Norfolk & Norwich Programme 2025 - 26

For all enquiries, please contact Simon Kinder norwichha@gmail.com

Venue: Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 6EA

HA members free, visitors £10 per event. Branch Associate membership is £15 per year.  

 

Sunday 19 October 2025, 2.15pm for a 2.30pm start

Venue: Gresham’s Senior School, Cromer Road, Holt, NR25 6EA

Family Fortunes: Jacobean Merchants in King’s Lynn

Dr G. Alan Metters FHA, Historian

Dr Alan Metters will examine the mercantile elite of King's Lynn in the early modern period, concentrating on how they ‘got on’ in the political sense - how they joined the elite and became members of the borough's governing body. The talk will be illustrated using three particular case studies: the Clarke family; Thomas Snelling and his family; and the remarkable Atkin family - all of them, in some ways, ‘incomers’, or outsiders, who still managed to get to the top of Lynn’s ‘greasy pole’.

 

Sunday 14 December 2025, 2.30pm

Venue: The View, The Forum, Millennium Plain, Norwich NR2 1TF

Butchers’ Hounds, Midden Curs and Trundle Tails: The Hidden World of Medieval Dogs

Professor Carole Rawcliffe, University of East Anglia

 

Saturday 28 February 2026, 2.30pm

**Please note date change**

Venue: The View, The Forum, Millennium Plain, Norwich NR2 1TF

Coffee with Hitler: The British Amateurs Who Tried to Civilise the Nazis

Dr Charles Spicer, Author

Charles Spicer will discuss his first book, 'Coffee with Hitler', which explores the astounding and poignant story of a handful of British intelligence agents who wined, dined and befriended the leading National Socialists between the wars.

 

Saturday 16 May 2026, 2.30pm

Venue: The Auditorium, The Forum, Millennium Plain, Norwich NR2 1TF

Norfolk and the Historic Towns Trust

Vanessa Harding, Chair of the Historic Towns Trust

Vanessa Harding will talk about this fascinating project, with insights into the urban history of Norfolk. https://www.historictownstrust.uk/

 

Saturday 20 June 2026, 2.30pm

Venue: The Auditorium, The Forum, Millennium Plain, Norwich NR2 1TF

The Diktat of Versailles: Reputation and Reality 1919-2026

Professor Tony Lentin

Professor Tony Lentin will speak about his latest book, The Diktat of Versailles: Reputation and Reality 1919-2026. The talk reconsiders the Treaty of Versailles against Keynes’ verdict of a ‘Carthaginian peace’. This powerful myth is contrasted with the reality of the Conference: a hard-won compromise. It highlights the mythology of Germany’s ‘destruction’ by a ‘Diktat’ of Versailles.