PROGRAMME We return to normal for the September meeting and will meet live Barn Hill Methodist Church Lectures will be live at Barn Hill Church, and also by Zoom at 10:45 IMPORTANT Change of lecture for June June 14th 2022 10:45 Live & on Zoom The Horse and Modern Art from George Stubbs (1714-1806) to Mark Wallinger (born 1959) The horse is so rooted within the psyche of the Western imagination that it has maintained its expressive power, as the current production of War Horse so eloquently testifies. The lecture traces major themes from Stubbs, the greatest horse painter of all time, to Degas, Duchamp-Villon’s Large Horse, a modern metaphor of horsepower, Munnings’s horses as defining images of Englishness, Picasso’s agonised horse in its death throes in Guernica (1937) which expresses the horrendous destruction of the city in the Spanish Civil War. The lecture concludes with the very diverse ways in which our leading contemporary artists have made use of the expressive power of the equestrian image. Mark Wallinger's gigantic 50 metre high horse will soon loom over the Kent countryside at Ebbsfleet. September 13th 2022 10:45 Live & on Zoom She Loves You: The Music of the 60’s (1960 to ’64) Steve King By 1960 interest in rock ‘n’ roll had started to fade, its biggest star was moving on and a new generation of teenagers were seeking something different. It came in the form of the Beatles, who broke all the rules and all the records. This is the story of the first five years of the 1960s, one of the most creative and innovative periods in the history of music, featuring all the major artists, important songs and principle musical genres. October 11th The Making of Landscape Photographs Charlie Waite. A fully illustrated talk with in excess of 60 images exploring the relationship between the making of an image and the way in which it is perceived by the viewer. Further discussion around the eye and the brain being an extraordinary double act made up of visual references and intellectual interpretation. November 8th 2022 (AGM at 10.30am)10:30 Live & on Zoom Packing up the Nation: Saving London’s Museums and Galleries in the Second World War Caroline Shenton This is the gripping and sometimes hilarious story of how a band of heroic curators and eccentric custodians saved Britain’s national heritage during our Darkest Hour. As Hitler’s forces gathered on the other side of the Channel to threaten these islands, men and women from London’s national museums, galleries and archives forged extraordinary plans to evacuate their collections to safety. Utilising country houses from Buckinghamshire to Cumbria, tube tunnels, Welsh mines and Wiltshire quarries, a dedicated team of unlikely heroes packed up their greatest treasures in a race against time during the sweltering summer of 1939, dispatching them throughout the country on a series of secret wartime adventures, retold in this talk. December 13th 2022 10:45 Live & on Zoom Oscar Wilde: Up Close Giles Ramsay "I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." I examine the public and private life of one of the world's most original and controversial artists. Born into a moderately respectable Dublin family Oscar Wilde recreated himself as an international celebrity and wrote a series of short stories and plays that charmed the world. In 1890 he also published the last of the great myths - The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ten years later Wilde, devoured by his fame, his demons and his decadence, would be dead. January 2023 10:45 Live & on Zoom The Healing Power of Plants Timothy Walker Mankind has exploited the medicinal properties of plants for thousands of years, yet the role of plants in modern medicine is still considered to be peripheral by many people. This talk attempts to put the record straight and to show that plant products are used every day by all of us to relieve pain and suffering, to heal wounds and cure diseases. This is a talk with a very wide appeal and relevance.