Dear Members and Friends,
I hope that you are well and having a good summer.
Earlier this year our branch President Graham Searle passed away. Graham served the branch as Chair for ten years, before another decade spent as President, but his impact went far beyond that. He was our primary contact point for local schools for many years and a warm and wise contributor to all committee discussions. He was also always ready with a probing question during Q&As. Graham was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the HA and to mark his contributions to the branch we will hold a lecture each year in his memory. Graham will be much missed.
Jane Saul, our Honorary Treasurer, was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at the Historical Association Awards Evening last month. Jane first joined the HA when she was at school and has been affiliated to the West Surrey branch for over 30 years. Before her current role, Jane was our branch Secretary for many years as well as taking on numerous other responsibilities, from organizing visits to second hand book sales. Jane was also a founding member of the national HA Branches and Membership Committee. It is fantastic that Jane’s contributions to the HA have been recognised at the national level.
At the same event, Tormead School in Guildford was awarded the Historical Association Quality Mark for History Gold Award. Congratulations to all at the department!
Last year saw attendances continue to increase towards pre-Covid levels. Hopefully this year’s programme will attract increasing numbers of members and visitors, plus sixth form groups. We will start in September with Professor Richard Hoyle from the University of Reading, who will consider reactions to the end of the harvest in the mid-nineteenth century. Professor Hoyle’s lecture is inspired by an engraving from Swallowfield, near Wokingham.
October will see our inaugural The Graham Searle Lecture. Professor Colin Jones, recently returned from a couple of years teaching in the United States, will deliver a talk resulting from his current research into the letters of the Duchess d’Elbeuf, a hostile witness to revolutionary events in France between 1788 and 1794.
Our focus will switch to the medieval period in November, when Dr Emily Winkler will cover how changes in circumstances led contemporary historians to rewrite history, rejecting what no longer made sense and supplying new material to fill gaps or expand ideas. The Oxford University academic will discuss how and why this happened across Europe in a distinctive way compared to what had been written before and would follow.
The last lecture of 2024 will feature Dr. Alana Harris, from King’s College London, who was due to visit us earlier in 2024 before being invited to attend a closed workshop at the Vatican. She will share the results of her research into Horton Cemetery, between Epsom and Chessington, which was the largest psychiatric cemetery in Europe.
Our programme will continue in 2025 when we will first host Professor Robert Gildea from the University of Oxford. He will share the results of his recent research into the mining communities affected by the strikes of the 1980s.
We will then switch to a topic which is probably much less familiar to most of us. Professor Natalia Nowakowska, also from the University of Oxford, will give an introduction to the Jagiellonians in February 2025. The Jagiellonians were a minor branch of the Lithuanian royal family who came to rule over a vast area of eastern Europe by the sixteenth century, including the modern capitals of countries including Hungary, Czechia, Poland and Ukraine.
We will switch to a more modern Empire in March, as Dr. Gillian Lamb, Lecturer in Modern History at King’s College London, explores the experiences of juvenile emigrants to parts of the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The following month, one of our favourite lecturers will return to cover the Court of Henry VII. Professor Steven Gunn from Merton College, Oxford, has entertained the branch on many occasions with his lectures on the Tudor period, most recently via Zoom during the pandemic. It will be great to have him back with us in person.
We will end the 2024/2025 programme with a visit from Professor Emma Griffin from Queen Mary, University of London. Professor Griffin is currently serving a four-year term as President of the Royal Historical Society and will encourage us to rethink the history of the industrial revolution.
Best wishes
Matthew Smith
Chair
24 Sept 2024 – Prof. Richard Hoyle, Visiting Professor of Economic History at the University of Reading – Celebrating the end of the harvest in the mid-nineteenth century.
15 Oct 2024 – The Graham Searle Lecture – Prof. Colin Jones, Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, Queen Mary, University of London – “With terror riding pillion”: A Duchess, Her Letters, and Confronting the French Revolution.
12 Nov 2024 – Dr. Emily Winkler, Lecturer in Medieval History, St Edmund Hall & Hertford College, University of Oxford – Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages.
10 Dec 2024 – Dr. Alana Harris, Reader in Modern British History, King’s College London – Doing History in Public Places: Lessons from a Historic England Project on Europe’s Largest Psychiatric Cemetery, in Surrey.
21 Jan 2025 – Prof. Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History, Worcester College, University of Oxford – Backbone of the Nation. Mining Communities & The Great Strike of 1984-85.
25 Feb 2025 – Prof. Natalia Nowakowska, Professor of European History, Somerville College, University of Oxford – The Jagiellonians (1377-1596): From Pagan Tribe to High Renaissance Dynasty.
25 March 2025 – Dr. Gillian Lamb, Lecturer in Modern British History, King’s College London – A Brave “New” World? Juvenile emigrants as settlers 1850-1900.
29 April 2025 – Prof. Steven Gunn, Professor of Early Modern History, Merton College, University of Oxford – The Court of Henry VII.
20 May 2025 – Prof. Emma Griffin, Professor of British History, Queen Mary, University of London – Why was Britain first? Rethinking the history of the industrial revolution.