Having spent the early part of my life in London and Sussex I came to the Bath area, via a brief spell in Hampshire, forty years ago. One thing I soon noted about my new home region was the large number of nonconformist chapels and meeting houses that speckle its towns and villages. Even in the 1970s some had already been converted into private homes or secular community facilities. But the names 'Ebenezer', 'Wesleyan', 'Unitarian' and several others remain carved into the fabric of the buildings.
Many of these places of meeting and worship also display dates from the late seventeenth century to the nineteenth. Reformation, Civil War, Enlightenment and industrialisation all contributed to a ferment of thoughts, ideas and arguments about religion and belief, religious practice and the relationship of the church and the individual.
Our speaker this month is Isabel Rivers, Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture at Queen Mary University of London. Professor Rivers is also Director of the Dissenting Academies Project. Her research interests focus on intellectual and religious history and the history of the book from 1660 to 1830. Her current project is a book whose title will be Vanity Fair and the Celestial City and its subtitle that of this month's lecture: Dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720-1800. It will make reference to religious publishing, societies for distributing books, advice about reading, seventeenth-century nonconformist and episcopalian inheritances, Roman Catholic influences, North American connections, interpreting the Bible, practical works, lives, letters, the uses of poetry, hymn collections and magazines. Among the key personalities featured in Professor Rivers's book will be John Bunyan, Henry Scougal, Philip Doddridge, William Law, George Whitefield and John Wesley.
Isabel Rivers's most substantial publication to date has been Reason, Grace and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, published in two volumes in 1991 and 2000. More recently she has published Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (2008) and Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales (2011).
Another date for your diary
My diary entry for 27 January (below) referred to HA Bath Branch members' visits in May and June and our Christmas event. I now have another date that you may want to note: the afternoon of Thursday 12 October, when a party of members will be able to visit St John's Hospital, founded in Bath by Bishop Reginald Fitzjocelyn in 1174 beside the hot springs of the Cross Bath to provide healing and shelter for the poor infirm. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century by a young John Wood the Elder, St John's has continued to provide for the poor of Bath for more than 800 years. More information and booking forms will be issued in the coming weeks.
Mike Short
Tuesday, 7 March 2017
Friday, 27 January 2017
Democracy and Despotism in British India (Thursday 23 February) and dates for your diary
I am writing this on the day after Professor Roey Sweet's excellent lecture on The Ladies' Grand Tour and the day before I leave for my first ever visit to India.
Indian civilisation dates back 4000 years and more to the Harappan settlements along the River Indus. In the following millennia various waves of invaders and settlers occupied and changed the subcontinent. In the north, where I will be going, Rajput clans rose to prominence from the late seventh century AD. Muslim invaders established a series of dynasties from the early thirteenth century. In 1526 the victory in battle of Babur marked the beginning of the great Mughal era, a time of prosperity and cultural excellence.
My visit will take me to the 'pink city' of Jaipur and to Agra, where the outstanding symbol of Mughal culture is Shah Jahan's exquisite Taj Mahal. In Delhi, where my visit begins, the centuries and cultures should converge, with New Delhi, built by the British between 1911 and 1931, representing the period between the decline of the Mughals and the bloody birth of independent India in 1947. The last few days of my visit will be spent in Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj from 1863 to 1947, in the lower ranges of the Himalayas.
Fortuitously, since our planning isn't that good, the British Raj is the subject of our lecture 13 days after my return. The title is Democracy and Despotism in British India. Did the long period of British domination in India bring benefits, either transient or lasting, to the Indian people? Do we underestimate or overestimate their exploitation by their British masters? Historians are bound to want to debate such issues.
To guide us through the thicket on this occasion we are pleased to welcome Dr Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University, a specialist in the history of the British Empire.
Dates for your diary in May, June and December
We have organised two visits during the summer break in our programme of lectures: on Friday 19 May to Great Chalfield Manor near Bradford-on-Avon and on Thursday 15 June to Owlpen Manor near Dursley. Each is a private visit - Owlpen Manor is not open to the general public - and will be guided by members of the families who live there. Each will include tours of the house and garden and will end with afternoon tea. Full details and application forms will be circulated to members and available at lectures from March.
Our members' Christmas visit and buffet will be held at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, on the evening of Thursday 14 December. The details and application forms for this will be send to members during August.
Mike Short
Indian civilisation dates back 4000 years and more to the Harappan settlements along the River Indus. In the following millennia various waves of invaders and settlers occupied and changed the subcontinent. In the north, where I will be going, Rajput clans rose to prominence from the late seventh century AD. Muslim invaders established a series of dynasties from the early thirteenth century. In 1526 the victory in battle of Babur marked the beginning of the great Mughal era, a time of prosperity and cultural excellence.
My visit will take me to the 'pink city' of Jaipur and to Agra, where the outstanding symbol of Mughal culture is Shah Jahan's exquisite Taj Mahal. In Delhi, where my visit begins, the centuries and cultures should converge, with New Delhi, built by the British between 1911 and 1931, representing the period between the decline of the Mughals and the bloody birth of independent India in 1947. The last few days of my visit will be spent in Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj from 1863 to 1947, in the lower ranges of the Himalayas.
Fortuitously, since our planning isn't that good, the British Raj is the subject of our lecture 13 days after my return. The title is Democracy and Despotism in British India. Did the long period of British domination in India bring benefits, either transient or lasting, to the Indian people? Do we underestimate or overestimate their exploitation by their British masters? Historians are bound to want to debate such issues.
To guide us through the thicket on this occasion we are pleased to welcome Dr Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University, a specialist in the history of the British Empire.
Dates for your diary in May, June and December
We have organised two visits during the summer break in our programme of lectures: on Friday 19 May to Great Chalfield Manor near Bradford-on-Avon and on Thursday 15 June to Owlpen Manor near Dursley. Each is a private visit - Owlpen Manor is not open to the general public - and will be guided by members of the families who live there. Each will include tours of the house and garden and will end with afternoon tea. Full details and application forms will be circulated to members and available at lectures from March.
Our members' Christmas visit and buffet will be held at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, on the evening of Thursday 14 December. The details and application forms for this will be send to members during August.
Mike Short
Tuesday, 6 December 2016
The Ladies' Grand Tour (Thursday 26 January)
The concept of the 'Grand Tour' is generally associated with aristocratic young men sowing their wild oats and picking up collections of art and antiquities with which to furnish the great houses of eighteenth-century Britain. In fact, the profile of the travellers who made the tour of Italy was considerably more varied than the caricature suggests and the purchase of artworks on a large scale was relatively uncommon. Many male travellers were accompanied by wives, daughters, sisters, or (escaping scandal at home) their mistresses and some intrepid women even travelled on their own. This lecture, given by Professor Roey Sweet, Director of the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester, will explore the experience of the Grand Tour from the perspective of these women and offer a rather different view of a cultural institution often seen as quintessentially masculine.
Roey Sweet has worked mainly in eighteenth-century British urban and cultural history. In 2012 she published Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy 1690-1820.
Mike Short
Roey Sweet has worked mainly in eighteenth-century British urban and cultural history. In 2012 she published Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy 1690-1820.
Mike Short
Thursday, 3 November 2016
Under the Satirist's Eye: Christopher Anstey's Poetical Portrayal of Eighteenth-Century Bath (Thursday 24 November)
A change to our previously published programme brings eighteenth-century Bath into focus for our November lecture.
The New Bath Guide, 'a series of Poetical Epistles', was first published in 1766. Its gently satirical account of the adventures of the three naive children of a Northern squire in the fashionable city of Bath brought fame to the poet Christopher Anstey.
Anstey was born into a prosperous Cambridgeshire family in 1724. After Eton College and the University of Cambridge, where his talent as a Latin poet was recognised, he settled into the life of a country squire. In the 1760s he suffered depression and ill health and was advised to take the waters at Bath. In 1770 he settled with his family at No 4 Royal Crescent, where he lived for 35 years until his death in 1805.
Of the New Bath Guide Anstey himself wrote that it included 'particular and topical Bath references to give the flavour of the place and time' but that he intended it to be a 'critique of manners and morals' with wider application. He also published An Election Ball, in Poetical Letters from Mr Inkle at Bath to his Wife at Gloucester (1776) and various other works.
Our guide to the New Bath Guide and Christopher Anstey's amused and amusing observations of life in eighteenth-century Bath will be local historian Gavin Turner.
Civic Reception and Members' Christmas Buffet
2016 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bath Branch of the Historical Association. Appropriately, our members' Christmas event, on Thursday 8 December, will begin in the Mayor's Parlour in the Guildhall, where we will be welcomed by the Mayor of Bath. Following this Civic Reception a festive buffet will take place in the Brunswick Room. The cost of reception and buffet is £20 per person. Members should seek further information from mikeshort20@btinternet.com or 01225 812945.
Mike Short
The New Bath Guide, 'a series of Poetical Epistles', was first published in 1766. Its gently satirical account of the adventures of the three naive children of a Northern squire in the fashionable city of Bath brought fame to the poet Christopher Anstey.
Anstey was born into a prosperous Cambridgeshire family in 1724. After Eton College and the University of Cambridge, where his talent as a Latin poet was recognised, he settled into the life of a country squire. In the 1760s he suffered depression and ill health and was advised to take the waters at Bath. In 1770 he settled with his family at No 4 Royal Crescent, where he lived for 35 years until his death in 1805.
Of the New Bath Guide Anstey himself wrote that it included 'particular and topical Bath references to give the flavour of the place and time' but that he intended it to be a 'critique of manners and morals' with wider application. He also published An Election Ball, in Poetical Letters from Mr Inkle at Bath to his Wife at Gloucester (1776) and various other works.
Our guide to the New Bath Guide and Christopher Anstey's amused and amusing observations of life in eighteenth-century Bath will be local historian Gavin Turner.
Civic Reception and Members' Christmas Buffet
2016 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bath Branch of the Historical Association. Appropriately, our members' Christmas event, on Thursday 8 December, will begin in the Mayor's Parlour in the Guildhall, where we will be welcomed by the Mayor of Bath. Following this Civic Reception a festive buffet will take place in the Brunswick Room. The cost of reception and buffet is £20 per person. Members should seek further information from mikeshort20@btinternet.com or 01225 812945.
Mike Short
Thursday, 20 October 2016
Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain? (Thursday 27 October)
Oliver Cromwell's is one of the most recognised names in history. But what is known of him? Was he a regicidal dictator, as David Sharp has claimed? Was he the military dictator described by Winston Churchill? The great poet John Milton, Cromwell's contemporary who called him 'our chief of men', and the writers Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner saw him as a hero of liberty. Leon Trotsky believed he was a class revolutionary. Crude popularity polls (eg BBC in 2002) rank him one of the 'greatest Britons of all time'. My friend Georgina Murphy, who grew up in County Cork, regards him as a genocidal monster.
A man of the middle gentry living in obscurity for most of his life, then MP for Huntingdon and Cambridge, a 'liberal' Puritan, a signatory of the death warrant of King Charles I, an able military and political leader, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England [and Wales], Scotland and Ireland ... He was all of those things. So, 'hero' or 'villain'?
Professor John Morrill was educated at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and at Trinity College, Oxford. He has taught at the universities of Stirling and Cambridge and is a fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and of the British Academy. He is now a deacon of the Roman Catholic Church and holds several senior positions in the Diocese of East Anglia. For ten years Professor Morrill was president of the Cromwell Association, 'a body that seeks to promote public knowledge about and interest in Cromwell and his age'. Who better to guide us through an assessment of one of the giants - or monsters - of history?
A change to the programme
Our lecture on 24 November will not now be as stated previously. The new title will be Under the Satirist's Eye: Christopher Anstey's Poetical Portrayal of Eighteenth-Century Bath. Our guest speaker will be Gavin Turner.
Mike Short
A man of the middle gentry living in obscurity for most of his life, then MP for Huntingdon and Cambridge, a 'liberal' Puritan, a signatory of the death warrant of King Charles I, an able military and political leader, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England [and Wales], Scotland and Ireland ... He was all of those things. So, 'hero' or 'villain'?
Professor John Morrill was educated at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and at Trinity College, Oxford. He has taught at the universities of Stirling and Cambridge and is a fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and of the British Academy. He is now a deacon of the Roman Catholic Church and holds several senior positions in the Diocese of East Anglia. For ten years Professor Morrill was president of the Cromwell Association, 'a body that seeks to promote public knowledge about and interest in Cromwell and his age'. Who better to guide us through an assessment of one of the giants - or monsters - of history?
A change to the programme
Our lecture on 24 November will not now be as stated previously. The new title will be Under the Satirist's Eye: Christopher Anstey's Poetical Portrayal of Eighteenth-Century Bath. Our guest speaker will be Gavin Turner.
Mike Short
Thursday, 1 September 2016
Introducing the new season, 2016-17
It is some months since my last diary entry, but this does not indicate a quiet summer away from Historical Association business. In May and June I was pleased to accompany large groups of Bath Branch members to Mells Manor, the home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford and Asquith (Lord Oxford is the great-grandson of Herbert Henry Asquith), and Rodmarton Manor, a house and contents built in the Cotswolds Arts and Crafts style. I attended the Historical Association Conference in Harrogate in May. The Bath Branch committee has met to plan the 2017-18 season of lectures. I have discussed the promotion of our branch with members of the editorial team of Bath Life, the first outcome of which will be our first magazine advertisement in the forthcoming (2-16 September) edition. And, in our ninetieth anniversary year, I have been able to accept on the Bath Branch's behalf an invitation for members to attend a Civic Reception with the Mayor of Bath before our pre-Christmas buffet in the Guildhall.
Our speakers for the new season come from Cambridge, Bristol, Leicester and London. We begin with our local friend Jennifer Scott, Director of Bath's wonderful Holburne Museum. The title of Jennifer's lecture is William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting. It will set in their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contexts the interests and enthusiasms of some of our great collectors of decorative and fine art.
This is the programme in full ...
22 September 2016
William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting
Jennifer Scott (Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath)
13 October
Members' visit to Bath Record Office
27 October 2016
Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain?
Professor John Morrill (Selwyn College, University of Cambridge)
24 November 2016
Historical Legacy Problems and Democratic Regime Change in Europe
Professor Geoffrey Pridham (University of Bristol)
8 December 2016
Civic Reception and members' Christmas buffet at the Guildhall, Bath
16 January 2017
The Ladies' Grand Tour
Professor Roey Sweet (University of Leicester)
23 February 2017
Democracy and Despotism in British India
Dr Sean Lang (Anglia Ruskin University)
23 March 2017
Dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720-1800
Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary University of London)
27 April 2017
Hogarth, Handel and the Foundling Hospital: a Story of Creative Philanthropy
Caro Howell (Director of the Foundling Museum, London)
Each lecture will take place on a Thursday evening at 7.30 at the Friends Meeting House, York Street. In the weeks preceding each one I will endeavour to introduce the lecturer and her or his subject in this diary.
Mike Short
Our speakers for the new season come from Cambridge, Bristol, Leicester and London. We begin with our local friend Jennifer Scott, Director of Bath's wonderful Holburne Museum. The title of Jennifer's lecture is William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting. It will set in their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contexts the interests and enthusiasms of some of our great collectors of decorative and fine art.
This is the programme in full ...
22 September 2016
William Holburne and George IV: the Art of Collecting
Jennifer Scott (Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath)
13 October
Members' visit to Bath Record Office
27 October 2016
Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain?
Professor John Morrill (Selwyn College, University of Cambridge)
24 November 2016
Historical Legacy Problems and Democratic Regime Change in Europe
Professor Geoffrey Pridham (University of Bristol)
8 December 2016
Civic Reception and members' Christmas buffet at the Guildhall, Bath
16 January 2017
The Ladies' Grand Tour
Professor Roey Sweet (University of Leicester)
23 February 2017
Democracy and Despotism in British India
Dr Sean Lang (Anglia Ruskin University)
23 March 2017
Dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720-1800
Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary University of London)
27 April 2017
Hogarth, Handel and the Foundling Hospital: a Story of Creative Philanthropy
Caro Howell (Director of the Foundling Museum, London)
Each lecture will take place on a Thursday evening at 7.30 at the Friends Meeting House, York Street. In the weeks preceding each one I will endeavour to introduce the lecturer and her or his subject in this diary.
Mike Short
Sunday, 3 April 2016
James, Duke of Monmouth (Thursday 28 April) and the AGM
James, Duke of Monmouth, was Charles II's first and favourite son. He blazed like a comet through the skies of Stuart England. He was a rake, a rebel and a revolutionary. After invading England in 1685 in an attempt to replace his Catholic uncle, James II, as king and being defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor - the last to be fought on English soil - he was executed for high treason on Tower Hill aged 36.
This season's final lecture will be given by Dr Anna Keay, Director of the Landmark Trust. You may have seen Anna last autumn in the fascinating Channel 4 series Restoring Britain's Landmarks which showed the work Anna and her colleagues undertake at the Landmark Trust. Other television series in which Anna has appeared include The Buildings that Shaped Britain (Channel 5, 2006) and The Tower (Channel 4, 2001). She also contributed to BBC television programmes on the Golden Jubilee (2002) and the State Opening of Parliament (2003-2006).
Anna's books include The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (Hambledon Continuum, 2008) and The Crown Jewels (Thames & Hudson, 2011). Anna's latest book, The Last Royal Rebel: The life and death of James, Duke of Monmouth, will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
The AGM
Anna Keay's lecture will be followed by a brief Annual General Meeting, during which the HA Bath Branch programme for 2016-17 will be announced.
Mike Short
This season's final lecture will be given by Dr Anna Keay, Director of the Landmark Trust. You may have seen Anna last autumn in the fascinating Channel 4 series Restoring Britain's Landmarks which showed the work Anna and her colleagues undertake at the Landmark Trust. Other television series in which Anna has appeared include The Buildings that Shaped Britain (Channel 5, 2006) and The Tower (Channel 4, 2001). She also contributed to BBC television programmes on the Golden Jubilee (2002) and the State Opening of Parliament (2003-2006).
Anna's books include The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (Hambledon Continuum, 2008) and The Crown Jewels (Thames & Hudson, 2011). Anna's latest book, The Last Royal Rebel: The life and death of James, Duke of Monmouth, will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
The AGM
Anna Keay's lecture will be followed by a brief Annual General Meeting, during which the HA Bath Branch programme for 2016-17 will be announced.
Mike Short
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