Image credit: The cloister of Gloucester Cathedral. Photograph by David Iliff, via Wikimedia Commons; license: CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported

 

Branch contact: Robert Sutton, 01242 574889, histassocglos@gmail.com

Venue: venues vary. Please see details in individual events below.  

Members and students: Free

Visitor fee: £4,

Branch website: www.haglos.co.uk

 

Gloucestershire Branch Programme 2026-7

 

Monday 21 September 2026 7.30pm

Exmouth Arms Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7LX

AGM and ‘Holst’s Cheltenham’: a quiz.

 

Monday 12 October 7.30pm

University of Gloucestershire FCH Campus, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ and Zoom

‘The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War: Biographies and Social History’;

Mike Richards, Associate Professor of Contemporary European History, University of the West of England.

Dr Richards research interests lie primarily in the social, political, and cultural history of modern Spain, its civil war and the dictatorship of General Franco (1936-75). The talk explores the part played by volunteers for the Republican side during the civil war in the light of reflections on their social and political backgrounds and lives. At the same time, it comments on the use of individual biographies in the methods and aims of social historians.

 

Monday 9 November 2026. 7.30pm TBC

Gloucestershire Heritage Hub, Alvin Street, Gloucester, GL1 3DW and Zoom.

Revisiting The General Strike of 1926

James Thompson Professor of Modern British History, University of Bristol.

 

Monday 14 December 2026 7.30pm

Exmouth Arms Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7LX

Spice!! Not to mention Christmas puddings….

Roger Crowley independent scholar

Roger is a best-selling narrative historian with deep interests in the Mediterranean world and its surrounding area. His most recent book tells the story of the sixteenth-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific. Roger’s illustrated talk on Europe’s obsession with spices that triggered the first phase of globalization, shaped the modern world – and popularized Christmas puddings…

 

Monday 18 January 2027 7.30pm TBC

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Appalachia and the Hillbilly in the American Imagination;

Professor Tony Harkins, Western Kentucky University.

Anthony Harkins’ pioneering cultural history, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, explores how the "hillbilly" evolved in the American imagination. He traces this enduring yet contested stereotype from the late 19th century through films, music, and the Internet.

 

Monday 15 February 7.30pm

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Global Politics of Welsh Patagonia;

Lucy Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, Aberystwyth University.

Lucy will challenge dominant romantic images of Y Wladfa, the Welsh Patagonian settlement founded in 1865. Drawing on archival sources written in Spanish, Welsh and English, the talk will expose the complex human relationships of this settler colony, and in particular disrupts the myth of Welsh–Indigenous friendship by foregrounding Indigenous experience

 

Monday 8 March 2027, 7.30pm

University of Gloucestershire FCH Campus, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ and Zoom

Women and the Crusades

Helen Nicholson, Emeritus Professor, School of History

Professor Nicholson is a world-leading scholar in research into the Templars and Hospitallers and the Crusades. Her talk will focus on the role of women in the crusades. Did women support crusades? Did women go on crusades? If they did, did they fight? Did women on the ‘other side’ fight? Cultural norms in European Christian and Muslim society in the middle ages did not expect women to take part in fighting. Yet some of the contemporary sources indicate that they did take an active part in crusade warfare. This talk explores the various roles that medieval women played in the crusades.

 

Monday 26 April 2007, 7.30pm. TBC

University of Gloucestershire FCH Campus, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ and Zoom

Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660

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

The decade after the execution of Charles 1 (1649) saw a transformation of the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland, reset the compact between the monarch and the people, and re-fashioned the story the British told - and continue to tell - about themselves. In this talk Professor Hunt will tell something of the story of what Britain's republic was really like: why it failed, but also, what it got right

 

Monday 17 May 2027 7.30pm. TBC

Gloucestershire Heritage Hub, Alvin Street, Gloucester, GL1 3DW and Zoom.

General Maczek's 1st Corps in WW2 and their post-war fates

Mr. Marin Silarski and Mr. Krzysztof Laskiewicz, private scholars

The Polish First Armoured Division under command of General Maczek played an important role in the liberation of France, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1944/5. For two years after the war members of the Division occupied northern parts of Germany, returning to England in June 1947, where they were disarmed and demobilised. As a result of the government’s legislation, Polish resettlement camps were created across Britain to house arriving Polish forces, often found in former army and air force camps, and military hospitals, with many closing by the 1950s and 1960s. Finding a place in British life was, however, challenging. This talk will offer both a survey of General Maczek's campaign and a personal view of life in the Corps and in a local, Gloucestershire resettlement camp.