“Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money,” remarked Joseph Duveen. It was a simple enough observation, but there was only one man who was perfectly positioned to combine his quintessential English charm with an unparalleled gift for creative salesmanship, allowing him to convince the tight-fisted titans of Wall Street (Frick, Morgan, Mellon etc.) that there was indeed one thing more important than money - art - and, “when you pay high for the priceless, you’re getting it cheap”. Without Duveen, two of America's three most highly rated museums - the Met in New York and the National Gallery in DC - would struggle, perhaps even fail, to be considered world-class today. But was he just a charismatic crook milking millionaires, or was he indeed truly deserving of the title, ‘world’s greatest art dealer'?

 Mark is the founder of AmericanAristocracy.com and lectures regularly in Europe and the United States, notably at the New-York Historical Society. After leaving Stowe School, Mark worked for twenty years as a plumber in London. However, his real passion has always been history, and he delights in 'telling a story,' not 'giving a lecture'. Packed with facts and laced throughout with humour, he takes a particular joy in bringing to life the stories behind the people that shape houses; and, his area of special interest lies in the great American houses and American social history, from pre-revolution to the end of the Gilded Age. 

Find out, in this very light-hearted lecture, about the various ceremonial events that take place around Christmas time. Carol services, concerts and even Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace and Windsor all play their part. How do the Chelsea Pensioners prepare and celebrate the festive season? All will be revealed so, come along and feel wrapped in a blanket of Christmas loveliness.

 Dr Graham Jones started his professional life as a musician in the British Army and over a glittering career spanning nearly forty years he retired as the Senior Director of Music, Household Division and Director of Music, Coldstream Guards a position unequalled throughout military music in Great Britain. During his illustrious career he has recorded over 40 albums and been responsible for the largest commissioning programme of wind band music in recent history commissioning over 30 new works for wind band. He pioneered a music education programme with the University of Salford for military musicians resulting in a new Master of Music in performance degree. Graham was made a Member of the British Empire by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace for outstanding service to military music in 1993. Having retired, at the start of 2012, from military service Graham is enjoying a second career as a guest conductor, adjudicator, guest speaker, lecturer, clinician, recording consultant and educator. He is also the Artist Director of London International Band Week, music consultant to Henley Music Festival, resident conductor of the British Imperial Orchestra, visiting conductor in residence at Troy University, Alabama, USA and guest lecturer on cruise ships.  Graham’s charitable work includes event planning in support of the Royal British Legion and sitting on the London fundraising committee of the Army Benevolent Fund - the Soldiers Charity.

Ice Age art - dating from c.40,000 to 12,000 years ago - continues to be found every year, in the form of both portable objects and images on cave walls and on rocks in the open air. This talk will present a selection of the most recent discoveries, many of them still unknown to the general public, and a few still unpublished. Most are in western Europe, but other regions from Florida to the Nile Valley have also entered the picture in recent years.

Paul Bahn

Studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and completed PhD thesis (1979) on the prehistory of the French Pyrenees. Has held post-doctoral fellowships, at Liverpool and London, plus a J. Paul Getty postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities. Devotes time to writing, editing and translating books on archaeology, plus occasional journalism and as much travel as possible. Main research interest is prehistoric art, especially rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic art, as well as Easter Island. Led the team which, at his instigation, searched for and discovered the first Ice Age cave art in Britain (at Creswell Crags) in 2003.

What did the stories of King Arthur and his knights and ladies mean to Victorian and Edwardian artists and their audiences? From tragic romance to political statement, we'll be examining how Arthurian legend was portrayed in the arts from William Dyce's virtuous paintings in Parliament's Robing Room to Aubrey Beardsley's darker take on the legends in his illustrations to the Morte d'Arthur and beyond to revivals of Celtic legend in the Edwardian period. 

Kirsty Hartsiotis

Kirsty was the curator of the decorative and fine art at The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham from 2008 to 2023. She is currently a curator at Swindon Museums, where she also worked prior to 2008.  At Cheltenham she looked after the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection, which includes the important private press archive, the Emery Walker Library. She’s curated many exhibitions on the Arts and Crafts and Private Press Movements, including Crafting Change and Ernest Gimson: Observation, Imagination & Making, as well as on modern art movements, such as A Very British Art Revolution. Her current exhibition at Swindon is all about British studio pottery, Beneath the Surface: A Century of British Studio Ceramics, May 2026-Feb 2027. Passionate about sharing her deep love for and knowledge of the arts, she’s also a freelance researcher, currently researching the work of Arts and Crafts designers in churches in the South West, and Arts and Crafts war memorials. She’s also been an oral storyteller for over 20 years, and has published a number of collections of stories. She is a regular columnist for Cotswold Life, writes for diverse other publications on art history and folklore, and was the newsletter editor for the Society of Decorative Art Collections.

A jam-packed hour of information and entertainment. Take a trip with Margaret as she delves into the 5000-year history, development, design, music, and lore of this fascinating instrument. Boasting over 1400 working parts, you will learn how the complex pedal mechanism was introduced and perfected into the instrument played today together with slides of the extraordinary designs as the instrument developed over the centuries. Indulge in the lavishly decorated Rococo harps made for Queen Marie Antoinette, the fashion statement that became associated with the instrument - and listen as Margaret plays her harp for you on this unique musical journey.

Margaret Watson

Margaret studied harp under the late Sidonie Goossens OBE and Sussex harpist Helen Arnold. She holds a Diploma in Music Performance on the harp and is also a Fellow of The Guild of Musicians and Singers. Now one of the busiest harpists in the Southeast, Margaret has played for Royalty, given concerts at National Trust properties, played at City Guildhall, Clarence House, The Garrick Club, The Savoy, Ritz, Dorchester and Hilton Langham Hotels in London, Glyndebourne Opera House, Covent Garden and for many weddings, private parties, group meetings, receptions, launches, corporate, civic and charity functions. Margaret is a very active member of the charity ‘Music in Hospitals and Care’ and gives bedside concerts for patients and mentally or physically disabled people in hospitals, hospices, and specialist care centres and nursing homes. With her very varied repertoire and often resplendent costumes, she has delighted numerous audiences throughout the UK.

Victorian Barbara Bodichon (1827-1891) was that rare bird, a successful professional female artist. Taught by Corot (among others), her vivid water-colours arguably bridge the gap between the pre-Raphaelites (most of whom were close friends) and the Impressionists. But that's not all: this unsung heroine was also responsible for the development of feminism in Britain. She campaigned for equal opportunity in the workplace, the law, the polling booth, at home, and in the world beyond the kitchen or the drawing-room. She co-founded the first university college for women in Britain (Girton at Cambridge) and kick-started women's fight for the vote. Cheerful, loving and beloved, she’s a very modern heroine. [Places of interest: Sussex, London, Cornwall, Algeria].

Jane Robinson

Dubbed by the BBC 'one of our most original and engaging social historians', Jane is a popular guest at literary festivals and on radio and television. She was born in Edinburgh, brought up in North Yorkshire, and educated at Oxford. Since childhood she’s been an insatiable book-collector (necessarily so, after being banned from the local library at 7 for using a jam-tart bookmark) and worked with a London antiquarian bookseller for ten years before becoming a full-time writer. She specialises in social history through women’s eyes; her 14 books to date include Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education (which inspired the successful stage play by Jessica Swale) and Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, about the first women in the traditional professions. Her most recent book is Trailblazer, an acclaimed biography of the Victorian artist and social reformer Barbara Bodichon, and she’s currently working on Out of Sight, Out of Mind, a social history of women’s madness. As well as writing, lecturing and mentoring early-career writers, Jane is an Enrichment Speaker on Viking Ocean Cruises, and designs pop-up Escape Rooms for charity. And she plays the French Horn. 

Abstract Expressionism and the New York School

Elevating the hand, intuition and eye of the artist, Abstract Expressionism emerged in aftermath of the Second World War as a vibrant American response to European modernism. It marked the shift in cultural power from an exhausted Europe to a newly powerful United States. Once regarded as 'provincial' and conservative, New York superseded Paris as the centre of the art world. Led by the Museum of Modern Art, New York's cultural institutions, media and collectors shaped modern art in the post-war era. Without coalescing around a formal programme but sharing aesthetic values and interests, a group of painters emphasised the materiality and physicality of painting and its two dimensionality detached from observation or naturalistic description. The Abstract Expressionists were influenced by earlier European art movements but began to create a newly confident, American style of painting. This talk explains how Abstract Expressionism developed as a distinct art movement and how some art critics identified it as the logical destination of modernist, abstract painting. Sometimes described as 'macho' and overtly masculine, Abstract Expressionism transformed painting into bold and expansive fields of colour.

Joshua White

Joshua is an enthusiastic and experienced art historian and lecturer who thoroughly enjoys sharing his love and knowledge of art, photography and visual culture with an audience. He is an experienced lecturer in 19th and 20th century European and American art, international contemporary art, photography, design and architecture. Teaching for 20 years at Christie’s Education, the college of Christie's auction house in London, he can provide a lecture or study day with his listed talks or create bespoke talks on request, for example to coincide with a temporary exhibition, special event or anniversary.

At Christie's Education, Joshua was director of The London Art Course and many other courses in the field of modern and contemporary art, ranging from Impressionism and Surrealism to photography and modern sculpture. He has also taught on the client VIP courses for the Chairman's and President's offices at Christie's, the world's biggest art business. 

Drawing on his media experience as a former BBC journalist, Joshua is also a founder and presenter of The Art Channel, an online project documenting and interpreting art exhibitions and artworks in museums and commercial galleries. The channel has now received two million views.

Joshua has direct experience of the art market while working as the Director of Hamiltons Gallery between 2018 and 2020 specialising in 20th Century photography. At Hamiltons, he exhibited and represented Don Mccullin and the estates of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts. 

Elsewhere, he has lectured for Sotheby’s Institute, The University of the Arts, The University of California, Cheung Kong Business School (China's leading business university), Tate Modern and Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum Academy, The National Portrait Gallery, Somerset House, The Design Museum, Union Bank of Switzerland, Artemisia, P & O Cruises and Mr and Mrs Smith. Further to his institutional work, he has worked with numerous private clients (including many former students) in London and led groups abroad to visit Berlin, the Venice Art Biennale and the influential art festival, Documenta in Kassel, Germany. In the UK, he has led groups to visit Bristol, Cambridge, Chichester, Liverpool and Oxford. In 2026, Joshua will be leading tours abroad for Kirker Cultural Tours and ACE Cultural Tours.

On television and radio, Joshua has been a guest contributor to Channel 5’s ‘Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr’, BBC Radio 4’s ‘Behind The Scenes’ and BBC Radio 3’s ‘Turning Picasso.’ As a writer, Joshua has written exhibition catalogues and been published by Hamiltons Gallery, the BBC, The FT, Christie’s Magazine, Flash Art, Wanderlust, Decanter, Lonely Planet, Mr and Mrs Smith and The Nicola Erni Collection of art and photography in Switzerland. 

‘Pins and Poking Sticks’ – Courtly Dress in Shakespeare’s Time

A contemporary of Shakespeare informs us that ‘a ship is sooner rigged by far than a Gentlewoman made perfumed gloves, bugle beads and other irresistible items. What were these objects and what was their role in the ‘art’ of dress?  Moral messages and secretive signals in emblematic jewellery and embroidery contributed to Elizabeth I’s image as the ‘Virgin Queen’. Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits will be decoded; to discover the role they played in courtly culture.

Jacqui Ansell

Jacqui read History of Art and Theory at the University of Essex then gained an MA in History of Dress from the Courtauld Institute. Formerly an Education Officer at the National Gallery, London, and a tutor and writer for the Open University, she lectures regularly on the public programmes of the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Wallace Collection. She's an expert on Court Dress, Grand Tour portraiture and Welsh Costume as well as dating and decoding dress in portraits and has contributed specialist essays on these topics for the Wallace Collection, and Philip Mould. Jacqui has contributed to numerous National Gallery podcasts and appears on their Youtube channel lecturing on 'Love' (amongst other things). As Senior Lecturer at Christie's Education, London she prepared future specialists in fine and decorative arts for the auction world and wrote and presented numerous online courses on history of art, history of design and women artists (available for study now). Her 2023 lecture tour of New South Wales for the Australian Art Society was extremely well received, garnering reviews such as the following:

'Jacqui is exceptional. A detailed eloquent lecture without reference to any notes whatsoever. The images were outstanding, tested to their limits on a full-sized cinema screen' (Narrabri Arts Society for ''Pins and Poking Sticks': Dress in Shakespeare's Time 1564-1616')

From June 2026 you can read her book on 'Fashion' in National Gallery paintings (Yale and National Gallery), and she is currently continuing her original research on Vincent Van Gogh's time spent in England - specifically Ramsgate - in 1876.

This illustrated romp through the performative nature of science and showmanship is presented by renowned performer Dr Tony Lidington. When asked to define his job, Tony describes himself as a showman, as it is close to the role of shaman – a portal to other perceptions of reality… or illusion. This talk explores the ways in which popular culture and science have been fused and confused over the years: how the definitions of what is real, unreal, imaginary, fake or hallucinatory, are all woven together. Learn how pseudo-science and empirical knowledge bifurcate, blur and merge over time, to create a blended muddle of perception that we sometimes call truth, sometimes fakery, or sometimes a show. A lively talk that mixes science, social science and performing arts...there will also be fun!

Tony Lidington

Tony has been a showman, researcher and teacher for over 40 years: he has run theatre venues, companies, festivals and events for and with a wide range of diverse communities. He specialises in historical popular entertainment forms and their application to contemporary contexts and in 2017, he was awarded a doctorate by Exeter University for his research into itinerant British performance forms and where he is now a part-time lecturer. He regularly broadcasts for both radio and television – such as David Walliams’ and Lee Mack’s episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? and most recently with Miriam Margolyes on Channel 4 as part of her programme about Dickensian Christmas. However, he is perhaps best known by families throughout the country, as ‘Uncle Tacko!’ - ringmaster of his extraordinary flea circus and the founder of ‘The Pierrotters’, Britain’s last professional seaside pierrot troupe. Tony is the author of "Don’t Forget The Pierrots!'' The Complete History of British Pierrot Troupes & Concert Parties, published by Routledge in 2022.

A fascinating look at how artists have portrayed a powerful woman over 2,000 years.

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.

Lucy Hughes-Hallet

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s most recent book on the 17th century Duke of  Buckingham, The Scapegoat,  has won the Plutarch Award for Biography of the Year and the Randy Shilts Award for Non-Fiction.   Her previous biography, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio was described in The Sunday Times as ‘the biography of the decade’. It won 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 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).  

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she is a widely respected critic.  She was Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize. 

Jim Thompson arrived in Bangkok as a US army officer in 1945, fell in love with it and stayed. Captivated by the beauty of Thai silk, an ancient craft in decline, he resuscitated it and made it famous, creating costumes for films and embellishing his house, which today is a museum. An aesthete and art collector, he created an exquisite home from six handcarved teakwood houses brought from the countryside and filled it with Asian art. Here he became a legendary host. This lecture tells the story of his achievements, showing the intricate process of silk production and its illustrious heritage, including royal robes and temple murals. It touches on films featuring his silks, reveals his house and its art collection and reflects on a life that ended with his mysterious disappearance.

Denise Heywood

Author, lecturer, photographer and journalist. She worked in Cambodia in the 1990s and has been a scholar of Southeast Asian art ever since. Her books include one on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Laos, also in French, and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by the daughter of King Sihanouk. Lectures for the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies on their post-graduate Asian Art Course and has also lectured for V&A, Madingley Hall (University of Cambridge), British Museum, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Asia House, National Trust, Royal Geographical Society and lectured worldwide for universities, museums, colleges, art institutions, literary societies and travel organisations. She writes for art, literary and travel publications and has appeared on television and radio. She has led cultural tours to Southeast Asia and France for the Royal Academy, the Art Fund, Asia House and many more and lectures on cruise ships. 

The architecture – domestic, commercial and spiritual – of Whitechapel and Spitalfields closely reflects the characteristics of its communities. This talk takes in three hundred years of East London history by exploring the fascinating and enduring legacy of the Huguenot and Jewish communities. At the heart of the story are wondrous buildings like the Nicholas Hawksmoor gem Christ Church Spitalfields, the new model dwellings built for the poor of the area, and the exotic Moorish arcades of Fashion Street. Encounter a host of figures including the writer Daniel Defoe, the brewer Benjamin Truman, and Anna Maria Garthwaite, a Lincolnshire vicar's daughter who produced designs for the Huguenot silk weavers of Fournier Street and Spital Square. Understand the impact on the architecture of the district of those who dedicated themselves to improving the lives of the poor such as Willam Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, and Samuel and Henrietta Barnett of the Toynbee House Settlement.

Mark Connelly

I have always been obsessed with history. My Dad, a London cabbie, drove me around the streets of the capital from the youngest age showing me how every building and stone of London bears witness to the past. My passion for history led me to undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and then a career in University teaching and research. From 2008 to 2024 I was Professor of Modern British History at the University of Kent, and during the First World War centenary I was director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, Gateways to the First World War, a centre designed to encourage public engagement with the centenary. This saw me engage with a wide range of organisations and groups and work in collaboration with the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

As someone committed to the idea of ensuring that all learning is accessible and engaging, and that the excitement of encountering the past can be felt by all, I have much experience of talking to history and heritage groups. My specialism is the cultural history of late nineteenth century and twentieth century Britain with a focus on the architectural and horticultural work of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission. This specialism means I am a regular speaker at Western Front Association branches (examples of my talks can be seen on the association's YouTube channel), and in 2023 I was presented with an award by the association in recognition of my outstanding services as a speaker and organiser of events.