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Lecture Programme

All our lectures commence at 10.45 am coffee is available from 10.00 a.m.

10September Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Riviera Paradise: Art Design and Pleasure in the 1920s – Mary Alexander

Time: Wednesday, 10 September 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Since the C19 English high society had ‘wintered over’ on the Côte d’Azur, but always left by April. In the early 1920s, however, an intoxicating mix of artists, writers, musicians and international visitors, inspired by a mythological seascape of luminous colours, created a new summer season. Sun tans and sportswear soon became ‘de rigueur’ in […]
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08October Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Art and History of Folding Fans from Antiquity to the 20th Century – Scott Schiavone

Time: Wednesday, 8 October 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Fixed Fans have been used for millennia, principally for cooling but also for religious and ceremonial purposes. The earliest known fixed fan was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun and dates to around 1323 BCE. In Europe, the folding fan was preferred and later developed into a ubiquitous accessory for the fashionable elite. They were […]
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12November Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Hazards of the Journey: Pilgrimage and Travel in the Middle Ages – Imogen Corrigan

Time: Wednesday, 12 November 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
What possessed people to trudge hundreds of miles, often in appalling conditions and sometimes perishing on the way? This lecture considers this question and also how there was a shift from spiritual wandering in the Anglo Saxon period to religious tourism in the days of Chaucer’s pilgrims. It also looks closely at travel in general […]
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10December Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Holiday Season: Food and Feasting in Art – Sarah Ciacci

Time: Wednesday, 10 December 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Christmas is historically a time for feasting and celebrations, in large part because it occurs in the middle of the dark and cold days of winter, so a mid-season celebration with lots of food and drink helped spur people on towards the spring. In this talk we will look at how food and feasting is […]
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14January Wednesday
Lecture Programme

John Constable: Chocolate box painter or maverick artist – Alan Read

Time: Wednesday, 14 January 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the quintessential English landscapist John Constable.  Enormously popular and endlessly reproduced, his paintings today are familiar – perhaps over-familiar.  But his modern reputation masks a radical, experimental artist who pushed the boundaries of art of his time just as much as his near-contemporary (and far more […]
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11February Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Morocco Blues: Why and how the Country changed colour – Elizabeth Gowing

Time: Wednesday, 11 February 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
This lecture draws on Elizabeth’s time in Morocco in visits spanning more than 25 years. The lecture focuses particularly on the stories behind the blue pigment used for the fishing boats and doorways of photogenic Essaouira on the Moroccan coast, and the Majorelle Blue developed and patented by French artist Jacques Majorelle in Marrakech in the […]
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11March Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Artists of Montmartre: The Pilgrims of Babylon – Douglas Skeggs

Time: Wednesday, 11 March 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
There is no name more evocative of Bohemian life: of high spirits, decadence, poverty, and revolutionary art in Paris, than Montmartre. In reality it was little more than a rundown suburb overlooking the city, bristling with windmills.
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13May Wednesday
Lecture Programme

160 years of London Underground Design and Architecture – Mark Ovenden

Time: Wednesday, 13 May 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Covers surprising attempts to create some graphic unity, even in the 1860s and 70s, expansion of the Underground and the need to create some cohesion between the different operating companies, Leslie Green’s architecture and the Arts & Crafts movement, Frank Pick, Edward Johnston’s typeface, Charles Holden’s architecture and the Streamline Moderne/Art Deco movement, the New […]
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10June Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Art of the Cartoonist – Harry Venning

Time: Wednesday, 10 June 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high profile UK publications (The Guardian, Radio Times) as well as for countless more obscure titles (British Journal Of Wound Care). He was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist Of The Year for his Guardian strip Clare In […]
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09September Wednesday
Lecture Programme

National Treasures: Saving London’s Museums and Galleries in WWII – Caroline Shenton

Time: Wednesday, 9 September 2026 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Garner Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
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 […]
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