After a terrible accident as a child, Frida Kahlo was seldom without pain. She charted her life, including her two marriages to the same man, Diego Rivera, through a series of fascinating and self-revelatory self-portraits and other Surrealist-inspired works, as seen in the Tate Modern exhibition in 2005. 

NOTE: Tate Modern will be holding a major retrospective of Kahlo's work from 25 JUNE 2026 – 4 JAN 2027

A lively and interactive lecture/workshop looking at how Shakespeare’s company produced the plays in the 16/17 century. Highlighting the differences between early modern and modern theatre practise, including repertoire constraints on rehearsal, cue scripts, embedded stage direction, visible audience, universal lighting, and touching on textual clues.  this workshop will change the way you look at Shakespeare’s texts for ever.

Many thousands of British soldiers - and, in some cases, their wives - sailed out to India in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the era before photography, many sent back drawings and paintings intended for private consumption. These now offer us a vivid insight into various aspects of their lives, sometimes unglamorous, often amusing. We see their journey out, their social activities, their bungalows, gardens and hill stations; also their cuisine, their recreations, life on the march, and their means of coping with heat, insects and other maladies… 

For the Romans, life meant getting together to eat and drink, in a pub, in a simple flat or at a banquet in a triclinium or grand dining room. Last supper in Pompeii celebrates the Roman love affair with food and wine, in a journey from fields and vineyards to markets and shops, from tables to toilets and the tomb. We visit the fertile vine-filled slopes of Vesuvius, then going into the bustling city, past shops and bars, we enter the home, with its grand reception rooms, and lovely garden filled with flowers and fountains. We recline in the dining room, with exotic food and fine wine, surrounded by Greek-style luxury; beautiful silver, mosaics and frescoes. But don’t go in the kitchen!

This lecture accompanies the major exhibition,Stanley Spencer in Suffolk, to be held at Gainsborough's house in Sudbury from November 2025 to March 2026, in partnership with the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. Exhibition co-curator Amy Lin will show how Spencer's art was rooted in both his personal relationships and his deep sense of place. Whilst his connection to Cookham is well known, Suffolk also held a profound resonance for the artist, as he married fellow artist Hilda Carline in Wangford, and later returned to Suffolk in the wake of his marriage breakdown. We will explore Spencer's family, friendships and artistic development through his visits to Suffolk in the 1920s and 1930s.

The remarkable untold story of Carry On actor Peter Butterworth, and his wife, Britain’s first female tv impressionist Janet Brown, best known for her impression of Mrs Thatcher.  Using classic film and tv clips, personal mementos, and rare photographs and letters from his family’s unseen collection, Tyler reveals the private story behind his parents’ public lives. It’s a journey that takes in MI9, the building of a theatre in the notorious WW2 Prisoner of War camp Stalag Luft III, nights at Chequers with a Prime Minister, This Is Your Life, and many more moments in their long, shared life in the theatre. 

Join Margaret for a seasonal hour of Christmas bygones and entertainment as she brings to life the joy of music through the ages at this time of year. She will be delving into the history of the harp and it’s incredible pedal mechanism and exploring some of the old Christmas Carols and their origins. Margaret will play a selection of festive favourites to get you in the mood for Christmas. 

This lecture provides a colourful introduction to the secret world of our 2000-mile inland waterway network and looks at all aspects of their exceptional artistic, architectural and engineering vernacular. Features range from sweeping aqueducts to tiny bollards; from colourful historic narrowboats to 'Roses and Castles' artwork; from grand World Heritage Sites to quirky listed buildings. A well-known architectural historian once described our canals as a 'poor man's art gallery'. 

This lecture gets up close and personal with the dynamic east London street art scene.  You’ll see art on the walls, the sides of buildings and sidewalks…..  In this lecture we will look at work by Banksy, quite possibly the most famous living street artist in the world, as well as street art by Ben Eine whose piece “Twenty First Century City” was recently presented by Prime Minister David Cameron to Barrack Obama. We will also see work by Shepherd Fairey the most celebrated street artist working in the US today, known around the world for his Obey and Hope campaigns. 

You will discover how the huge growth and popularity of Street Art is reflected in the astonishing transformation of Spitalfields and Shoreditch from a once seedy and deprived area into one of the most vibrant, most fashionable, most happening neighbourhoods in London.

It is hard to know whether to be impressed or disgusted by Peter the Great. His personality was a confusing collection of contradictions. On one hand he was the enlightened sovereign who dragged the sprawling, medieval country he ruled into the modern age. Born with immense energy and drive, he taught himself the rudiments of ship design and founded the Russian navy, defeated the Swedes and seized the land on which to build the city of St Petersburg, which would grow into one of the most beautiful and ornate capitals in the world. On the other he was a violent and brutal tyrant, fascinated by freaks and cruel practical jokes, a coarse, foul speaking drunkard who personally tortured hundreds of his subjects and ordered the murder of his own son.  

This lecture follows the course of his turbulent life from his childhood in Moscow, where he saw his family butchered before his eyes, through his wild teenage years in which he formed his own private regiments, presided over dissolute drinking clubs and taught himself to sail on an ancient boat once given to Ivan the Terrible, to the triumphs and conquests of his old age when he established Russia not only as a modern nation but also as a major political and military force in the western world.

Although it seems as if Donald Trump is an aberration in the line of American presidents. he is merely the latest manifestation of a long-seated trait in American politics stretching back to 1776. The lecture uses clips of Hollywood films featuring presidents from Franklin D Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, including John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, to reveal how Trump played on the fears and dreams that have been at the root of Americans' hostility to their own federal government throughout their history.

Winner of three of the Chelsea Flower Show’s most prestigious medals, Xa Tollemache will talk about how taking over the gardens at Helmingham Hall, which she and her husband inherited, inspired her to become the eminent landscape gardener we know today

A fellow artist once said that Constable’s paintings made him reach for his umbrella. In Constable’s time most artists painted the English landscape and its weather in a conventional, idealised way; but he wanted to show how it actually appeared under bright or showery skies. His passionate, dogged determination to paint the vivid colours of nature, and his startlingly fresh evocations of being outdoors on towpaths and country lanes, set him apart from artists of his own time – but resulted in paintings that ring as true as ever today. 

This talk will offer a fresh view of the life and work of Constable through the lens of the turning year. Season by season, it will unfold his life story, beginning with the detailed Suffolk landscape studies he made in his youth and concluding with the visionary, emotion-filled pictures of his final years. 

Dr Susan Owens is a writer and art historian. Formerly Curator of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum where she specialised in British watercolours and drawings, she now lives in Suffolk. Her books include The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art, which won the Apollo Book of the Year award in 2024; Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape, a Times / Sunday Times Art Book of the Year; and The Ghost: A Cultural History. Her next book, Constable’s Year: Art and Life Through the Seasons, will be published by Thames & Hudson in 2026. 

Whether drawing duchesses or portraying princes, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was high society’s leading portraitist. Flaunting a consummate technique, his luxurious canvases mirrored his subjects’ wealth. Yet beneath the dazzling veneer of works such as Madame X, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit and Lady Agnew of Lochnaw lurks a much rawer world by far. Sargent certainly scandalised Parisian society and the city’s Salon with his frank depictions of human sexuality, yet he was even more modern than they might have feared. This talk charts the artist’s life and his prolific output, showing that, like the era he came to represent, Sargent was always on the cusp of seismic change.

This lecture will explore two contrasting perspectives of New York city at the turn of the century - a period of vast magnate fortunes, urban poverty, new money vs old, rapid expansion and unprecedented technological change. We will be spectators at the glittering Vanderbilt Ball held in their mansion on Fifth Avenue in 1883. What were the leisure and cultural activities of this privileged elite who shopped in Paris for art and couture and spent summers at their 'cottages' in Newport? In contrast, we will marvel at the expanding city through the eyes and imagery of the Ashcan painters - John Sloan, George Bellows, William Glackens and Everitt Shinn. Exploring the natural beauty of the Manhattan open skyline and sunsets before the high rise skyscrapers, we will travel to work on the elevated railways, watch the raw energy of the night-lit building sites and the bustling ships being unloaded on the waterfront, visit a vaudeville show, wander in Central Park, and be shocked by the eviction of poor immigrant tenants on the lower east side. 

The flower paintings of Cedric Morris (1889-1982) capturing plants around the Mediterranean, the Canaries and beyond reveal him as a consummate botanist. After a fire in 1940, Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines were forced to relocate their East Anglia School of Painting and Drawing to Benton End near Hadleigh, in Suffolk. Not just a School but a vibrant eclectic artistic hub in a setting of Morris’s horticultural genius. He lived at Benton End until his death, enjoying national stature as artist and plantsman whose legacy included over 90 new irises.

The Great Buddha of the Todai-ji (Great Eastern Temple) of Nara was commissioned in the first half of the 8th century by Emperor Shomu who aimed to unify the country by creating a network of temples in all provinces. The colossal bronze statue of Buddha, over 16 metres high, was the symbol of imperial authority. Its completion in 752 was marked by a grand ceremony, attended by the Emperor and Empress, aristocrats, thousands of officials and monks, as well as foreign guests from many regions of Asia. The ceremonial artefacts used in this occasion are still preserved in the temple storehouse Shoso-in, together with the Emperor’s personal belongings.

Perhaps we wouldn’t think of Norwich as a hotbed of death or drama – after all – it is ‘a fine city’ in all aspects of the word. Not only that, but perhaps we wouldn’t associate Norwich with Saint George – he is after all England’s patron saint, not the particular son of an East Anglian city. However, if we were to cast our thoughts back six hundred years we would find a very different world to that in our imagination – a world full of the ravages of a pandemic known as the black death; a world that tried to make sense of the devastation and grief through dramatic processions and allegiance to a warrior saint.

The discovery of the grave of King Richard III in Leicester raised many fascinating new questions. The severe scoliosis exhibited by the skeleton revealed that the twisted physique of Shakespeare’s ‘Black Legend’ was based in fact. But how could a diminutive person, suffering from a significant spinal condition, have become a skilled practitioner of the knightly fighting arts? How could he have worn armour and fought in three major battles? What would his armour have looked like? In the case of a king whose royal legitimacy was questioned by many people, how were the visual trappings of knightly kingship used to solidify his claim?

The American artist who has become synonymous with the isolation experienced by many in the Covid era. We will look at Hopper's unique contribution to American art in the 20th century with his haunting images of loneliness in the midst of urban life.

What is it that conductors do that makes orchestras respond in so many different ways? Is it a good baton technique? A strong personality? The way they look? And why are there relatively few women found on the podium? And why are the conductors paid so much more than anyone else on the concert platform? Drawing on history and his own musical experiences from well over six thousand performances and recordings, Nigel seeks out some answers. This lecture contains some rare video footage of conductors in rehearsal and performance.  

Like its name, the Roaring Twenties was a loud and boisterous decade, marked by novelty, modernity and huge social, technological, and economic change. Following the dark days of the Great War, it spawned a generation of wealthy and privileged Bright Young Things who were determined to shock and who broke with the conventions of the past to pursue a life of hedonism and promiscuity, fuelled by an endless round of champagne, cocaine, parties and jazz. Women wore fur coats and cloche hats, donned new boyish fashions and had short, cropped hair. Men drove fast cars, mixed cocktails and smoked American cigarettes.

Built for grandeur, receptions & court masques, the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace became central to the Stuart dynasty. Designed by Inigo Jones in 1622, this classical building is infamous as the execution site of King Charles I. The hall survived the fire that destroyed Henry VIII’s great Whitehall Palace in 1698 and its magnificent painted ceiling, by Peter Paul Rubens, is the only one in the world still in its original setting. Discover the building’s revolutionary architecture and Baroque-style art, seismic events in constitutional history, and how Parliament dared to kill a king. 

Siobhan Clarke BA has worked for Historic Royal Palaces for 20 years delivering tours and lectures on Hampton Court, Kensington, the Tower of London and the Banqueting House, Whitehall Palace. Her experience includes education sessions and tours for schools, universities, corporate and private clients.  

She has lectured for the British Museum, National Trust, U3A, Arts Society and Smithsonian and featured on BBC Radio Women's Hour and Television's Secrets of Henry VIII's Palace. Her published work includes: A Tudor Christmas, in collaboration with Alison Weir, (2018), The Tudors: The Crown, The Dynasty, The Golden Age with Linda Collins (2019), King and Collector: Henry VIII and the Art of Kingship (2021) and she is currently working on Gloriana: Elizabeth I and the Art of Queenship.

The celebration of Christmas brings together a broad range of traditions which are now regarded by many as integral to Christmas as a whole. Using a wide range of artworks and covering the output of many well-known and lesser known artists including Giotto, Caspar David Friedrich and Norman Rockwell this talk examines the elements of Christmas in their artistic setting. From the Christmas feast to Christmas Cards, holly and ivy, trees, crackers, gift giving and of course lots and lots of snow, this lecture is guaranteed to put you in the Christmas spirit. 

Biographical detail: Holds a First Class BA in Art History from Reading University, an MA in World Art Studies from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in Architectural History, also from Reading. Lectured for 10 years at Reading and at the University of East Anglia, and now works as a freelance lecturer and adult education provider. Has published articles and a book chapter on the architect Francesco di Giorgio and currently researching the development of the Riddlesworth estate with a view to future publication.

In his heyday, the animal artist Edwin Landseer was hugely celebrated and loved for his dogs and Highland stags; later, for his lions in Trafalgar Square. He was a child prodigy; aged 5 years old he made a detailed study of a foxhound which astounded everybody; later he became known for his vivid and varied textures of animal skin, hair and fur, which he achieved with special brushes, keeping their design a secret. He was a party man, with party tricks; with his left hand he could draw a horse’s head and with his right a stag’s head complete with horns – at the same time!

Most widely appreciated for his dogs, he could paint comic dogs, tragic dogs and in-between dogs, and he became known - with some justification - as the Shakespeare of Dogs.

He was socially much in demand with the aristocracy and with Royalty, teaching the Queen and Prince to etch. But after awhile it all gets too exhausting; the celebrated artist feels happier up in the Highlands of Scotland. He ends up stressed, drunk and mad, comparing himself to one of his own hunted stags. Nobody can get him to behave except his neighbour Mrs Pritchard, an elderly widow said to look like “ a very small monkey, with bright blinking eyes and a merry mouth.” 

When Sir Edwin died they named a pub after him; they buried him in St Paul’s Cathedral, and someone put black wreaths around the necks of those lions in Trafalgar Square. 

Karin is known for her entertaining lectures on writers and diarists connected with the arts from the mid-18th to 19th century, and moving forward in time with Virginia Woolf. Extensive research into diaries and letters bring lectures to vivid life. Karin illustrates them with slides of contemporary pictures and portraits from varied sources.

In the eighteenth century the rise of enlightenment thinking challenged the authority of traditional religious ideas and popularised a vision of the world as a mechanistic universe governed by the laws of science.

Early German Romantic writers and thinkers such as Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis sought to re-enchant the world in the face of enlightenment rationality and open up a space for a spiritual dimension in the post-enlightenment world.

We’ll examine how these notions, of a new kind of spiritual experience, are reflected in the landscape art of Caspar David Friedrich, who sought to develop a new genre of spiritual landscape as an alternative to the calcified conventions of academic religious art developing a form of symbolic landscape art that evoked feelings of the sublime. Friedrich lived through the Napoleonic Wars and we’ll also examine the political aspects of Friedrich’s art during this turbulent period.

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

In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder was commissioned to create a series of paintings for a dining room in Antwerp. The images, charting the course of a year, changed the way we view the world through art. Landscape had previously been a decorative backdrop to dramas both sacred and profane. But in Bruegel's hands the landscape and our interaction with it became the focus. Looking at paintings such as The Return of the Herd, Hunters in the Snow and The Gloomy Day, this lecture explores how Bruegel pioneered a whole new way of thinking about the environment and our individual places within a shifting cosmos.

Gavin Plumley A writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. Lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, is published in June 2022. 

For over forty years, Winston Churchill was a keen amateur artist. He painted from 1915, right down to his retirement in the 1950s. His landscapes record almost every country which he visited as a distinguished statesman. In Britain he painted at Blenheim, where he was born, at Port Lympne and Trent Park, where he stayed, and at Chartwell, his final home. Abroad, he painted in France and Belgium, from the trenches of World War One, and after that, on the French Riviera. He also painted in Europe, at exotic locations like Morocco and Egypt, and in Canada and the United States. Churchill’s wit is legendary: there are even books about it, but I shall not announce his best lines in this summary of a lecture!   

Churchill discussed painting with Noel Coward, who was another keen amateur artist for over forty years. Indeed, Churchill persuaded Coward to stop using watercolour and convert to full oil painting. In Britain, Coward painted in or near his two Kentish homes: Goldenhurst, and his magnificent house overlooking the sea at St Margaret’s Bay. He painted in Italy, at Venice and Portofino, but also three other Mediterranean locations which have yet to be identified. Perhaps you will be able to identify them? The majority of his paintings are of Jamaica: he retired and had two homes there. Coward of course used wit and humour in many of his plays and musicals, as well as in his personal life.

Biographical detail:  An art historian and archaeologist. In the 1980s he became Founder- Chairman of the Friends of Shakespeare's Globe. In 2005 he was one of two Lecturer Representatives on the The Arts Society Advisory Council and also Vice-Chairman of Folkestone. He is the author of four books on the Impressionists in England, and one on the Frost Fairs on the Frozen Thames. His latest book My Father, the Man who Never Was features in his latest lecture.

The Russian Avant Garde movement contained some of the greatest names of its generation. Malevich, Chagall, Kandinsky, Exter, Popova, Rozanova, Rodchenko, Tatlin and countless others blazed a trail through Art History for an all-too brief period. With their creativity stunted by the advent of Socialist Realism in 1932, their work disappeared – only to re-emerge in the early 1970s when Greek collector, George Costakis began to buy up swathes of paintings of the period. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a flood of newly-discovered works appeared on the Western and domestic markets of which the vast majority, up to 95%, had neither verifiable provenance nor exhibition history, their authenticity supported only by documents from now discredited Russian and Western art historians and erroneous certificates of chemical expertise.

This scandal reached a crescendo in January 2018 with an exhibition of 24 dubious works of the period at the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts in Belgium. James Butterwick examines the background behind the mass faking of the Russian Avant Garde, the history of these dubious paintings, universally rejected by museums and the art market, as well as the methods used to ‘create’ authenticity.

Biographical detail: James Butterwick began collecting and selling Russian Art in 1985 and has established himself as one of the world’s leading experts. He moved to Moscow in 1994, becoming the only foreign member of the Russian Society of Private Collectors and began forming collections, taking part in museum exhibitions and lecturing on Russian Art, including at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 2013 and the Museum of Russian Impressionism in June of this year.

In 2008 James became the only foreign member of International Confederation of Antique and Art Dealers of Russia and the CIS and in 2013 joined the Society of London Art Dealers.

James acts as a source of museum quality paintings with flawless provenance of both the Russian and European School and has access to all the leading experts, private collections and museums in any area of the arts. He travels regularly to Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan where, in October 2013, he opened an exhibition of leading Impressionist paintings.

In 2015 James became the first gallery dealing in early 20th century Russian Art to be invited to exhibit at TEFAF, Maastricht – selling four works to the Kröller-Müller Museum. The following year saw a much-heralded personal exhibition of the Ukrainian avant-garde artist, Alexander Bogomazov (1880-1930) with further sales to both Kröller-Müller and subsequently to the Arkansas Art Centre. James also exhibited at the first TEFAF New York fair in 2017.

His private gallery is in London. He speaks fluent Russian.

Cleopatra, the woman for whose love’s sake Antony is imagined to have given up the chance to rule the Roman world, has been inspiring painters, poets and (more recently) film-makers for over two millennia. Their gorgeously voluptuous depictions of her offer insights into changing concepts of beauty, and into the racial and sexual assumptions underlying them.  Showing images ranging from Roman portrait busts, through medieval illuminations, the glorious works of Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, the splendour of Tiepolo and the exoticism of Gustave Moreau to 20th century film stars (Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and the Carry On team’s Amanda Barry), I will show how Cleopatra became a screen onto which artists have projected their wildly differing fantasies about exotic danger and erotic bliss.

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

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

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she has written on books, theatre and the visual arts for a number of publications, including The Sunday Times, The Observer, The New Statesman and the TLS, and for Radio 3’s Night Waves. She is Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize.  

As Official Mistress to Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour became one of the major patrons of her age, commissioning some of France's best artists including Boucher, van der Loo, and Drouais. Constantly re-positioning herself in relation to Queen Marie Leszczynska of France, La Pompadour was something of a chameleon. Find out how art became both her seduction strategy and a political tool at the royal court.

Biographical detail:  Trained as an artist before gaining a PhD in Art and Critical Theory from the University of Sussex. Has lectured in art history for the City Lit, Tate Modern, the Course, Art in London, London Art Salon, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Nth Degree Club and many private art societies; also runs art history study tours abroad. 

There have been pictorial representations of The Magi from as early as at least the 6th century, such as depictions in Byzantine ivories with origins in places such as Constantinople. Indeed, a vast array of artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (active 1550/1; died 1569), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Masaccio (1401-1428/9?), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) to name but a few, have been clearly fascinated by story and its possibilities when it comes to visual depictions. However, these depictions over this vast period of time have been anything but consistent. All the aforementioned artists will be mentioned in this lecture, as I seek to will unravel the myth and the iconography behind the proliferation of the story of the adoration of the magi from its Eastern and pagan roots to its current Christian interpretation. To aid my examination of this story, and to trace the changes in iconography and depictions of the kings themselves, I will be illustrating it with a variety beautiful works of art, images made across many centuries that will illuminate this fascination as never before. The lecture will begin by looking at the etymology behind the term ‘magi’ and how it has come down to us and what is now means in contemporary society. 

This lecture will then look at the changing iconography behind the depictions of the story and the various meanings behind these changes in its iconography, not to mention the changes in the story of the adoration of the magi itself.  Moving on the lecture will then look at the origin of the names of the magi and the significance of their gifts to the Christ Child.  Following this exploration of the fundamental roots of the story I will then come to the issue of the inclusion of the black king, where he came from, why he would be included, how significant was he and how European artists tackled the problem of depicting this magus when they themselves had little or no knowledge of such people of colour.  

Finally, I will examining the actual origins of the story and how much of a bearing does that story, as we understand it, have on the actual story written in the Bible.  To examine this final question, I will contrast the relevant passages the biblical with images from many sources to help clarify the difference between those and the example images.  This final part of my lecture will set out to ask what it is we want this story to mean and why do we hold on to the legendary story rather than biblical tale in our mostly Western secular society.

Biographical detail:  Holds a BA in Art History and an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. Was Visiting Lecturer in Art History at the University of Reading in 2005 and 2007, gave lectures and guided tours, plus special talks, at both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery for 18 years. Currently he lectures at the City Literary Institute, Imperial College, London, and has presented a series of talks at the National Maritime Museum and the Courtauld Institute.

Worshipped by Aesthetes and cultivated by Impressionists the sunflower casts its golden rays across art and culture. A personification of the divine and the regal, we trace its history from classical myth to twentieth century painting via Van Dyck and Van Gogh, Clytie and Klimt, Monet, Rivera, Wilde and Watts. Green and gold, human and divine, the adoring and the adored, the Sunflower.

Biographical detail: Twigs Way is a professional researcher and writer fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her work explores themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature...and she enjoys following lesser known paths in garden history towards the unexpected. Her original work was on the history of women in the garden and she retains an active research interest in this topic.

Recent publications include the art and culture of specific flowers including the carnation and the daffodil and her book on the Chrysanthemum in Art and Culture was published October 2020 by Reaktion Press, and she is currently working on the Daffodil in art and culture.

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. 

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

THIS LECTURE WILL BE PRECEDED AT 10.00 AM BY TASES 2022 AGM.  ALL MEMBERS ARE WARMLY INVITED TO ATTEND.

Since the 1950s, Chatsworth and its collections have undergone a renaissance under the leadership of first  the 11th, and now the 12th, Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. This lecture paints a portrait of Devonshire’s treasure house in the modern age, illustrating the extensive recent decorative and furnishing renovations in the house and the restoration of historic interiors, stone work and works of art. The lecture also includes work by modern and contemporary artists in the collection at Chatsworth including Lucian Freud, Elisabeth Frink, David Hockney and David Nash, to Richard Long, Allen Jones, Michael Craig-Martin and Edmund de Waal.

Simon Seligman studied art and architectural history at Warwick University, including a semester in Venice. Also Graduate of the Attingham Summer school. From 1991 until 2010, worked at Chatsworth, in a variety of roles, latterly as Head of Communications. Has lectured about Chatsworth, the Devonshire Collection and associated topics, throughout the UK and on several US tours (including the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Art). Gave numerous public presentations and interviews with the late Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Alongside his lecturing, working part time for John Ruskin’s charity the Guild of St George, a trustee of three arts festivals, and a Life Coach in private practice.

2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael. The monumental figures and clarity of form of his art epitomises the grandeur of the High Renaissance while his masterful drawings, in a variety of media, reflect his creative processes. His early death at the age of 37 belies the scope of his work and future influence. In this lecture, we will study his art and architecture, from his early work in Urbino and Florence to its full maturity in Rome.

Shirley Smith graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses. Also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of the period in the context of the society for which it was produced

The Nazis looted over 20% of Western Art during World War II, confiscating art from Jewish families and emptying museums throughout Europe. This lecture will provide an overview of Nazi looting by setting the scene in Nazi Germany, discussing Hitler’s obsession with art and how the Monuments Men recovered art after the war. Several landmark cases will be discussed in detail, including Gustav Klimt’s celebrated Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the stash of over 1200 artworks found in possession of the son of a notorious Nazi dealer.

Shauna Isaac has been active in World War II art restitution for several years and has worked with families and government organisations to recover Nazi looted art. She set up the Central Registry on Looted Cultural Property and served as a member of the Working Group for the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague. Shauna studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the UK and Smith College in the USA. She is a regular lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Her publications include articles for The Art Newspaper, The Times Literary Supplement and Art Quarterly. She is a contributor to the book Insiders/Outsiders: Refuges from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British Visual Culture.

Born into a Polish family, Misia was a virtuoso pianist taught by Gabriel Fauré, before marrying Thadee Natanson owner of the magazine La Revue Blanche. She was painted many times by Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Eduard Vuillard (who was deeply in love with her), and Renoir who wanted to paint her nude. She knew Debussy and Ravel who dedicated several pieces to her. She later remarried a wealthy businessman and was able to finance Diaghilev’s extraordinary Russian Ballets becoming an integral part of the circle around Picasso, Stravinsky, Cocteau and Nijinsky. Her final marriage was to the Spanish muralist José Sert with whom she travelled extensively, becoming Coco Chanel’s closet friend and confidante. Misia was at the very heart of modern art and music in Paris. Misia Sert was the subject of a major exhibition in the Musée d’Orsay in 2012.

Studied History of Art at Cambridge. Formerly Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at Croydon College of Art. Publications include Venice - the Artist's Vision (1990, 1995), The Art of Diana Armfield RA (1995), Dictionary of Scottish Painters (1990, 1998, 2001, 4th edition 2010), A Hand to Obey the Demon's Eye (2000), Scottish Watercolours 1740-1940 (1986, 1991), A Private View - David Wolfers and the New Grafton Gallery (2002). Interviews artists for the Artist Magazine and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and The Critics Circle. A practising artist, he was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1994 and appointed Keeper in 2010.

Arguably the greatest Victorian polymath, Ruskin stoutly defended both Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. A patient and enthusiastic teacher of drawing, he was a significant collector of paintings and a perceptive critic. A scholar of the northern gothic, he also elucidated the evolution of Venetian architecture. Generous with his treasures, he endowed a museum for working men at Sheffield, supported the Working Men’s College in London and did much to encourage the education of women. In the arts and crafts he advocated high quality workmanship, whilst criticising exploitative industrialists. His books influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi and the founders of the National Trust.

Dr. David Cross is Hon. Research Fellow, Durham University. Founder of the Cumbrian Biographical Project. Past President of Cumbria DFAS. Author of biography of George Romney. Specialises in Lake District artists of all genres. Art history lecturer to undergraduate and adult classes at Universities. Catalogue of Paintings in Durham Castle (2002). In recent years has lectured on cruises in the Mediterranean and Baltic. He has edited two volumes of the illustrated letters of Percy Kelly (1919-1993). His volume in the national series on public sculpture is Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria and was published in 2017.

We are fortunate indeed to have so many parish churches (c.17,000), all different and each with their own unique story to tell. We will explore their development both inside and out, glorying in our wool churches, commanding towers and spires and regional diversity. Churchyards, stained glass. Doom paintings, errant clergymen all feature in this fully illustrated talk.

Andrew Davies is Extra-Mural Tutor for London, Essex and The Open University; Author of 9 books, including The East End Nobody Knows; frequent contributor to radio and television; has lectured all over the world; organises walks to complement his lectures.

Carel Pietersz Fabritius was a Dutch painter. He was a pupil of Rembrandt and worked in his studio in Amsterdam. Fabritius, who was a member of the Delft School, developed his own artistic style and experimented with perspective and lighting. He was only 32 years old when he was accidently killed in Delft, in 1654.

Among his works are A View of Delft, The Goldfinch, and The Sentry.  

Clare Ford-Willie has an 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.

The young artist Aubrey Beardsley created original and shocking images that came to define the 1890s. His astonishingly assured, linear drawings, influenced by Japanese prints and ancient Greek vase paintings, were considered by many to be grotesque, decadent and erotic. This lecture tells the story of Beardsley’s short life and brilliant work.

Dr Susan Owens is an art historian, writer and curator. She studied English literature at Oxford University and European art at the Courtauld Institute, then wrote a doctoral thesis on Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations to Oscar Wilde’s play Salome at University College London.

She was a curator at the Royal Collection before becoming Curator of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Susan has curated many displays and exhibitions and written or co-authored books on natural history illustrations, watercolours, drawings and self-portraits. She is a regular contributor to publications including the Times Literary Supplement, Apollo, the Literary Review and The World of Interiors.

Now freelance, Susan lives in Suffolk. Her recent books include The Ghost: A Cultural History (2017) and Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art (2018). Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape (Thames & Hudson) came out in 2020; it was shortlisted for the Apollo Book of the Year Award and is a Times art book of the year. 

Sandy Burnett’s close relationship with Bach’s music stretches back for decades; between 1997 and 2010 he directed a complete cycle of Bach’s sacred cantatas in West London. In this illustrated talk he explores how Bach brings the Christmas story alive in his Weihnachtsoratorium or Christmas Oratorio, written for Lutheran congregations in 1730s Leipzig. An overview of Bach’s life and achievement precedes a close look at this magnificent work which draws on various forms ranging from recitative, arioso, aria, chorale, and instrumental sinfonia through to full-blown choruses which are infused with the joyous spirit of the dance.

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. Combining engaging scholarship with hands-on expertise, he devises and leads cultural holidays all over the world, is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music, is a highly sought after double bassist on the London jazz scene, and was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19 season.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a man out of step with his time. Scorning the traditional idealised interpretation of religious subjects, he took his models from the streets, painting them realistically and heightening the emotional intensity by his dramatic contracts of light and shade. Such a revolutionary style was condemned by many as was his equally dramatic personal life and uncontrollable temper which involved him in endless brawls and even murder. This lecture will study the life and works of this enigmatic man and of his influence on later artists.

Shirley graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses. Also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of the period in the context of the society for which it was produce

THIS IS A REPLACEMENT TO THE LECTURE PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED

In 1745, a Princess from the minor province of Anhalt-Zerbst in Saxony, married Prince Karl Peter Ulrich of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, heir to the Imperial Russian Throne.

She was Princess Sophie Auguste Frederike and by 1762 she had deposed her, was crowned Empress Catherine II and became the sole ruler of the Russian Empire. With seemingly inexhaustible wealth, she set about creating the most glittering court in Europe, if not the world.

From the arts, to architecture, to the most dazzling of jewels, her passion for cultivating, commissioning and collecting only the finest has formed the nucleus of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

In his talk Andrew guides you through this fascinating time and illustrates what was created, lost and survives to this day, not to mention her private passions.

Andrew's taste for fine 'costume jewellery' can be traced back to an antique market, where he came across a late Victorian brooch set with what he initially thought were emeralds and diamonds. They were, in fact, crystal and green glass set in silver and gold. He realised that beautiful jewellery didn't require expensive stones, and that it was the elegance of the design and the quality of the workmanship that truly mattered. Private commissions then started to trickle in. The trickle turned into a flood, as celebrities such as Michael Jackson (a large crystal and pearl shoulder jewel) and Shirley Bassey (necklaces) were seen wearing Andrew's creations.

In 2002, the V&A commissioned a collection of jewels to accompany the resplendent Tiaras, Past and Present exhibition which became one of their most popular exhibits. The exposure gained by the show then led to Andrew's jewellery appearing in film.

In 2005, he was asked to make tiaras and jewellery for Mrs Henderson Presents starring Judy Dench. In 2009, pieces were commissioned for The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt and Miranda Richardson. In 2012, he was chosen by the creators of Downton Abbey to supply a large collection of jewellery for the third series. The characters played by Maggie Smith, Shirley Maclaine, Elizabeth McGovern and Michelle Dockery were all adorned with elegant tiaras, combs, earrings and necklaces designed and created by Andrew Prince.

COVID-19 SITUATION AND ANY RESTRICTIONS PERMITTING

Illustrated with many wonderful works of art, this lecture tells the extraordinary story of the rise of the son of a lawyer in Ajaccio, Corsica, to become Emperor of the French before finally being defeated and sent into exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. It also attempts to explain the nature of his genius as an administrator and a military commander, assessing his achievements and his failures, his strengths and his weaknesses. Among the topics covered will be his marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais, his relationship with the Duke of Wellington, and his place within history. It is in some ways a very human story, but one which focuses on one of the most remarkable men who has ever lived.

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

THIS LECTURE  IS POSTPONED TO A DATE TO BE ADVISED, BECAUSE OF COVID VIRUS PRECAUTIONS

Dickens is the most visual of writers. This is reflected in his  love of art and artists. Suspicious of connoisseurs and dealers he admired the art of his friends and contemporaries like Augustus Egg, William Powell Frith and John Leech. This lecture explores Dickens relationship with art, his criticism, his commissioning and those that depicted the world he had created in his novels. 2020 is the 150th anniversary of the death of Britain's greatest  novelist.

Biographical note; Studied at the Slade School of Art and at the universities of Birmingham and Manchester. Was Curator at the Watts Gallery, now Curator of the Gainsborough Museum and lectures regularly at the Tate, Russell-Cotes Gallery, Museum of London, Guildhall Art Gallery, Bristol University and Mercer Art Gallery. Has also presented talks in New York.  Publications  include George Frederic Watts: Victorian Visionary (2008), The Art of Satire: London in Caricature (2006), and William Powell Frith: Painting in the Victorian Age (2006).

Rembrandt is considered by many to be Holland’s greatest artist and the equal of Mozart, Shakespeare and Michelangelo. Unlike van Gogh, the other great Dutch artist, Rembrandt has not left much written material explaining his views on art, but what he has left is a unique visual autobiography in his self-portraits which he did from the age of 20 to 63, the year of his death. This lecture will use the self-portraits as a thread through his life and with his other masterpieces explore the man and what, why, and how he painted. Was he indeed a businessman or bohemian, rebel or romantic?

Biographical Note; Jane Choy-Thurlow is a docent and enjoys giving lectures and tours at the Mauritshuis, Prince William V gallery and  Huygens Museum Hofwijck in The Hague, The Netherlands. A few of the many exhibits in the Mauritshuis she has been part of are: the  legendary Johannes Vermeer exhibit, Rembrandt by Himself and Holbein, Portraitist of the Renaissance.

An active member of The Arts Society, she is a founding member of DFAS of The Hague and has fulfilled committee positions including  chairman and Mainland Europe Area Chairman and presently is Area Trainer and a New Societies committee member. She received her BSc from Salem State University, USA, her Med from Trinity College Dublin and continued art history studies at Leiden University.

Using illustrations from illuminated manuscripts, readings from literature and contemporary accounts, and the haunting songs and lively dance tunes of medieval England, Sarah brings alive the spirit of a Medieval Christmas, a time of joy and celebration for some, but hardship and suffering for others. With extracts from literature and manorial household accounts, she pieces together life in a medieval manor house at Yuletide. In addition to her reproduction medieval harps, she adds the plucked psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, hammered dulcimer, and gemshorn to the musical mix, performing carols, music and readings for an atmospheric and musical seasonal celebration. 

Biographical Note:  Sarah is a graduate and prize-winner from the Royal Academy of Music and in 2015 was elected an Associate. She performs, writes and lectures about the harp regularly in America, Australia, Europe and UK. All lectures are presented digitally and include live music and songs on harps and other instruments depending on subject matter. 

THIS LECTURE WILL FOLLOW ON FROM THE AGM, WHICH WILL START AT 10.00 a.m.

A highly topical lecture, given the current arguments about the multi-billion pound restoration planned for Westminster! The Houses of Parliament is one of the most famous and staggering buildings in the world. Its rises serenely from the Thames at Westminster, on a site which has been the centre of power and  government in England from the earliest times. It is a masterpiece of Victorian architecture and a spectacular feat of civil engineering, but from the beginning, its design and construction were a battleground for its architect, Charles Barry. The practical challenges, even by the standards of Victorian invention, were immense Battling the interference of MPs and royalty, coaxing and soothing the genius of his partner Pugin, fending off the mad schemes of a host of crackpot inventors and busybodies, and coming in three times over budget and twenty-four years behind schedule, this lecture will tell the story of how Charles Barry created the most famous    building in Britain.

Biographical Note: Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and Mary Beard called it ‘microhistory at its absolute best’. Its acclaimed sequel, Mr Barry’s War, about the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was a Book of the Year in 2016 for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was described by Lucy Worsley as ‘a real jewel, finely wrought and beautiful’. Caroline was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in 2017, has appeared at the Cheltenham, Hay and Henley literary festivals and on BBC radio and TV.

No synopsis yet exists for this lecture.

Biographical details: Focusing on the role of posters and poster artists in the history of advertising, this global-award winning Creative Director of international advertising agencies has lectured extensively on design, illustration and photographic styles as they have influenced the building of brands. He has himself created posters for major brands including British Airways, Nestlé, Sony, General Motors and Shell. His travel writing and photography has appeared in various airline magazines as well as Time. He has also written and produced several hundred TV and Radio commercials and corporate video programmes.

According to historian Barbara Tuchman, the invention of the ball ranks as highly as the invention of the wheel. Simon Inglis agrees, especially after spending years delving into cubbyholes at pavilions and museums, in workshops and factories, finding out how these apparently simple objects came into being and how their design and manufacture has evolved. He asks, why are marbles glass? Why did the discovery of gutta percha transform golf? Why were games such as lawn tennis and ping pong made possible only in the mid 19th century? Why did some billiard balls explode, and why are rugby balls such an odd shape? In 1853 the ingredients of one manufacturer's cricket balls were listed as cork, worsted, hemp, brown oats, suet, lard, alum, stale ale and dragon's blood. Can this really be true, or is it, perhaps, just a load of old balls?

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

Everyone is aware about “1066 and all that” without necessarily knowing the exact facts about this momentous event. This lecture will present in details the historical, cultural and artistic aspects of that unique masterpiece, the Bayeux Tapestry, which provides posterity with such a startling testimonial of   peoples’ lives in the late Viking age. 

Biographical note: BA Hons Courtauld Institute; Diploma: Study Centre for the History of Fine & Decorative Arts. Freelance lecturer in Fine Arts and tour-guide to Berlin, Dresden, Munich. Chairman of the Board of     Trustees of the  Dresden Trust

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is arguably the most important Indian artistic figure of the modern era. The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, claimed that he had two gurus: Gandhi and Tagore. A renowned poet, novelist, composer and painter, Tagore is also the only person in history to have written the national anthems for two countries (India and Bangladesh). He became a global sensation when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the first non-European to do so. This lecture provides an introduction to Tagore’s remarkable life and work, including his novels, poetry, songs and paintings. It also explores the role Tagore’s art played in the story of India’s fight for independence.

Biographical Note: Dr John Stevens is a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a member of academic staff at the SOAS South Asia Institute. His PhD in History is from University College London. He teaches British Imperial history, Indian history and Bengali language, and is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh. He publishes widely in the fields of British and Indian history. His biography of the Indian guru Keshab      Chandra Sen will be published by Hurst in 2018. He appears regularly in the Indian media, and was recently a guest on BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time, discussing the poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore. 

At the turn of the last century, Vienna was the capital of a vast empire and one of the most exciting artistic laboratories in the world. It produced painters such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, architects like Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Looking at these and others figures in the context of the society in which they worked, this talk asks how and why the City of Dreams became a cultural hotbed around 1900. 

Our Tours Secretary has linked a five day tour to Vienna, departing on May 16th 2019, to this lecture.  Contact Hilary Cramp for details.

Biographical note; A writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to         newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. Lectures widely about the culture of  Central  Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York, as well as for history of art societies and The Art Fund. 

The birth of documentary films in the 1930s with clips from Victorian and Edwardian films, through the experimental Soviet era to the 129 films produced by the GPO Film Unit in seven years, including 'Night Mail' with  poetry by W H Auden and music by Benjamin Britten.

Biographical note; Born during the Second World War, Howard was educated in Scotland and gained an MA from Trinity College, Dublin. In the 1960s he worked for UK and International Advertising Agencies before starting his own marketing and print company in Canterbury. His website on http://www.howardsmith.me.uk has full details. He was delighted to gain accreditation as an Arts Society lecturer in 2017.  His lectures mainly cover an extraordinary thirty year period which saw immense change, ingenuity and creativity .

For the series Downton Abbey, Andrew was commissioned to produce many jewels for the main characters, and this inspired him to create a talk based on Downton and the changing styles of the time portrayed.  Jewellery and Fashion are often seen as two entirely separate and distinct fields of design, but this is very far from the case.  In his talk Andrew guides you through the extraordinary periods and events between 1890 and 1929, where the great fashion houses collaborated with the finest of jewellers to produce works of art of outstanding quality and glittering opulence. Along with this he discusses the clients and patrons who commissioned the    jewels and how they were worn with the sumptuous gowns.

Biographical note; Andrew Prince has had a passion for the jewellery since he was a small child. In 1980, when he was nine, Andrew's mother took him to the Princely Magnificence exhibition at the V&A, exhibiting Renaissance jewels dating from 1500 to 1630. It proved a revelation. Dazzled by the splendour and opulence of the jewels on show, Andrew decided then and there that creating jewellery was what he wanted to devote his life to.   Andrew started work in London’s Bond Street, working for The Antiques Roadshow expert Ian Harris. He then joined the renowned contemporary jeweller Elizabeth Gage and worked with her on the design and production side. Andrew's taste for fine 'costume jewellery' can be traced back to an antique market, where he  realised that  beautiful jewellery didn't require expensive stones.  In 2012, he was chosen by the creators of Downton Abbey to supply a large collection of jewellery.

An eclectic mix of artistic and moral landscapes in eighteenth century England. Contemporary with    England’s greatest landscaper, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Gainsborough was an originator of the      English landscape painting school. We will examine a selection of his paintings and portraits to identify what we see in the managed countryside. Art as nature or nature as art? Another contemporary and Bath contact was Coplestone Bampfylde Warre, a gentleman artist who lived at Hestercombe near   Taunton. The lesser known tragedy at the Linley family’s estate in Lincolnshire, Grimsthorpe Castle,  provides links between Gainsborough, Brown and Sheridan. Gainsborough trained with William Hogarth whose landscapes are rather more urban with explicit moral messages.    Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens provide a striking contrast between the rural idyll and urban fabrication as well as social mores .

Biographical note: Has lectured in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe and Japan, and in 2017 returns to The Arts    Society in New Zealand. Lectures for the University of Cambridge ICE (Course Director for International Summer Programme), the Royal Horticultural Society, museums, and travel companies. Consultant designer specializing in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references. Author of 11 books including Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies. Theatre productions: How does your garden grow Mr. Shakespeare and  Impressionists in their Gardens: living light and colour. Presenter and contributor on television and BBC Radio 4.  

The Christmas Tree presents us with over five centuries of art and meaning. Vital to the imagery of both the pagan world and Christianity, its significance emerges in Norse yuletide, ancient Rome and with the early-medieval saints, before its diverse strands were drawn together to symbolize the modern Christmas. It is wrapped in legend, from the Icelandic sagas to St Boniface, from the Mystery Plays to Martin Luther. In art, the forest fir has made the transition from Viking rock carvings to German Romanticism and Scandinavian naturalism, on its way to finding its place as an icon of our modern     festival. Decorated and shimmering with light, it has brought Christmas from outside the home into the heart of the family, it has drawn soldiers together across No-Man’s Land, and it continues to symbolize its essential, timeless message of Peace on Earth. 

Biographical note: MA , RCA and PhD European University Institute, Florence. Having previously worked at the V&A and lectured there and for the University of Warwick, now lectures for the Open University. Has lectured widely in Britain; at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Museum of London amongst others, and to specialist groups including the Art Fund, the Ceramics Society, the Costume Society and the Ancient Monuments Society. She has also lectured in Europe, the USA  and Canada and has numerous publications.

Orpheus could quite literally charm the birds out of the trees with his music - yet he failed to bring his beloved Eurydice safely out of the Underworld. All he had to do was to lead her up to the light without looking back at her… Not surprisingly the tale of how the legendary singer lost his lover through a single glance has inspired much great music (including the first masterpiece of opera, Monteverdi’s Orfeo), and visual artists too have responded to this tragic story of love and loss.  Explore the wealth of art and music on the theme of Orpheus, with a rich array of paintings and musical examples from Monteverdi, Gluck, and Offenbach, even taking in the Can-Can!

Biographical note:  Dr Lois Oliver studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute,  completing an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art . She worked at the Harvard University Art Museums before joining the curatorial team at the V&A and then the National Gallery where she co-curated the major exhibition Rebels and Martyrs: the image of the artist in the      nineteenth century (2006) and a series of touring exhibitions. Currently Assistant Professor in History of Art at the University of Notre Dame in London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute, she writes audio and multimedia tours for clients  and has appeared on TV programmes for the BBC and Channel 5, as well as  broadcasting on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. Also a keen violinist, she plays regularly with orchestras.