Chinese history for over 2,000 years has been all about the rise and fall of successive dynasties. The empire was founded around the same time as the Roman Empire and it collapsed not long before the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Then, unlike Rome, it rose again - and again. This lecture examines the […]

Learn how voters could be corrupted. Who could vote? Which political parties were involved? Who became MPs? Which issues gave rise to reform and how were they suppressed? What events were happening at the time? Who was involved? What tactics were employed? Is it all about money and/or power? Drawing from recently published diaries a […]

This talk reviews the development of various national varieties of Art Nouveau at the turn of the 20th century.  It also points out the connections and differences between Art Nouveau and the national varieties of what became known as Art Deco in the 1920s.

Maps can be very beautiful, and many, over the centuries, have been considered to be art. More recently, contemporary art has adopted mapping – its conventions, aesthetics and ways of representing the world and orienting ourselves in it - in its own spatial explorations. This talk will be an introduction to this journey from map […]

Have you ever wandered down a picturesque high street or through a lovely old church and wondered what the architecture around you was telling you?  In this two-hour session we will cover the basics of dating English buildings by eye, identifying the clues that will reveal a structure’s age, and taking a glance at the […]