All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

The Bayeux Tapestry is instantly recognisable and one of the most outstanding cultural objects to survive from the early Middle Ages. Long admired for its vivid narrative, today it is the unanswered questions that most intrigue modern audiences: was it made in England or France? Was it stitched by men or women? This sparkling lecture looks not only at its creation, but also at its more amazing afterlife. Displayed by Napoleon to bolster French ambitions for a new cross-channel invasion; cherished by Victorian embroiderers as an icon of women’s heroic joint efforts; hunted down by Hitler, who was
outwitted by bureaucratic obfuscation.

TIMOTHY WILCOX

Timothy Wilcox is a writer, lecturer and exhibition curator with special interests in British art, in landscape and in watercolour painting. He was a museum curator in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings following positions at the V&A, in Liverpool and Hove. As a freelance curator and lecturer since 1997, he has organised exhibitions on Laura Knight, Hilda Carline, John Sell Cotman and John Constable, at venues including Tate, The Lowry, the Wordsworth Trust and Dulwich Picture Gallery. He contributes regularly to the educational programmes at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and lectures at museums and galleries in Britain, Europe and the USA.

This months lecture is preceded by the AGM at 10.45am followed by the lecture starting at 11.00am

Papers relating to the AGM will be forarded to members before the event.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL 

Gustav Klimt and his colleagues broke away from the imperially endorsed art institutions in Vienna in 1897 and founded the Secession. That was the same year that Gustav Mahler arrived to take charge of the Opera House in the city. Comparing these two totemic fin de siècle talents, this lecture places Klimt and Mahler in context, asking what fundamentally
links and, indeed, divides them.

GAVIN PLUMLEY

A writer and broadcaster, Gavin Plumley appears on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and contributes to newspapers, magazines, and opera and concert programmes worldwide. He lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe. Recent appearances include Klimt and The Kiss in cinemas worldwide, and talks at museums, galleries and festivals. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, was published in 2022; his second, The Gay Apocalypse: Queer Life and Culture in Vienna 1900 will be published next year.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

Described as one of the most experimental painters of his time, Thomas Gainsborough sought to bring joy and pleasure while seeking to equal the Old Masters. He cultivated a persona that presented him as spontaneous and uncalculated. However, his masterful technique with seemingly rapid hatching and bravura gestural brushwork, and his constant inventiveness in the poses and gestures of his sitters, speak of an artist who thought deeply about his work. In this talk we will look at one of Gainsborough’s most admired paintings, Mr and Mrs Hallett, or the Morning Walk as it has become known, to explore the life and technique of this much-loved painter.

MATTHEW MORGAN

Matthew Morgan is an independent art historian, educator, and museum professional with a passion for sharing the joy of art. He has lectured widely across Britain and Europe, in settings as diverse as universities, festivals, and cathedrals, as well as galleries such as the National Gallery, the Royal Collection, the Wallace Collection, the Courtauld Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum. His degree is from Cambridge, he studied at the Courtauld for his MA, and his PhD is from Birkbeck, University of London.

As Museum Director, Matthew ran Turner’s House in Twickenham, dedicated to the great landscape painter. He has taught for more than eight years at Birkbeck, University of London, and served as Head of the London Learning Team at the Royal Collection. At the National Gallery, Matthew devised and delivered a wide range of learning events, and earlier in his career he worked as a Director in the Valuations Department at Christie’s.

Matthew has contributed to TV documentaries, podcasts, and radio programmes, and created a series of short films about paintings available on YouTube.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

This lecture celebrates the careers of some truly remarkable women who made their mark in what was once a male-dominated world, giving us some of the finest moments in British comedy. From Joyce Grenfell to Victoria Wood, from Thora Hird to Penelope Keith, and from Dora Bryan to Wendy Craig – along with many other unforgettable performers – we’ll revisit the women who helped shape the nation’s comic voice.

Drawing on my own personal connection to this world, and illustrated with letters, anecdotes and wonderful examples of their work, the lecture explores what drove these much-loved figures to step into the spotlight. We’ll consider the unique qualities that made them so funny, and how they earned their hard-won place in the history of British theatre and comedy.

TYLER BUTTERWORTH

Tyler Butterworth grew up in a theatrical family and 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. Now he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe for private clients. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

This lecture explores how Antarctica was carried home – not in crates of specimens, but in images. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, during the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration, watercolourists, oil painters, photographers and early film-makers translated the white vastness of the ice for the wives and mothers waiting in Britain. What did Antarctica mean to the first people to stand at the edge of the known world? And what does it mean to us now? Through the expeditions of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton – and through the work of their official and unofficial artists – we will explore how art shaped the continent in the public imagination. Beyond the celebrated painters and photographers, I will uncover the overlooked amateurs: physicists, mammalogists, cartographers and meteorologists who sketched, painted and photographed alongside their scientific work, quietly framing Antarctica in ways history has often ignored.

KATHERINE MACINNES

Katherine MacInnes (MSt Oxford University, MA Hons St Andrews) is a public speaker and the non-fiction author of Snow Widows: Scott’s Fatal Antarctic Expedition Through the Eyes of the Women They Left Behind (HarperCollins 2022) and Woman with the Iceberg Eyes: Oriana F. Wilson (History Press 2019). Writing as Kate Nicholson, she published Behind Everest: Ruth Mallory’s Story (Pen & Sword, 2024), which was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Mountain Literature Award.

Katherine first started researching polar history when her husband climbed Everest in 2006 and her children were 10 months, 3 and 5. She looked to history and found inspiration from the invisible women – mothers, wives, widows – throughout exploration’s history.

Katherine has been shortlisted for the Biographer’s Prize and is a sought-after public speaker on polar history around the globe, from Norway to the Royal Geographical Society. She is currently penning The Shortest History of Antarctica for Old Street Publishing’s Shortest History series with publication planned for 2026. 

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

A fully illustrated talk with in excess of 60 images exploring the relationship between the making of an image and the way in which it is perceived by the viewer. Further discussion around the eye and the brain being an extraordinary double act made up of visual references and intellectual interpretation.

CHARLIE WAITE

Charlie Waite is firmly established as one of the world’s leading landscape photographers.

While working as an actor in British theatre and television for the first ten years of his professional life, he became fascinated by theatrical lighting and design. Gradually, the landscape and the way it can be revealed to us through light and shade stole him away from the acting profession.

His style is unique in that his photographs convey a spiritual quality of serenity and calm. He has established a worldwide reputation for his particular approach to his work. His photographs are held in private and corporate collections throughout the world.

Over the last thirty-five years, Charlie has lectured throughout the UK, Europe and the US. He has held numerous solo exhibitions all over the world, including in London, Tokyo, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, New York and California. Charlie has provided and continues to provide tuition to amateur, professional and aspiring photographers of all ages from the UK, Australia, Europe and the US, which he hugely enjoys.

In 2014, Charlie was awarded a direct Fellowship by The Royal Photographic Society. In 2016, he received an invitation by the Royal Academy of Arts to exhibit in their Summer Exhibition. The Millennium year saw him being awarded the prestigious Honorary Fellowship to the British Institute of Professional Photographers, and in early 2007 he was presented with Amateur Photographer’s Power of Photography award, which is given to a photographer whose work is deemed to effectively demonstrate the powerful and memorable images of which photography is capable.

Charlie is frequently seen on British television discussing the finer aspects of landscape photography. In September 2005, he completed filming for a six-part television series on landscape photography. He has worked with numerous distinguished authors including Adam Nicolson, Jan Morris, John Julius Norwich and A N Wilson. 

In 2007, Charlie launched the UK Landscape Photographer of the Year, an annual international photography competition, which ties in perfectly with his desire to share his passion and appreciation of the beauty of our surroundings through photography.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

A look at some of opera's greatest rivalries, spats and tiffs, ranging from the throw-away remark to full in-public fighting. They certainly make for a spicy history. Which individual or voice category might be the worst example? Are they an intrinsic part of opera? Whose fault are they? We will hear and see examples of great singers from the past to the present, which should entertain and inform both opera aficionado and detractor alike.

TIM MIRFIN

Tim Mirfin is an opera singer. He has performed in all major European countries, Russia, the US, Australia and the Middle East. He has given concerts in some of classical music’s most iconic venues, such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein, the Bolshoi, the Wigmore, Festival and Albert Halls. He also teaches singing, gives masterclasses, lectures on opera and the voice and runs a local community choir.  He studied postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music and National Opera Studio, previously reading law at Cambridge. He is passionate both about opera as an art form and also about the sheer act of singing. He is keen to share peeks behind the curtain on both apparently mysterious activities.

This month's lecture is being held on WEDNESDAY, 5th May and NOT TUESDAY, 4th May

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.                                                    

By far the most common type of Arts and Crafts work in England’s churches is stained glass. Starting with one of the most ground-breaking schemes, Gloucester Cathedral’s Lady Chapel by Christopher Whall, 1899, we’ll explore the works of designers such as Henry Payne and Paul Woodroffe, and look, too, at some of the female artists of the Movement who excelled in glass, such as Theodora Salusbury, Caroline Townshend, the Rope cousins and Veronica Whall.

KIRSTY HARTSIOSIS

Kirsty Hartsiotis 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. 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. 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.

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

This lecture explores the exhilarating world of design in Denmark, Sweden, Norway Finland and Iceland, beginning with the ‘beauty for all’ philosophy that inspired Gregor Paulsson's seminal 1919 book More Beautiful Everyday Things. We will look at key events such as the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930, and key figures who helped to turn Nordic Design into a global phenomenon in the 1950s, such as Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto, Hans Wegner, Jørn Utzon and Ilmari Tapivaara. We will also look at contemporary projects undertaken by architectural practices such as Snøhetta and Poul Henningsen.

ROSAMUND BARTLETT

Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, lecturer and translator.  Her work ranges across the arts, from painting to music, and across cultures, from Italy, France and Germany to the countries of Northern and Eastern Europe. She began her career as an academic in Slavic studies after completing her doctorate at Oxford, and has held fellowships both in the UK and at the European University Institute in Florence. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Modern Languages in Oxford, and in 2024 became a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brasenose College.

Over the years she has written on music, literature and drama for institutions including the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Salzburg Festival, and about art for Apollo and The Burlington Magazine. She is currently writing a book about the revolution in the arts which took place in early 20th-century Russia, and its connection to modernist developments in Western Europe.

She has led art, architecture, design and music tours throughout Europe, and contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC. Her lecturing work has taken her from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where she lives, to the Harriman Institute in New York, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.  

All lectures are held in the Crosfield Hall, Broadwater Road, Romsey, SO51 8GL and start at 11.00am.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is arguably the most important Indian artistic figure of the modern era. A renowned poet, novelist, composer and painter, Tagore became a global sensation when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the first non-European to do so. This lecture provides an introduction to Tagore’s remarkable life and work, includin his novels, poetry, songs and paintings. It also explores the role Tagore’s art played in the story of India’s fight for independence.

Dr JOHN STEVENS

Dr John Stevens is head of the London Bangla Academy, an online school that teaches the Bengali language to students across the world. He gained his PhD in History from UCL, before going on to teach British Imperial History, Indian History and Bengali Language at SOAS, University of London. His biography of the Indian guru Keshab Chandra Sen – Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet – as published by Hurst and Oxford University Press. He is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh and has lectured at numerous Indian universities. He also works as a consultant on Indian affairs. He has appeared many times in the Indian media, and was a guest on BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time, discussing the poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore.