art and design. Founded by the architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus moved in 1924 to a designed campus which attracted some of the leading artists and designers working in Europe, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Laszlo Maholy-Nagy. The school modelled itself on a medieval craft guild where masters would train apprentices within studios dedicated to particular materials and techniques. Guided first by Expressionism and later by a more practical concern with utility and affordability, the workshops aimed to make a diverse range of products for the home and for industry. Often riven by aesthetic and political debates, the Bauhaus acquired a mythic status especially as it was later shut down by the Nazis. The faculty and students were subsequently dispersed throughout the world, where they brought the principles and ideas of the school to a new generation of students. From the design of buildings to the function of a table lamp to the appearance of the printed page, the Bauhaus arguably changed the world, advocating the removal of ornamentation and historicism in favour of functionality, simplicity and efficiency. 

Joshua White has extensive experience lecturing in Modern and Contemporary art, teaching for over 18 years at Christie’s Education in London where he was director of ‘The London Art Course’. He has taught multiple courses over the years from Impressionism and Surrealism to Art Photography and Performance.

He is a founder and presenter of The Art Channel, an online project documenting and interpreting Modern and Contemporary art exhibitions in commercial galleries and public institutions. The channel has now received two million views.

Joshua has direct experience of the art market, working as a Gallery Director between 2018 and 2020 specialising in 20thCentury photography.

Elsewhere, he has lectured for Sotheby’s Institute, The University of the Arts, The University of California, Tate Modern and Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Somerset House and The Design Museum. Further to his institutional work, he has worked with numerous private clients in London and led groups abroad in Berlin, the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel.

On television and radio, Joshua has been a guest contributor to Channel 5’s ‘Great Paintings of the World’, BBC Radio 4’s ‘Behind The Scenes’ and BBC Radio 3’s ‘Turning Picasso.’ He has written exhibition catalogues and been published by the BBC, The FT, Christie’s Magazine and Flash Art. 

More recently, Joshua has begun to lead art travel tours to Europe.

TBA