How to read an English Country Church: Pre-Christian to the Anglo-Saxon
Nicholas Henderson
Architectural, historical, religious and social changes have shaped and formed our church buildings. It is possible to ‘read’ the passage of time, movements, cultures and peoples in the architecture and art forms evident in many of our English country churches. This lecture will take us through the first of four overarching eras, from the pre-Christian era, through the arrival of the Romans, to the Anglo-Saxons.
Escomb Saxon Church – english-church-architecture.net
A graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Nicholas trained for the Anglican ministry at Ripon Hall, Oxford. He was formerly Bishop-elect for the Diocese of Lake Malawi in Central Africa (2005-2009) and undertook his doctorate on Lay Anglican Ecclesiology with the University of Wales, Lampeter. He lectures regularly and currently works as a parish priest in West London.
How do dealers, auctioneers and museum staff determine whether a piece is by one painter or another? Artists before the 18th century usually worked with a number of assistants around them, trained to reproduce the style of the master as closely as possible. How can we study these workshop productions, distinguishing between master and pupil, master and copyists? In this lecture, Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe will consider clues, weigh up their relative usefulness, and reveal some of the tricks of the connoisseur.
Chantal has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. She has trained as a painting conservator, and has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989 as well as for a number of societies and institutions in London: these have included the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection.
Charlie Chaplin was a man of contradictions – a playboy and a workaholic, an innovative artist and the last to embrace talking pictures. Chaplin revolutionised the language of cinema and in his guise as The Little Tramp he became the most universally recognised performer of all time. He had a tortured private life, but he was adept at using elements of that life in his films. He was one of the few Hollywood producers to make an overt political stand in his films Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). His early films, particularly The Kid (1921) drew on the experiences of immigrants and the urban poor and on memories of his own deprived childhood in the slums of London.
Wikipedia
Colin Shindler has been lecturing on American and British social and cultural history for over 20 years. He was awarded his PhD at Cambridge University and subsequently lectured on film for their History Faculty between 1998 and 2019, exploring its relationship to modern British and American social and cultural history.
Between 1975 and 1999 he pursued a wide-ranging career as a writer and producer in television, radio and film. He won a BAFTA award for his production of A Little Princess. His production of Young Charlie Chaplin was nominated for a US Prime Time Emmy. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Buster and was the producer of various television dramas such as Lovejoy and Wish Me Luck.
He has written three novels as well as numerous television scripts and radio plays: his most recent radio play Leni Goes to Hollywood, about the German film director Leni Riefenstahl, was broadcast on Radio 4 in August 2021. Other radio plays for R4 included How To Be AnInternee (about P.G. Wodehouse) and one on Private Eye & The Profumo Affair (Rumours).
He is the author of BarbedWire and Cucumber Sandwiches: The Controversial South AfricaCricket Tour of 1970 which was short listed for the MCC/Wisden Cricket Book of the Year in 2021. He is best known for his childhood memoir ManchesterUnitedRuined My Life which was short listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. His other publications include HollywoodGoes To War: Films & American 1952 Society 1939-and Hollywood inCrisis: Films & American Society 1929-1939. I’m Sure I speak for Thousands of Others (2017) was a history of unpublished letters written to the BBC and his non-fiction novel Garbo &Gilbert in Love was an imaginative reconstruction of the infamous relationship of the two MGM stars.
He is currently working on the television adaptation of his novel HollywoodNazis. His next book is titled Granada Land: Coronation Street and the Emergence of the North 1960-1970.
This lecture will follow the Annual General Meeting which will begin at 10:30am.
Sharandeep Kaur, the recipient of the Bursary for the best Foundation Year student 2022 at Warwickshire college received her certificate and cheque from Shaun Pitt in June. In the autumn, Sharandeep will start a Fashion course at Kingston University.
We will be based at the 4 star Crown Hotel & Spa in Scarborough which stands elegantly above the south beach retaining many of its original features whilst being modern in decoration and furnishings throughout.
We will explore this beautiful part of the country including Hardwick Hall en-route, Castle Howard, Whitby Abbey also a guided art and landscape tour at Yorkshire Sculpture Park on the return journey.
Roz Crampton will be upstairs with information and brochures
The Day of Special Interest held on Friday 31 March 2023 had three lectures on “1000 Years of Coronations”. It was held at The Warwickshire Country Club, Leek Wootton, CV35 8BT, and the presenter was Barbara Askew who is a historian and Blue Badge guide.
Richard II July 1377 – Wikipedia, image in public domain
During this Study Day, Barbara talked about the evolution of the Coronation ceremony from Saxon times up to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She described the stages of the coronation from the Proclamation through to the Homage and gave an account of the fascinating incidents, ill omens and memorable mishaps that have occurred at coronations over a thousand years. The different items of Coronation Regalia were described with an explanation of their history, ceremonial significance and liturgical symbolism. There was then an entertaining insight into the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2nd 1953, the first to be witnessed by the people by the new medium of television.
It was an extremely informative day with a lot of relevance for the Coronation of King Charles III
Susan Dunnett Days of Special Interest co-ordinator
This lecture will tell the remarkable story of Carry On actor Peter Butterworth and his wife, Britain’s first female television 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 will reveal the private story behind his parents’ public lives. It’s a journey that will take 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.
Tyler Butterworth spent twenty-five years as an actor working extensively in film, television, theatre and radio. He then worked as a development producer in television documentaries and was closely involved with NASA on a landmark commemorative television series. He now works as a voice actor, recording audiobooks, documentaries and voiceovers, and produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.
Leni Riefenstahl was undoubtedly one of the most creative women of the twentieth century. From her early days dancing on Berlin’s stages, to becoming an actress and then producing her own films, she was always difficult and uncompromising in what she wanted to achieve. Her iconic films of the 1934 Nuremburg Nazi rally and the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were exceptional, using techniques that were way ahead of their time and still used in documentaries today. After the war, having been cleared by three Nazi tribunals, she went to live with a remote tribe in Africa, producing stunning photographs and documentaries.
Howard Smith is a retired graphic designer. Born during the Second World War, he 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.
Jacqueline Cockburn certainly brightened our very dull and rainy day with an excellent and uplifting lecture on the Spanish painter, Joaquin Sorolla, known as the Painter of Light. Sorollo has become more well known in the last 5 years. A prolific and very famous painter during his lifetime. The screen lit up with his large colourful bright canvasses, many showing his favourite theme of the beach in Valencia.
Jacqueline Cockburn is a course director and lecturer at the V & A, lectures at The Royal Academy, The Art Fund and The London Art History Society, and has toured New Zealand and Australia for The Arts Society. Her specialist field is Spanish Art. She is Managing Director of an arts tours company running residential courses in Andalucía in the art and culture of the region.
The past decade has seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile British designer with his acclaimed Olympic cauldron, the iconic new London bus, and designs for a spectacular new headquarters building for Google.
Over the past twenty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world.
This lecture looked at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded.
A Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian Swankie is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is a qualified freelance London guide and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.
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