All enquiries to Branch Secretary Eleanor Yates – email historicalassocwinchester@outlook.com or text or call 07973 427915

Lectures will be at 7.30pm. Unless otherwise stated, the venue is The Science Lecture Theatre, Kingsgate Street, Winchester SO23 9PG, and sometimes online additionally.

Lectures are free to members and students, visitors are asked for a donation of £5

 

Winchester Programme 2025-26

 

Wednesday 8 October 2025

The Russian Revolution: Hopes, Fears, Tragedy

Dr. George Gilbert, Associate Professor in History, University of Southampton

The Russian Revolution occurred over 100 years ago, but many of the questions and aspirations raised by the revolution still linger today.  Among these are: what constitutes revolution?  How and why were the hopes and dreams of ‘ordinary’ people raised in 1917 quashed by the ensuing Bolshevik dictatorship?  What were these aspirations in the first place – what did workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors mean by words like freedoms, rights, socialism?  This masterclass will peel back some of the layers of meaning surrounding the vast historiography on revolution, focusing on some of the questions that have most engaged historians.  It will consider the significance of the revolution in the current moment in world history, and thus why we should study the revolution today.

 

Wednesday 12 November 2025 (preceded by AGM)

What the Greeks did for us

Professor Antony Spawforth, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History, Newcastle University

Tony Spawforth served as assistant director of the British School at Athens and went on to teach at Newcastle University.  He has published thirteen books, including co-editing the third edition of The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1996) and authoring The Complete Greek Temples (2006) and Greece: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (2002).  His The Story of Greece and Rome (2018) has been translated into six languages.  His latest book (Yale 2023) is What the Greeks Did for Us.  He has a long interest in popularising his subject, including journalism, talks and eight archaeological documentaries for BBC television.

 

Wednesday 26 November 2025

Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660

Professor Alice Hunt, Professor of Early Modern Literature and History, University of Southampton

Alice Hunt talks about her new, critically-acclaimed ‘biography’ of the 1650s, when England was – for the first and only time in its history – a republic, led by the soldier-statesman, Oliver Cromwell.  This talk will focus on the lesser-known cultural story of the decade that turned Britain upside down.  Amid the tumult came innovation and commercial opportunity.  Alternative forms of art and writing flourished. Satirists mocked MPs and the first English opera was staged.  Philosophers talked radical politics in coffee houses and men and women devoured newsbooks.  In Oxford, a group of experimental scientists scrutinised the world in new ways; they later became The Royal Society.  England’s distinctive republican experiment may have been short-lived, but it reshaped the British Isles, reset the compact between monarch and people and refashioned the story the British told – and continue to tell – about themselves.  Alice has previously written about Tudor monarchy and James I, and is the author of The Drama of Coronation (2008).  Republic was published by Faber in 2024 and selected as a book of the year by The Times and the Telegraph.

 

Wednesday 14 January 2026

Women and the Crusades

Professor Helen Nicholson, Emerita Professor of Medieval History, University of Cardiff

Helen Nicholson is a former Head of the History Department at Cardiff University.  She has written extensively about the Crusades and the military religious orders and the Crusades, and her recent books include Women and the Crusades (Oxford University Press, 2023) and Women, the Crusades, the Templars and Hospitallers in Medieval European Society and Culture (Routledge, 2025).

 

Wednesday 11 February

Witchcraft and politics in seventeenth century English media

Dr Tabitha Stanmore, University of Exeter

What did it mean to call someone a witch in the 1600s?  The fear of malevolent witchcraft was very real in early modern England, but the label was also a useful one to employ against political enemies, or reinforce the status quo.  During this talk, Dr Tabitha Stanmore will explore some of the ways that witchcraft was weaponised for political ends.  Focussing mostly on the years leading up to and including the Civil Wars, we will look at how witchcraft propaganda was used to disparage certain groups but also hold up a mirror to English society.