Following the completion of last season's lecture programme on 26 April groups of HA Bath members have visited Bowood House and Gardens in Wiltshire on 16 May and the contrasting Gatcombe Court to the southwest of Bristol on 14 June.
For members there is now a summer break, and for the HA Bath committee an opportunity to reflect on what has passed and to make plans for the future. The committee will meet on 10 July with Howard Jacobs as its chairman for the first time. Boyd Schlenther, whose five-year term ended at the AGM, will continue to be a member of the committee. Everyone will welcome Howard and wish him well as he leads us through the next phase of our own long history.
I and two other members of our committee spent two days in May at the Historical Association Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon. One of the consequences is that we have secured the agreement of renowned author and broadcaster Tracy Borman to be our guest speaker on 28 November 2019.
First, however, there is the 2018-19 season, details of which were circulated at the Annual General Meeting in April. The seven lectures begin with Professor Tony Badger, current President of the Historical Association, who visited us in 2016 to speak about Presidents Obama and F D Roosevelt. This time he will endeavour to place the election of President Trump in a historical perspective. We have speakers from the universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester and London, a Lay Reader from Bath Abbey, and my fellow HA trustee and friend Jenni Hyde who will, during the course of her lecture, sing to us. Our Christmas visit and buffet this year will take place in the evening of Thursday 13 December at the American Museum in Britain. Members will receive details and application forms for this event during August.
This is the programme ...
27 September 2018
The 2016 Election and Donald Trump in Historical Perspective
Professor Tony Badger (former Master of Clare College, Cambridge),
President of the Historical Association
25 October 2018
English-speaking Radicals and the French Revolution
Professor Peter Jones (University of Birmingham)
22 November 2018
Rivers, Rains and Resilience: Indus urban and rural communities in the third millennium BCE
Alessandro Ceccarelli (Magdalene College, Cambridge)
13 December 2018
Members' Christmas Visit and Buffet
at the American Museum in Britain, Bath
24 January 2019
The Reformation: how Bath Abbey survived it
Jeremy Key-Pugh (Lay Reader, Bath Abbey)
28 February 2019
Modernising Calcutta: Technology, the Spectacular and the Unexpected
Dr Anindita Ghosh (University of Manchester)
28 March 2019
New ways of 'reading' and contextualising the Lindisfarne Gospels
Professor Michelle Brown (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
25 April 2019
Singing the News: Ballads in Mid-Tudor England
Dr Jenni Hyde (Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool Hope and Southampton)
All lectures will take place on Thursday evenings at 7.30 in the Friends Meeting House, York Street. I plan to introduce each one in this diary.
Mike Short
