Date: Thursday 13 November 2025, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Charlie Forman

Follow in the footsteps of the millions who have crossed the Thames over the last three millennia. There was a crossing at Westminster in the Bronze Age, 1,500 years before the Romans constructed London Bridge. In the 1,700-year wait for the next bridge, other crossings relied on watermen and horse ferries as traffic got jammed on London Bridge. The last 200 years have seen more than 50 new crossings over and under the river. Some are great feats of engineering; others are architecturally elegant. Every crossover changes the city’s genetic code.

Date: Thursday 4 December 2025, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Rosalind Whyte

NB: this lecture will take place on the first Thursday of the month - normally our lectures are the second Thursday
450 years ago, an artist was born who would bring about one of the most radical changes in pictorial style, particularly through his pronounced use of contrasting light and shadow or chiaroscuro. He was the most famous painter of his time in Italy, as well as a source of inspiration for hundreds of other artists. Known as Caravaggio, his given name was Michelangelo Merisi. Although he had the name of an angel he was anything but, being a notorious brawler and spending his last years on the run from a murder charge. This lecture will introduce you to the drama of the life and the art of Caravaggio.

Date: Thursday 8 January 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Lois Oliver

Music was a constant theme in Manet’s life and art. His wife Suzanne Leenhoff was a gifted pianist, and regular musical soirées were held at the Manet family home. His pictures of musicians and their audiences range from early canvases depicting itinerant gypsy musicians and Spanish dancers through to paintings encompassing the full range of Parisian musical culture, from private performances to street entertainment, café concerts and the Paris Opera. Manet also designed cover illustrations for music composed by his friends.

Date: Thursday 12 February 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Antony Penrose

Lee Miller (Anthony Penrose’s mother) was a woman at war, as was any woman caught up in WWII. She shot faultless images for Vogue’s haute couture in London’s bombed out streets. She documented the magnificent work of the WRNS, ATS, Land Girls, the WRVS and nurses. She showed us refugees in Europe, women accused of collaboration and those forced into slave labour or prostitution. She also showed us the horror of concentration camp victims.

Date: Thursday 12 March 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Chloe Sayer

For over a century, postcards have pictured our shared history across the globe. They have documented the changing role of women, the growth of cities, evolving styles of architecture, home decoration, royalty, celebrity, the rise of cinema, aviation, the automobile, fashion trends, celebrations and holidays. Few people, places or things have not been the subject of a postcard, but the age of the postcard is over. With our mobile phones, we take and send images in an instant. This lecture celebrates the history and scope of picture postcards - bearers of news and repositories of memory.

Date: Thursday 9 April 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: James Russell

Growing up in the shadow of their mother's illness, Paul and John Nash emerged as artists at the same time, exhibiting their work in a joint exhibition in 1913. The following year they enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and both served on the Western Front before working together as war artists. Both subsequently explored wood engraving and book illustration. But their art moved in different directions and, while remaining close, each sought to distance themselves from the tag of 'the Nash brothers'. It could be the plot of a novel, but every word of this intriguing personal story of brotherly love, strife and competition is true.

Date: Thursday 14 May 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: John Snelson

2026 marks 75 years since the death of Ivor Novello, whose career was extraordinary by any measure: composer, playwright, film idol and stage star. Novello, who died suddenly in 1951, was certainly the master of the romantic waltz song which sustains his reputation today, but there is much more to his genius than 'Dear Ivor' and wistful nostalgia. With examples from his songs, scripts and films, this lecture goes to the heart of Novello as an instinctive and innovative force in film and on stage in his day. The range of his music, the wit of his writing and the individuality of his acting fuse into a unique ability to realize the power of dramatic performance time and time again.

Date: Thursday 11 June 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Lydia Bauman

Gwen John’s work is both instantly recognisable and era-defining. She is known for the quiet strength of the solitary women in her portraits and the reflective stillness of her interiors. For decades she was overshadowed by her famous brother Augustus and often portrayed as a recluse, but nevertheless defied convention to forge her own existence. She trained at the Slade, then one of the few art schools to accept women on the same terms as men. She made her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris amid a rich cultural circle that included James McNeill Whistler and her lover, Auguste Rodin. This is the story of a progressive trailblazer and a painter devoted to her craft at the forefront of early 20th century art.

Date: Thursday 9 July 2026, 8.00pm

Lecturer: Rupert Dickens

Van der Heyden’s reputation pales in comparison with Leonardo da Vinci, but his career at the height of the Dutch Golden Age was no less extraordinary.  He was a brilliant painter and draughtsman, producing wonderful views of Amsterdam and other cities. But he was also an inventor, entrepreneur, administrator and marketing genius. Among his innovations were a mechanical fire engine and street lighting.  We will take a close look at his career from his meticulous cityscapes through to the detailed drawings of his inventions and the surprising vanitas still-life paintings he produced at the end of his career.