Unless otherwise stated, all talks start at 7pm and finish no later than 8.30pm. The venue for talks is: Room 1.09, Park Building, King Henry I St, Portsmouth, PO1 2BZ. Pay on arrival: £4 per lecture, or £20 for all lectures from October to May. Students and HA members pay nothing. There’s no need to book a place; just turn up.

For further information or to be added to our email distribution list please contact Kate at portsmouthhistorybranch@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/Portsmouth-History-Association-Branch-103900362210248

 

 

Portsmouth Branch Programme 2025 - 2026 

 

 

Tuesday 14th October 2025

The story of a Portsmouth Family Caught Up in the Far East During WWII

Caroline Wigley

In July 1940, George Bearman – electrical engineer at the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth – was on secondment to the Naval Dockyard in Hong Kong, when threats of invasion from the Japanese resulted in the evacuation of almost 3,500 women and children, among them George’s wife, Hilda, and two young sons. Letters between George and Hilda cover the 18 months as the colony slides towards war, against the backdrop of the home country at war, and worries about their home, family and friends based back in Portsmouth, and on through the years following the Japanese invasion of December 1941.

 

Tuesday 11th November 2025

William Schaw Lindsay MP, Victorian Shipping Magnate

Bill Lindsay

William Schaw Lindsay was born in Ayr in 1815. He was orphaned by the age of ten, ran away to sea aged sixteen and within nine years was a captain of an oceangoing merchant ship. He then became a shipbroker and shipowner. By the mid-1850s he owned 22 ships and was chartering 700 a year. His ships were involved in the Crimean War, in emigration to Australia and Canada, and in the American Civil War. He met many dignitaries including Brunel, Dickens, Disraeli, Nightingale and Lincoln and visited Portsmouth Royal Dockyard in 1854. His diaries are housed in the National Maritime Museum. Bill Lindsay worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a marketing director for 35 years. On retirement he pursued researching his family tree and discovered his forefather. He wrote his great-great-grandfather's biography as a result of transcribing his diaries which took six years. Bill is a member of various maritime societies and is editor of the online magazine of the Society for Nautical Research.

 

Tuesday 9th December 2025

The Royal Navy in the Cold War Years, 1966-90: Retreat and Revival

Ed Hampshire, Naval Historical Branch

During the latter half of the Cold War, the Royal Navy faced some of its greatest challenges: both at sea confronting the increasingly capable and impressive Soviet Navy, and on shore when it faced policy crises that threatened the survival of much of the fleet. During this remarkable period, the Navy had rarely been so focussed on a single theatre of war – the Eastern Atlantic – but also rarely so politically vulnerable. This paper will explore these and other issues and argue that the Cold War at sea has been neglected in both the popular and the academic literature and was in many ways the crucial arena of East-West confrontation up to the end of the 1980s.

 

Tuesday 13th January 2026

Saints or Sinners? Sexuality, Reputation and the Representation of Queens from Contemporary Sources to Modern Media

Dr Ellie Woodacre, University of Winchester

Despite being the most powerful and visible lady in the land, comments on the lives and activities of queens can be surprisingly sparse in contemporary sources, unless they were seen to be doing something scandalous of course! This talk discusses the representation of royal women as both ‘saints’, and particularly as ‘sinners’, with examples of women such as Catherine the Great, Wu Zetian and Marie Antoinette, who had ‘black legends’ in their own time which continue to be represented in modern popular culture today.

 

Tuesday 10th February 2026

Henry VI and the Origins of the Wars of the Roses

Dr James Ross, University of Winchester

Dr Ross's lecture will focus on Henry VI, king of England from 1422-61, and the ways in which his priorities as king diverged sharply from what was expected of medieval monarchs, and how his fitful engagement with government - in an age of personal kingship - was perhaps the worst of all worlds for the realm he ruled. The extent to which this led to the bloody outbreak of the Wars of the Roses will be evaluated. Dr James Ross is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Winchester. He works on English political society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly on the nobility and on kingship. Amongst other publications, he has written biographies of John de Vere, Thirteenth Earl of Oxford, 1442-1513 (2011) and Henry VI: A Good, Simple and Innocent Man (2016) for the Penguin English Monarch Series.

 

Tuesday 10th March 2026, 7.30pm Start

VICTORS’ JUSTICE The Nuremberg Trial and its Lasting Legacies

Professor Michael Biddiss, University of Reading

In this lecture Professor Biddiss will consider the dilemmas faced by the victors at the end of the Second World War as they sought to reach inter-Allied consensus about prosecution and punishment of the defeated Nazi leadership.  He will then discuss the proceedings eventually conducted at Nuremberg in 1945-6, described by one of the British judges as ‘the greatest trial in history’.  After reviewing the positive achievements of the International Military Tribunal in condemning the Nazi regime he will highlight those weaknesses of planning and implementation that contributed to limiting the effectiveness of the longer-term aims which Nuremberg was also intended to fulfil.  The second half of the talk will review the ways in which, across eighty years, the Trial’s legacies have remained relevant to international concerns over war crimes, including crimes against humanity and acts of genocide. Professor Biddiss will trace the tangled path that led towards the formation of a permanent International Criminal Court in 2002 and will also mention debates about the ICC’s subsequent record, concluding with reference to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as well as the legal status of Israel’s response to Hamas terrorism and other Palestinian issues. Michael Biddiss is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Reading, and a former Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.  He has also been President of the Historical Association (1991-4) and a Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society (1995-9). 

 

Tuesday 12th May 2026

Dr James Thomas memorial lecture: Portsmouth and the Blitz

James Daly

Details TBC