Thursday 1 September 2016

Introducing the new season, 2016-17

It is some months since my last diary entry, but this does not indicate a quiet summer away from Historical Association business. In May and June I was pleased to accompany large groups of Bath Branch members to Mells Manor, the home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford and Asquith (Lord Oxford is the great-grandson of Herbert Henry Asquith), and Rodmarton Manor, a house and contents built in the Cotswolds Arts and Crafts style. I attended the Historical Association Conference in Harrogate in May. The Bath Branch committee has met to plan the 2017-18 season of lectures. I have discussed the promotion of our branch with members of the editorial team of Bath Life, the first outcome of which will be our first magazine advertisement in the forthcoming (2-16 September) edition. And, in our ninetieth anniversary year, I have been able to accept on the Bath Branch's behalf an invitation for members to attend a Civic Reception with the Mayor of Bath before our pre-Christmas buffet in the Guildhall.

Our speakers for the new season come from Cambridge, Bristol, Leicester and London. We begin with our local friend Jennifer Scott, Director of Bath's wonderful Holburne Museum. The title of Jennifer's lecture is William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting. It will set in their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contexts the interests and enthusiasms of some of our great collectors of decorative and fine art.

This is the programme in full ...

22 September 2016
William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting
Jennifer Scott (Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath)

13 October
Members' visit to Bath Record Office

27 October 2016
Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain?
Professor John Morrill (Selwyn College, University of Cambridge)

24 November 2016
Historical Legacy Problems and Democratic Regime Change in Europe
Professor Geoffrey Pridham (University of Bristol)

8 December 2016
Civic Reception and members' Christmas buffet at the Guildhall, Bath

16 January 2017
The Ladies' Grand Tour
Professor Roey Sweet (University of Leicester)

23 February 2017
Democracy and Despotism in British India
Dr Sean Lang (Anglia Ruskin University)

23 March 2017
Dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720-1800
Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary University of London)

27 April 2017
Hogarth, Handel and the Foundling Hospital: a Story of Creative Philanthropy
Caro Howell (Director of the Foundling Museum, London)

Each lecture will take place on a Thursday evening at 7.30 at the Friends Meeting House, York Street. In the weeks preceding each one I will endeavour to introduce the lecturer and her or his subject in this diary.

Mike Short 
  

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