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 May 10th 2022 10:45 Live & on Zoom Lincoln Cathedral: Mary’s Paradise Garden Jonathan Foyle During the thirteenth century, Lincoln Cathedral was amongst the greatest building projects in England and despite a series of disasters, from an earthquake to war and robbery, we have inherited a magnificent and relatively unscathed masterpiece of art and architecture. Through its sheer size and complexity, the cathedral’s beauty can be difficult to understand. But through writing the book Lincoln Cathedral: Biography of a Great Building the speaker offers a fresh and coherent analysis of the cathedral’s evolution. This talk shows how this wonderfully inventive structure embodied changing ideas about the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Paradise, to whom it was dedicated. June 14th 2022 10:45 Live & on Zoom The Land of the Midnight Sun: Norway’s Golden Age of Painting Stella Grace Lyons Why isn’t Norwegian art better known? Should it be? The late 19th century marked a defining moment in Norway. For the first time romantic painters began to turn to their own land for inspiration. They painted the stormy seas, the towering glaciers and the raw, untamed nature of their homeland. Their aim? To draw attention to the beauty of their country and explore what it meant to be ‘Norwegian’. This talk looks at the artists from Norway’s ‘Golden Age’ who captured the far north with drama and romance and interpreted their wild country as a mythical, eerie entity. It will explore the stunning works of JC Dahl, Peder Balke, Nikolai Astrup and Harald Sohlberg. This is chance to discover some of art’s most under appreciated artists! 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.