An illustrated talk by Andrew Negus The Portsmouth talk is in four parts, and covers the origin and development of the settlement from 1100 until today. Naturally its history is closely related to the growth of the Royal Navy and the Navy’s part in making the UK the most powerful country in the world by...
Presented by Alison Habens and Matt Wingett Writers and researchers, Alison Habens and Matt Wingett, claim to have discovered an extraordinary fact: three famous literary figures of the 19th Century, H.G.Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling met each other in the early 1880s, in the Old Drapery Bazaar, Hide's Emporium, on King's Road in Southsea....
Her Honour Judge Sarah Munro KC. In 2016, Judge Sarah Munro became a Senior Circuit Judge at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) trying serious cases frequently involving murder trials. Judge Munro will talk about her career as a lawyer for the last forty years and her work at the Old Bailey. HHJ Sarah...
Presented by Dr. Ben Timmis Although we take modern medical technology for granted, the CT Scanner, invented by an Englishman, is a truly extraordinary machine, that has had a huge impact on the practice of medicine as we know it today, ever since it was introduced in the 1980s. This talk will explain the origins...
Presented by Sarah Stanfield Lewis Carroll was a paradigm shifter in Victorian Children’s literature, who excited the imaginations of his young readers, and none more so than one Pelham Greville Wodehouse. Unexpected links between the two authors began to emerge on close examination of their lives and literary output. Sarah Stanfield Sarah was born on...
The Life of Ken Wood and his Involvement in the Kenwood Company Kenneth Maynard Wood (1916-97) joined the Merchant Navy at 14, traveling the world and learning the importance of teamwork, which set him up for a successful business life. Ken's interest in electrical engineering eventually led him into manufacturing domestic appliances. In 1947, Ken Wood and his business...
Andrew Negus is back by popular demand to give the second part of the Portsmouth story - not that you need to have heard the first one to appreciate Part II covering Portsmouth 1750 to 1850. We shall see how two Napoleons force the creation of world class defences around Portsmouth and force the Dockyard...
By Dr Ian Friel The talk is about some of the shipwrecks Ian researched as a historian – an English ship from the 1400s, a Dutch vessel from the 1600s, and a British passenger liner from the 1850s. The last of the three remains lost, and its story has odd resonances with that of the...
By Vivien Morgan ‘Cross-dressed to Kill’ is a book featuring a unique collection of extraordinary stories by twenty women cross-dressers of English, Irish, French, Prussian, Russian, Spanish, American and Israeli nationalities. There were literally hundreds of known women cross-dressers in Britain across Europe and in the Americas yet they have been erased from both social and military...