The story of two remarkable Victorians and the birth of English comic opera. Their quarter of a century long partnership began in 1871, when the pair were brought together by the remarkably entrepreneurial theatre manager Richard D’Oyly Carte, with whom they collaborated on fourteen unique comic operas.  Perhaps best known for The Mikado, H.M.S Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe, their satirical brilliance can still inspire and impress today. Enjoy the bouquets, brickbats and their extraordinary popularity and fame. Their success was unprecedented in the history of music theatre and their creativity inspired the likes of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Their legacy not only inspired amateur companies to flourish but also left London with three great theatres and three world famous hotels.

With the exception of Munch, it’s only in the last forty years that Nordic art from 1880 to 1920 has made an impression on the wider world. Exhibitions and books have traditionally focused on the supposedly unique Nordic light and evocative national landscapes painted in this era.  But this was also a period of heady experimentation, of vastly different genres and painting styles, influenced by wave after wave of the French avant-garde. It was finally the time for Nordic women painters to break through, receive the highest accolades internationally and achieve the most prestigious posts in the arts world.  And yet the twentieth century forgot these remarkable female painters. Why?

Fortunately, this century has seen their rediscovery and an explosion of interest. They are now names you need to know, famous again on the international exhibition scene. In the last decade they have had blockbuster retrospectives not just in the Nordics but at Tate Modern, The Royal Academy, the Musée d’Orsay…and the works of one scored triumphantly in New York in the Guggenheim’s most popular exhibition ever.  

This talk explores works by artists as diverse as Hilma af Klint, Helene Schjerfbeck, Harriet Backer, Sigrid Hjertén, Ellen Thesleff and Anna Ancher, to tell the story of the Nordic Modern Breakthrough through the eyes of its female artists. Their ability to create groundbreaking art in a man’s world is testament to their talent and endurance.  We’ll learn how they found training, the sacrifices they had to make and why art history erased them. And when you have seen their powerful works - interiors and arctic mountains bursting with colour, achingly emotional self-portraits, innovative abstraction, angst-ridden expressionist cityscapes – you’ll understand why Scandinavia’s Modern Breakthrough in art needs to be told by its women artists.  

In this lecture I review the life and works of Paul Klee and the impact of his unfortunate mysterious illness. The talk will show Klee as a poet, a writer, an accomplished musician, a teacher as well as being one of the most prolific artists of the 20th century. His work covered several 'isms' of post first world war German art. He also had a wicked sense of humour in his caricatures. Shortly after escaping from Nazi Germany, as one of the so-called 'degenerate artists', Klee developed the very rare auto-immune disorder, scleroderma. This is a disease that has been the subject of much of my research career. What is less known, and is the focus of the second half of the lecture, is that Klee documented in his own drawings the impact of the disease on his health and his life in general. There is much in his diaries and letters  to accompany these very moving outputs, culminating in how he approached his own death.

synopsis to come

This lecture explores an artist whose work, inventiveness, and ability to catch the zeitgeist is still admired a century after her bold 'Bizarre' wares were launched in 1927. These Art Deco masterpieces are the products that most vividly signify Clarice Cliff's legacy. She spent a lifetime innovating. Born in 1899, she was a working professional whose lifespan covered the period in which women broke through the barriers of the art world. While the Royal Academy barred women from accessing the full training and privileges of their male counterparts, the pottery industry was one that had traditionally offered female artists the opportunities to excel. Cliff's talents were recognised when she was still a teenager, and she went on to produce designs that keyed into the cutting-edge trends of the period, setting the bar for ceramics as a commercial art form.  

This talk is on how magicians have appeared in art throughout the centuries, whether in paintings, satirical prints or cartoons. Early artists used the magician to symbolise the mysterious and the unknown, associating them with astrology. In the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch produced two of the most famous and striking pictures of the conjurer performing the Cups and Balls trick. The 18th and 19th century saw a proliferation in engravings and lithographs showing the magician both indoors and on the streets. Bringing it right up to date there are examples of how cartoonists and satirists delight in linking politicians with skulduggery with images of them featuring Sawing a Woman in Half, Vanishing illusions or pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat. Some of the tricks talked about are performed by Ian.

Discover the core of Charles Dickens character in this enlightening and entertaining lecture.  Making his debut reciting a poem as a 7 year old sitting on a pub table, little Charles Dickens developed a lifelong passion for the theatre. As a young man he attended the theatre every night for 3 years, he created over 2000 intensely theatrical characters, and produced, directed, and starred in lavish productions staged in purpose built theatre spaces in the family home. First night audiences included Queen Victoria and The Duke of Wellington!

Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts in the 15th century and when Catherine Medici an Italian noblewoman married the French King Henry II in 1533, she brought Ballet to the French court. A century later, King Louis XIV, a passionate dancer, popularised and standardised the art form and in 1661 he founded the Royal Academy of Dance, The popularity of ballet soared in Russia in the late 19th century when Russian choreographers and composers took it to new heights.

The lecture will trace the story of Banksy’s humble beginnings as a tagger on the streets of Bristol in the 1980’s to one of the most recognisable names in the art world.  We will examine the reasons behind his incredible rise, looking at some of his famous stunts and discuss what his influence has been on the art market today and look at what his legacy, if any, might be. 

Between 1911 and 1914 Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc (two of the founding members of The Blue Rider artists’ group in Munich) believed that they were working together to create a new art for a new spiritual era that was about to dawn. Influenced by a mix of ideas derived from German and Russian Romanticism, and Theosophy’s blending of Western and Eastern mysticism, Kandinsky and Marc created a symbolic art using colour symbolism to represent spiritual ideals and began to explore the possibilities of abstract art.

A fascinating lecture of how opera began, developed and spread worldwide; from 1600 to the present day. Illustrated with musical examples and excerpts of opera productions from around the world. This illustrated lecture looks at the development of opera from its baroque beginnings right up to the modern-day Hamilton. Highlighting the major changes and game-changers through each century, the movers and the shakers, focusing upon the greatest operas by the greatest composers. This lecture is suitable for the operatic novice; or expert.   

I write only for fame… 

Jane Austen 

When Jane Austen declared that she wrote ‘only for fame’, she was, of course, being ironic: she published anonymously; there is no record on her gravestone that she was a writer; and her books fell out of print shortly after her death.  But now, Jane Austen is one of our best loved authors, with legions of adoring fans throughout the world.  Her novels have inspired countless stage and screen adaptations, and even provided solace to soldiers in the trenches.  She is the face of the £10 banknote, and she adorns tea towels and fridge magnets everywhere.  Jane Austen is now very famous indeed.    But how did it all happen?  This lecture will chart Jane Austen’s rise to fame; it will explore the making of a literary celebrity and examine Austen’s legacy, 250 years after her birth.      

Alice provides a painter’s perspective on famous artworks from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Rembrandt and Turner are revealed as artistic risk-takers, whose new combinations of glazes, surfaces, pigments and processes re-defined the language of painting.  

These two forefathers of experimentation lead the way for modern artists such as Pollock and Fontana, who went beyond the brush, the canvas, and the gallery wall itself in search of the meaning of making

The lecture covers the career, style and impact of the Renaissance master painter, from his prodigious childhood in Urbino, to the Princely reputation he enjoyed in Rome. The lecture will look at his famous works, as well as analyse his lesser-known masterpieces. Discover the truth behind his competition with Michelangelo, his shocking death, and how this artist became the celebrated Prince of painting, honoured with a burial in one of the most remarkable buildings in the world.

Synopsis to come

Explores the way TS Eliot was indebted to, and himself inspired - whether as subject or as poet - some of the 20th Century's greatest artists

As a pioneer of literary modernism, TS Eliot inevitably influenced his counterparts in the visual arts. He was friends with several artists. Edward McKnight Kauffer and David Jones illustrated his work; Patrick Heron and Wyndham Lewis painted him; Jacob Epstein sculpted him. There are paintings and compositions inspired by his poems. And the reverse is also true; The Waste Land famously employs techniques borrowed from modern art. 

The British musical grew in its own unique way, with style, heart, guts and masses of fun. We are still entertained by revivals of Me and My Girl, The Boy Friend and Oliver! But what of the many more hit shows, such as Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet, Ivor Novello’s King’s Rhapsody and the bitingly satirical Expresso Bongo, that are no longer staged?

This lecture rediscovers a distinctive West End story to give a new perspective on the shows and the people who made them. It’s an aspect of culture and personality unique to Britain – and fascinating in variety and success. 

This is the story of making a replica of the oldest known stringed instrument, the Gold Lyre of Ur, a Mesopotamian lyre dating from 2,500 BC.  A lyre is the precursor of the harp. We have made a playable instrument, using authentic materials from the Middle East: cedar wood, mother-of-pearl, pink limestone and lapis lazuli. The crowning glory is the bull’s head on the front, which is covered in gold. 

The lecture is illustrated with Powerpoint pictures of all the stages of the making, and then of musicians performing with it, with a sound clip so that you can hear what it is like. It took more than 3 years to complete, all with voluntary help. The story of the acquisition of the materials, and the construction, is quite dramatic, and the finished product is amazing.