September Lecture - 04 September 2017
In and Under the Vatican - Joyce Hill
Professor Joyce Hill received warm hospitality during stays at the Vatican on academic business when she was given privileged access to two millennia of archaeology and history in and deep underneath the magnificent St Peter's Basilica. Some, though, might see conspicuous consumption - fine wines, limousines - as at odds with the plight of the faithful poor. The distinguished Anglican scholar's quarters were in the former convent where the retired Pope Benedict now has an apartment. Today's huge 16th-century basilica overlaps the outline of a previous St Peter's built 1,200 years earlier by Constantine atop the reputed grave of the apostle; that one's foundations stood on pagan and early Christian tombs (small "houses" of a kind still seen in modern Italian cemeteries). These often intact tombs were explored by Professor Hill, who explained a Jonah and whale engraving: some see the regurgitation of Jonah after three days as an Old Testament hint of the coming resurrection of Jesus. Close to Constantine's edifice was a "Cleopatra's Needle" shipped from Roman-times Egypt and once the centrepiece of a racetrack on the site, it is now in St Peter's Square (oval). Vatican City (pop. 842 includes 100 Swiss Guards) is 110 acres (our South Park is 91) officially became an independent state only in 1929, nearly 70 years after the Risorgimento brought the Papal States, covering much of central Italy, into the newly united country.
In and Under the Vatican - Joyce Hill
Professor Joyce Hill received warm hospitality during stays at the Vatican on academic business when she was given privileged access to two millennia of archaeology and history in and deep underneath the magnificent St Peter's Basilica. Some, though, might see conspicuous consumption - fine wines, limousines - as at odds with the plight of the faithful poor. The distinguished Anglican scholar's quarters were in the former convent where the retired Pope Benedict now has an apartment. Today's huge 16th-century basilica overlaps the outline of a previous St Peter's built 1,200 years earlier by Constantine atop the reputed grave of the apostle; that one's foundations stood on pagan and early Christian tombs (small "houses" of a kind still seen in modern Italian cemeteries). These often intact tombs were explored by Professor Hill, who explained a Jonah and whale engraving: some see the regurgitation of Jonah after three days as an Old Testament hint of the coming resurrection of Jesus. Close to Constantine's edifice was a "Cleopatra's Needle" shipped from Roman-times Egypt and once the centrepiece of a racetrack on the site, it is now in St Peter's Square (oval). Vatican City (pop. 842 includes 100 Swiss Guards) is 110 acres (our South Park is 91) officially became an independent state only in 1929, nearly 70 years after the Risorgimento brought the Papal States, covering much of central Italy, into the newly united country.
April Lecture - 10 April 2017
Piles, Priests and Paradise - Michael Green
Forensic pathologist Michael Green's lecture "medical mysteries of the Old Testament" - or the dirty bits from the Bible. These were the stories behind all that begat-ing and who lay with whom and who knew someone else's wife as did Abraham know Hagar and the consequences thereof in sorrow, barren women, STDs and general misery. It wasn't edifying but it was unfailingly wry and often very funny. It was also educative on the writing of the King James Bible, with problems of translation from ancient languages in which oral history had been written a millennium after the events. There were also the limitations of the Hebrew vocabulary (even in modern times, said Dr Green, 1,000 words make you fluent), So a lot of guesswork then. All this as Passover 2017 began: each of the ten plagues of Egypt might be explained by such as climate change BC or events of Krakatoa proportions; arsenic-poisoning by Delilah may have caused Samson's hair-loss; possibly a sudden-death or shaken baby in the Judgement of Solomon case. And surprises for the layman included over 400 minor Commandments, often on public hygiene, and Hebrew-proper having no words for the genitals other than "that thing" and "that place."
Piles, Priests and Paradise - Michael Green
Forensic pathologist Michael Green's lecture "medical mysteries of the Old Testament" - or the dirty bits from the Bible. These were the stories behind all that begat-ing and who lay with whom and who knew someone else's wife as did Abraham know Hagar and the consequences thereof in sorrow, barren women, STDs and general misery. It wasn't edifying but it was unfailingly wry and often very funny. It was also educative on the writing of the King James Bible, with problems of translation from ancient languages in which oral history had been written a millennium after the events. There were also the limitations of the Hebrew vocabulary (even in modern times, said Dr Green, 1,000 words make you fluent), So a lot of guesswork then. All this as Passover 2017 began: each of the ten plagues of Egypt might be explained by such as climate change BC or events of Krakatoa proportions; arsenic-poisoning by Delilah may have caused Samson's hair-loss; possibly a sudden-death or shaken baby in the Judgement of Solomon case. And surprises for the layman included over 400 minor Commandments, often on public hygiene, and Hebrew-proper having no words for the genitals other than "that thing" and "that place."
March Lecture - 13 March 2017
Great Forgers - Jim Williams
Eyes glazed just a bit as unpronounceable names succeeded those of equally obscure Renaissance artists, but lawyer and novelist Jim Williams made his point that in the chancers' world of art and literary forgery it is usually the middleman - the dealer - who makes big money while it is the talented but crooked journeyman who takes the rap. Except, until a spelling mistake in 600BC Assyrian rang alarm bells, in the case of the Greenhalghs of Bolton. In recent times they kept the whole criminal enterprise in the family- from the remarkable craftsman knocking up "centuries old masterpieces" in the garden shed to his faux naive disabled father closing the deal. Their up-to-£1.5m profits included £440,000 in 2003 when the local museum bought the home-made Amarna Princess sculpture "from Ancient Egypt"; Bolton museum has since re-acquired it at £500 for a fakes exhibition. Also entertaining: the quip that Corot turned out 3,000 paintings "of which 10,000 are in the USA; the escape of Dutch artist Emyr de Hory from the death penalty because he merely forged a "Vermeer" he sold to the Nazis, while it would have been treason to sell an original national treasure; and the jailing of Clifford Irving for $700,000 fraud after writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Another Irving, Holocaust-denier David, figured in Mr Williams's story of his own link to the Hitler-diaries scandal - he published a novel about the fuhrer's diaries some months before the attempted hoax. Irving at first declared them false, but later declared them authentic after finding something in them confirmed a pet theory.
Great Forgers - Jim Williams
Eyes glazed just a bit as unpronounceable names succeeded those of equally obscure Renaissance artists, but lawyer and novelist Jim Williams made his point that in the chancers' world of art and literary forgery it is usually the middleman - the dealer - who makes big money while it is the talented but crooked journeyman who takes the rap. Except, until a spelling mistake in 600BC Assyrian rang alarm bells, in the case of the Greenhalghs of Bolton. In recent times they kept the whole criminal enterprise in the family- from the remarkable craftsman knocking up "centuries old masterpieces" in the garden shed to his faux naive disabled father closing the deal. Their up-to-£1.5m profits included £440,000 in 2003 when the local museum bought the home-made Amarna Princess sculpture "from Ancient Egypt"; Bolton museum has since re-acquired it at £500 for a fakes exhibition. Also entertaining: the quip that Corot turned out 3,000 paintings "of which 10,000 are in the USA; the escape of Dutch artist Emyr de Hory from the death penalty because he merely forged a "Vermeer" he sold to the Nazis, while it would have been treason to sell an original national treasure; and the jailing of Clifford Irving for $700,000 fraud after writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Another Irving, Holocaust-denier David, figured in Mr Williams's story of his own link to the Hitler-diaries scandal - he published a novel about the fuhrer's diaries some months before the attempted hoax. Irving at first declared them false, but later declared them authentic after finding something in them confirmed a pet theory.
February Lecture - 13 February 2017
A Brief History of the World in Clay - Lars Tharp
All human life is here. No, not in the sense of a racy Sunday tabloid's boast. It's the story of ceramics. The way it was told by Lars Tharp, his affability honed by 30 years of Antiques Roadshow, in his masterly lecture Brief History of the World in Clay, the planet could scarcely get by without the process of digging up mud then shaping and baking it. Ceramics (basic earthenware, serviceable but porous; stoneware where particles are fused together by higher temperatures; and the holy grail that is porcelain, ultra fired to attain its glaze) began 20,000 years ago. Lascaux cave painters used clay pigments; 3D bison in sculpted clay, although not fired, survive in the Dordogne; and the Chinese master ceramicists buried their exquisitely detailed terracotta regiments around 200BC with the remarkable intention of them never being seen again. For Tharp, civilization began when peripatetic man settled down to farm Mesopotamia and needed containers to store, transport and trade their produce: often-huge pots were thrown. Today ceramics are vital, often essential, to us in ways far beyond the domestic, artistic, decorative and commemorative - protection of space vehicles, to clad buildings from Sydney opera house to Harrods and, the clincher, as insulation wherever electricity is involved. Nuclear safety, tick. Bullet-proof jackets, tick. White newsprint, tick. A downside? Well, life expectancy for potters in 1930s Stoke: 42 years.
A Brief History of the World in Clay - Lars Tharp
All human life is here. No, not in the sense of a racy Sunday tabloid's boast. It's the story of ceramics. The way it was told by Lars Tharp, his affability honed by 30 years of Antiques Roadshow, in his masterly lecture Brief History of the World in Clay, the planet could scarcely get by without the process of digging up mud then shaping and baking it. Ceramics (basic earthenware, serviceable but porous; stoneware where particles are fused together by higher temperatures; and the holy grail that is porcelain, ultra fired to attain its glaze) began 20,000 years ago. Lascaux cave painters used clay pigments; 3D bison in sculpted clay, although not fired, survive in the Dordogne; and the Chinese master ceramicists buried their exquisitely detailed terracotta regiments around 200BC with the remarkable intention of them never being seen again. For Tharp, civilization began when peripatetic man settled down to farm Mesopotamia and needed containers to store, transport and trade their produce: often-huge pots were thrown. Today ceramics are vital, often essential, to us in ways far beyond the domestic, artistic, decorative and commemorative - protection of space vehicles, to clad buildings from Sydney opera house to Harrods and, the clincher, as insulation wherever electricity is involved. Nuclear safety, tick. Bullet-proof jackets, tick. White newsprint, tick. A downside? Well, life expectancy for potters in 1930s Stoke: 42 years.
January Lecture - 9 January 2017
Great tales from Crimea, Caucasus and Ukraine - John Pilkington
Exactly 28 years after his first adventure story (Old Silk Road? Patagonia?) so pleased members that he has been booked regularly ever since, John Pilkington pulled a local rabbit out of the hat during his latest travelogue: en route to topical trouble-spots in the former Soviet Union, he had learned that the magnificent basilica in Krakow is 2.5 times the height of Durham cathedral. Thence to eastern Ukraine, where an armed uprising by of ethnic Russians has rejected rule from Kiev, via tiny Transnistria where similarly pro-Moscow feeling caused the region to beg Mr Putin to move in after its secession from Moldova - he declined, but the local economy is primarily a money-laundering operation for Russian criminals. In the Crimea, as hordes of Russian tourists sample its architectural and scenic delights in the wake of Putin's 2014 coup, John found huge satisfaction among the local population (80 per cent Russian) and resignation by long-suffering Tartars living there. The insightful lecture included many fine photographs especially of nearby Odessa, Ukraine's remaining Black Sea showpiece, so far denied the World Heritage site it deserves.
Great tales from Crimea, Caucasus and Ukraine - John Pilkington
Exactly 28 years after his first adventure story (Old Silk Road? Patagonia?) so pleased members that he has been booked regularly ever since, John Pilkington pulled a local rabbit out of the hat during his latest travelogue: en route to topical trouble-spots in the former Soviet Union, he had learned that the magnificent basilica in Krakow is 2.5 times the height of Durham cathedral. Thence to eastern Ukraine, where an armed uprising by of ethnic Russians has rejected rule from Kiev, via tiny Transnistria where similarly pro-Moscow feeling caused the region to beg Mr Putin to move in after its secession from Moldova - he declined, but the local economy is primarily a money-laundering operation for Russian criminals. In the Crimea, as hordes of Russian tourists sample its architectural and scenic delights in the wake of Putin's 2014 coup, John found huge satisfaction among the local population (80 per cent Russian) and resignation by long-suffering Tartars living there. The insightful lecture included many fine photographs especially of nearby Odessa, Ukraine's remaining Black Sea showpiece, so far denied the World Heritage site it deserves.
December Lecture - 5 December 2016
Keeping the Lights on - David Edwards
If you want to fight fracking, don't cite the risk of earthquakes. UK fracking is different from that in the USA where shallow drilling is the norm; that is the method said to cause tremors. Here, the drill has to go down 1.5km to 4km and so, according to Glasgow University energy specialist David Edwards, removes the danger. Your more reasonable objection, he reckoned in his Keeping the Lights On lecture, is a pollution threat to underground water. He didn't say whether frackers can guarantee a no-leaks operation. Last century, world population went up 2.5 times but there was a four-fold rise in energy consumption; today's 7.4bn people would be 9bn by 2050, pointing to more resource conflicts - e.g. oil wars.. Encouragingly, though, oil is not going to run out, but coal is. UK energy security, he said, was of course best assured by a mix of sources, including nuclear and renewables - points on the latter included that to be fully resourced by wind power we would need wind farms on 10 per cent of our landmass; Norwegian hydropower was to be imported; there was a possibility of bringing geo-thermal power undersea from Iceland; and hydropower (limited in the UK, the latest project providing only a 20th of the power generated by coal at Ferrybridge) starts to boil your kettle 30 seconds after the dam gates open. Wave energy had huge potential but Scotland's pioneer in that technology had gone bust. Nimbyism is old-hat in opposing energy projects: the Banana syndrome is even more obstructive - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. He condemned that attitude: "Who must pay to keep the lights on? The user must, environmentally and financially. And that means all of us." The cash bill for UK energy security 2010-20, at £159bn didn't seem so daunting against, for example, the £500bn paid to prop up banks.
Keeping the Lights on - David Edwards
If you want to fight fracking, don't cite the risk of earthquakes. UK fracking is different from that in the USA where shallow drilling is the norm; that is the method said to cause tremors. Here, the drill has to go down 1.5km to 4km and so, according to Glasgow University energy specialist David Edwards, removes the danger. Your more reasonable objection, he reckoned in his Keeping the Lights On lecture, is a pollution threat to underground water. He didn't say whether frackers can guarantee a no-leaks operation. Last century, world population went up 2.5 times but there was a four-fold rise in energy consumption; today's 7.4bn people would be 9bn by 2050, pointing to more resource conflicts - e.g. oil wars.. Encouragingly, though, oil is not going to run out, but coal is. UK energy security, he said, was of course best assured by a mix of sources, including nuclear and renewables - points on the latter included that to be fully resourced by wind power we would need wind farms on 10 per cent of our landmass; Norwegian hydropower was to be imported; there was a possibility of bringing geo-thermal power undersea from Iceland; and hydropower (limited in the UK, the latest project providing only a 20th of the power generated by coal at Ferrybridge) starts to boil your kettle 30 seconds after the dam gates open. Wave energy had huge potential but Scotland's pioneer in that technology had gone bust. Nimbyism is old-hat in opposing energy projects: the Banana syndrome is even more obstructive - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. He condemned that attitude: "Who must pay to keep the lights on? The user must, environmentally and financially. And that means all of us." The cash bill for UK energy security 2010-20, at £159bn didn't seem so daunting against, for example, the £500bn paid to prop up banks.
November Lecture - 5 November 2016
Amid Beautiful Trees - Roger Hailwood
From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks - the aphorism is not yet fully fulfilled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire but it is obviously apt. The idea that retired naval officer David Charles had some 30 years ago that Britain should have a national site of remembrance away from London and combined with an arboreal showpiece came after visits to the USA's Arlington cemetery in a magnificent treescape. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire gave immediate encouragement. The first plantings on 150 acres of restored gravel pits were 20 years ago, so the trees are well short of maturity but are still a fine backdrop for the more than 300 memorials, many of them military plus scores of tributes to public service, sacrifice and loss of all kinds. Its opening year, 2001, saw 12,500 visitors; 300,000 come now. A £17.5m visitor centre opened last month. All this we heard from official guide Roger Hailwood. It is difficult to decide which recalled tragedy or heroism is the most moving - perhaps the "shot at dawn" tableau pardoning hundreds of young men cruelly, as we now acknowledge, accused of 1914-18 cowardice. There's the lychgate that PoWs built at the entrance to the cemetery where lie thousands of victims of inhumanity inflicted in Changi jail; and 30 metres of recycled track laid by the slave labourers of the Burma railway, rails made in Middlesbrough in 1902. A buried gas pipeline meant no planting along one wide corridor - so it has become a poppy meadow to immortalise slaughter on the Somme.
Amid Beautiful Trees - Roger Hailwood
From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks - the aphorism is not yet fully fulfilled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire but it is obviously apt. The idea that retired naval officer David Charles had some 30 years ago that Britain should have a national site of remembrance away from London and combined with an arboreal showpiece came after visits to the USA's Arlington cemetery in a magnificent treescape. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire gave immediate encouragement. The first plantings on 150 acres of restored gravel pits were 20 years ago, so the trees are well short of maturity but are still a fine backdrop for the more than 300 memorials, many of them military plus scores of tributes to public service, sacrifice and loss of all kinds. Its opening year, 2001, saw 12,500 visitors; 300,000 come now. A £17.5m visitor centre opened last month. All this we heard from official guide Roger Hailwood. It is difficult to decide which recalled tragedy or heroism is the most moving - perhaps the "shot at dawn" tableau pardoning hundreds of young men cruelly, as we now acknowledge, accused of 1914-18 cowardice. There's the lychgate that PoWs built at the entrance to the cemetery where lie thousands of victims of inhumanity inflicted in Changi jail; and 30 metres of recycled track laid by the slave labourers of the Burma railway, rails made in Middlesbrough in 1902. A buried gas pipeline meant no planting along one wide corridor - so it has become a poppy meadow to immortalise slaughter on the Somme.
October Lecture - 10 October 2016
Unfrocking Medieval Egypt - Jacqueline Hyman
"I see wonderful things." Even Howard Carter had a walk-on part in textiles maestro Jacqueline Hyman's wide-ranging survey of clothes making and embroidery over the centuries. The finder of Tutenkhamun's treasures had an early boost in his Egyptology career when Professor Eric Newberry took him on in the first decade of the 20th century to help the recovery of children's Sunday-best burial wear. A box of these wonderful things - as Mrs Hyman revealed them to be after her months of intense, painstaking and delicate research (including body-fluid removal from the medieval-era garments in silk, linen and wool) - were Newberry's 1933 gift to Leeds university; until recently they lay there unexamined. Her findings under x-500 microscopes showed sophisticated colour-weaving techniques, advanced embroidery, gold threading and surprising sources of materials and expertise (cotton from Aleppo, Chinese-made fabrics). The sewing, for instance of speciality buttons and run-and-fell seams, would defeat most domestic seamstresses today. But, saving European pride, Mrs Hyman showed similar advanced work (reinforced stitching at stress points, quilting) done even earlier for Thomas Becket's finery and Francis of Assisi's alleged apparel.
Unfrocking Medieval Egypt - Jacqueline Hyman
"I see wonderful things." Even Howard Carter had a walk-on part in textiles maestro Jacqueline Hyman's wide-ranging survey of clothes making and embroidery over the centuries. The finder of Tutenkhamun's treasures had an early boost in his Egyptology career when Professor Eric Newberry took him on in the first decade of the 20th century to help the recovery of children's Sunday-best burial wear. A box of these wonderful things - as Mrs Hyman revealed them to be after her months of intense, painstaking and delicate research (including body-fluid removal from the medieval-era garments in silk, linen and wool) - were Newberry's 1933 gift to Leeds university; until recently they lay there unexamined. Her findings under x-500 microscopes showed sophisticated colour-weaving techniques, advanced embroidery, gold threading and surprising sources of materials and expertise (cotton from Aleppo, Chinese-made fabrics). The sewing, for instance of speciality buttons and run-and-fell seams, would defeat most domestic seamstresses today. But, saving European pride, Mrs Hyman showed similar advanced work (reinforced stitching at stress points, quilting) done even earlier for Thomas Becket's finery and Francis of Assisi's alleged apparel.
