Reading Branch Programme


Reading Branch Programme 2023-24

 

 

Enquiries to Branch President Chris Sexton sexton44@gmail.com

 

Lectures are held on Friday evenings - one per month from October to March - as detailed below. They all take place at Reading School, Erleigh Road, Reading RG1 5LR.  A plan of the school site showing the location of the Lecture Theatre, parking places etc. together with the gate code, can be obtained from sexton44@gmail.com.

 

Lectures commence at 7.30pm, the October one preceded by the branch's AGM uniquely starting at 8.00pm. They are free-of-charge to all HA Members or local Associates. Non-members are charged £3 per lecture. Associate Membership which covers all six lectures costs £10 per annum, or £15 for a couple.

 

A delectable two-course supper with wine is served for the Speaker and anyone else wishing to attend, in the School Refectory - 6.00pm for a 6.30pm sit-down. Anyone who would like to dine with us should book a place with r.a.houlbrooke@reading.ac.uk by the previous Tuesday. The price for supper for the 2023/24 season is to be confirmed – but we can assure you it will be the best value eating out in Reading today- and the most sociable and interesting company too!

 

 

13 Oct 2023 7.30pm AGM, talk 8pm

Reading branch AGM followed by

Dr Joanna Laynesmith (Reading)

Political Prophecy and the Wars of the Roses

 

In the battle of words that accompanied the Wars of the Roses, propaganda frequently drew on centuries of old ‘prophetic’ literature. This illustrated talk will explore stories of inheritance from legendary kings and claims to be the victor of Merlin’s dragon prophecy through art, genealogies, literature and pageantry. It will examine the contrasting ways in which kings and their subjects attempted to utilise these narratives and then consider their impact on royal imagery in later centuries.

 

 

10 Nov 2023

Professor Natalia Nowakowska (Somerville College, Oxford)

The Jagiellonians (1377-1596): From Pagan Tribe to High Renaissance Dynasty 

 

The Jagiellonians were one of the most powerful dynasties of late medieval and early modern Europe, rivalled only by the Habsburgs. At their height circa 1500, Kings of Poland as well as sovereign grand dukes of Lithuania, they ruled vast lands stretching from Prague to Kyiv, and from the Baltic to the Adriatic. These dominions included present day Belarus and Ukraine, where their rule left a lasting imprint. More briefly they were kings of Hungary and Bohemia. This lecture will ask how the Jagiellonians, with their origins in medieval Lithuania, transformed themselves from Europe’s last pagan tribal power into a leading Catholic dynasty of the High Renaissance. It argues that to understand the Jagiellonians and their geopolitical legacies, we need to read them not just in their Central European, or European, context but as part of a wider Eurasian story. 

 

 

8 Dec 2023

Julian Pooley (Surrey History Centre and Leicester University)

The Gentleman’s Magazine

 

Founded in 1731, the Gentleman’s Magazine was the world’s first magazine, reporting domestic and foreign news, announcing the latest discoveries in science, medicine and technology, reviewing books and recording births, marriages and military promotions alongside crimes and freak weather.  Its obituaries of the deceased laid the foundation for the Dictionary of National Biography and are a major source for the lives and deaths of thousands of 18th century people. This talk provides an introduction to the magazine, explores its value for family and local historians and uncovers the daily lives of our ancestors throughout the Georgian period

 

 

12 Jan 2024

Professor Ben Jackson (University College, Oxford)

100 Years of Labour Governments, 1924-2024?

 

The 100th anniversary of the first Labour government (and the possibility of Labour returning to government later this year) offers us the opportunity to reflect on how Labour has fared as a party of government – its achievements and its limitations – and how the party has changed across that period. The first Labour government was populated by the working class autodidacts and trade unionists who had founded the party in the early twentieth century: how did the social composition and ideological orientation of Labour governments change as successive generations of Labour leaders entered office during the 1940s, 1960s and after 1997?

 

 

2 Feb 2024

Dr Philippa Hellawell (The National Archives)

Slavery, Power, and Resistance: The History of the British Slave Trade in Eight Documents

 

Focusing on records at the National Archives, this talk will include material on the Royal African Company. Full synopsis to be confirmed.

 

 

15 Mar 2024

Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College, Oxford)

The Damascus Events: The 1860 Christian Massacre and the Reconstruction of Damascus.

Professor Eugene Rogan, St Anthony’s College, Oxford.

 

In the summer of 1860, a violent mob stormed the Christian quarters of Damascus, killing five thousand and levelling churches, homes and workshops in eight days of carnage. In this lecture Eugene Rogan of St Anthony’s College, Oxford and one of the foremost historians of the Arab world, examines the underlying causes of the violence, as social and economic changes gave rise to a genocidal moment – and the measures taken by the Ottoman authorities to restore law and order, re-house the surviving Christian community, and to restore Damascus to vitality.  The relevance of the Damascus Events extends to the challenges faced in present-day Syria, and to all societies that have come back from the brink of genocide.