News

Dear Members and Friends, Hope that you have all had a good summer.  After a year when the number of attendees at lectures has gradually increased, I am delighted to confirm our first post-pandemic programme to be held entirely in person at St. Nicolas Hall in Guildford.  Please do share with any potential visitors or new members. We will start ...

The May lecture will now take place on Tuesday 23rd May ...

I am very sorry to have to inform you that November's lecture has been postponed. Julian Pooley has tested positive for coronavirus, unfortunately, and is not well enough to visit. Please spread the word to anyone you know was planning to attend. I will look to reschedule the lecture as part of next year's programme. We had planned to receive ...

Two of the lectures this year are having to be swapped, due to unforseen circumstance. The new dates are: Tuesday 18 October 2022   Prof. A. Curry - English views of Joan of Arc from the 15th to 21st centuries. Tuesday 17 January 2023  Prof. P. Corfield - The New Aristocracy of Talent in Eighteenth-Century Britain ...

The AGM of the Branch will be held at 7.30pm on Monday, 12 September. This will be held in accordance with the procedures set out by the Historical Association and, as last year, will be a Zoom Meeting of the Branch Committee. The Agenda is set out below. Any member of the Branch who wishes to attend the AGM, or ...

Dear Members and Friends, I must start this newsletter by extending my thanks to Chris Mitchinson for his decade long stint as chair which is coming to an end this summer.  I am sure that you will agree that he has been an excellent chair and has continued to discover new and engaging lecturers, even during the challenging last couple ...

We hope that the vast bulk of the meetings will be live at St. Nicolas Hall but we will finalise plans in the light of the latest covid background in mid-September. (Please watch out for confirmatory e mails). Options range from live meetings to Zoom or some combination of the two but it would greatly help if any member was ...

The series of Zoom lectures that began in September as our safest and only permissible response to the Covid situation have provided some excellent presentations. One advantage of using Zoom is that the PowerPoint presentations can be seen with amazing clarity. One lecture suffered to a degree by an inadequate microphone on the presenter’s PC. The Committee have decided to ...

Race, Region and Rebellion: The Origins of the American Civil War 1846-1861 by Prof Lawrence Goldman, University of London. The American civil war lasted for 4 years, in which 700,000 Americans lost their lives. The Battle of Gettysburg had armies of 100,000 on both sides. One of the consequences of the American civil war, led to a greater control of ...

Accidental Death in Tudor Surrey: How People Died Reveals Much About How They Lived by Professor Steven Gunn, Professor of Early Modern History, Merton College, Oxford. Professor Steven Gunn is currently leading a research project, looking into 9,000 inquests from the 16th century. One may think that these 16th century inquests are just  routine reports  into the deaths of a ...

Whose Heritage? Imperial trophies and national treasures from the Elgin Marbles to the Benin Bronzes. Emeritus Professor Tony Stockwell, Royal Holloway College, University of London. 29 September 2020 The original trophies, that were bought back to Europe, originally came previous ancient eastern Mediterranean cultures, with the most well know being the Elgin marbles, and the Egyptian treasures from the French ...

One of the joys of studying history is that current issues that seem so overwhelming and novel are on reflection merely the latest variants of problems that have recurred in many different eras, geographic locations and very different cultural milieus. Often as the person responsible for putting together the branch programme (albeit with more than a little help from my ...