Event Type: Branch

Takes Place: 13th March 2026

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Lecture theatre, Reading School, Erleigh Road, Reading RG1 5LW (cars enter through Erleigh Rd entrance - contact Chris Sexton for the gate code).

Description: The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, rediscovered after centuries of at least semi-darkness by the scholars of the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true? I’ll argue in this talk, based on my recent book, that much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate 'civilisations'. Once we move past that model, we can see history differently: made out of relationships, not cultures. Millennia of global encounters and exchange built what we now call the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. It is contact and connections, rather than solitary civilisations, that drive historical change. And it is not peoples that make history – people do.

How to book: Branch suppers precede each lecture from 6pm (cost £20 per person) and are held in the school’s refectory.

Price: HA members, students and school pupils free. Non-members visitors £3. Associate branch membership £10 per annum.

Tel: 01344 779321 or 07957 184342

Email: sexton44@gmail.com

Organiser: Chris Sexton

Lecturer: Professor Josephine Quinn (Professor of Ancient History, Fellow & Director of Studies, St John’s College, Cambridge)

Region: South-East England

Branch: Reading