Portsmouth Branch Programme


Portsmouth Branch Programme 2023-24

Venue for talks:  Room 2.01 Park Building, King Henry I St, Portsmouth PO1 2BZ.

All talks start at 7pm and finish no later than 8.30pm.

Pay on arrival: £4 per lecture, or £20 for all lectures October to May. Students and HA members free. 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

 

10th October 2023

The Hunt for Traitors in the Great War

Professor Mark Cornwall, University of Southampton

This talk is about two major cases of nationalist treason in the era of the First World War. In the horrific conflict of 1914-18 the warring countries expected loyalty from their citizens and took harsh measures against anyone deemed to be disloyal or in collusion with the enemy. We will look at two notorious cases of such ‘treason’. First is that of the Irish nationalist Roger Casement who was executed by the British in 1916 on a charge of treason; he had been in Germany trying to get aid for an Irish uprising against British rule. Second is a case from Austria-Hungary resulting from the assassination of the Habsburg heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in 1914. The Serb plotters behind the murder were put on trial but it also resulted in a mass of other treason trials in wartime Bosnia. These different cases in two enemy states reveal much about the prosecution and punishment of traitors. Could they ever receive a fair trial in the conditions of wartime? And what does this reveal about the age-old problem of how to interpret the crime of treason?

 

17th October 2023, 7-9pm

Social Event at Guildhall Brewhouse & Kitchen

 

14th November 2023

Misunderstanding and Mistrust: Anglo-Russian relations during the time of the Romanov Tsars 1613-1918

Stephan Roman

Stephan Roman is the author of a recently published book about Anglo-Russian relations ‘Isle and Empires : Romanov Russia, Britain and the Isle of Wight’ (Medina Publishing, 2021). In his talk, Stephan will explore the fraught and complex history that underpins the current tensions between Britain and Russia. There is a particular focus on the Isle of Wight which had many fascinating connections with the Romanov Tsars. It was here that Tsar Nicholas II and his family made their last ever visit to Britain in 1909. Stephan Roman studied history at the University of Oxford and then worked in international cultural relations for many years. He was a senior manager at the British Council and was a consultant for the World Bank and the European Commission. He has a strong interest in Russia and European history. His grandfather was a senior official in the Tsarist administration of Tsar Nicholas II prior to the revolution of 1917.

 

12th December 2023

Histories and Geographies of the Manhattan Project

Professor Kendrick Oliver, University of Southampton

In this lecture, Kendrick Oliver will discuss the origins and early history of the Manhattan Project - the Allied wartime effort to develop the atomic bomb. In particular, he will explore the significance of geography and place to the project's early history, including: (1) the development of centres of nuclear science in the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s; (2) the impact of European exile scientists upon activity in the field of American nuclear science in the mid-to-late 1930s; (3) the relatively uncoordinated American response to the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 and the importance of British interventions to the creation of a bomb development programme in 1941; (4) approaches to the problem of where and how to source the necessary supplies of uranium; and (5) the subsequent shift in the geographies of American nuclear research away from the North Atlantic coast to sites in New Mexico, Tennessee, and Washington State.

 

9th January 2024

Why Elizabeth I never married

Professor Hoyle, University of Reading

Queen Elizabeth I is surrounded by myth - which obscures the fact that she was a practical working politician - and by surmise - which allows each generation to project onto her whatever seems important to them. This lecture tries to explain why she never married by locating the queen’s failure in the context of sixteenth-century monarchy. There can be no doubt that the Queen would have preferred to marry and was bitterly aware of the comforts she lost by not doing so. But the choice of spouse was not the Queen's. It was never possible to secure a consensus about either who she should marry nor the role of any husband in government. Arguments within the Privy Council were publicly circulated and killed the Anjou Match in 1579-80, the Queen’s last hope of marriage. The idea of the Queen as a ‘virgin queen’, who never married because of her dedication to her nation, and which emerges late in the reign, is simply making the best of a bad job and serves to conceal personal and political failure.

 

13th February 2024, Dr James Thomas Memorial Lecture

‘Into the jaws of death’: Working & dying on Britain’s railways, c.1890-1939

Dr Mike Esbester, University of Portsmouth

In this talk Mike will introduce some of the hazards of working on Britain’s railways from the end of the 19th century to the Second World War. He will consider how Portsmouth fits into a national picture, and will introduce the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, focusing on workers involved in accidents before 1939 and making information more easily available for researchers. Mike Esbester is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth and the academic lead of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth, National Railway Museum and Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick.

 

12th March 2024

Landing craft at D-Day, Andrew Whitmarsh Curator, The D-Day Story

Andrew Whitmarsh Curator, The D-Day Story

Over 4,100 landing craft and landing ships played an essential part in the 1944 Normandy Landings, but today their role is often overlooked. That was not the case at the time: “Before the war I had never heard of any landing craft except a rubber boat. Now I think about little else.” General George Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army, November 1943. The talk will look at some of the different types of vessels and how the Allies were able to build this fleet, and will feature stories of some of their crews on D-Day.

Andrew Whitmarsh is curator of The D-Day Story, Portsmouth, which includes the last surviving LCT or Landing Craft, Tank that took part in the Normandy campaign (displayed in partnership with the National Museum of the Royal Navy).

 

14th May 2024

Byzantium: The Forgotten Empire

Professor Jonathan Harris, Royal Holloway, University of London.

This talk is an exploration of one of the great cultural and political forces of the Middle Ages that somehow never made it onto the school curriculum. The lecture looks at who the Byzantines were and why their state endured for so long in very adverse circumstances between the fourth and fifteenth centuries. ​Finally, it will consider why and how, in the end, it disappeared. Jonathan Harris' publications include Byzantium and the Crusades (Third edition 2022), Introduction to Byzantium (602-1453) (2020) and Lost World of Byzantium (2015).

 

21st May 2024, 7-9pm

Social Event at Guildhall Brewhouse & Kitchen