Many people now carry a phone with a camera capable of taking very high-quality pictures, and yet the painting of botanical specimens persists with new Florilegium Societies still being formed.  Why is a drawing and painting still considered to be superior to a digital image?  This talk looks at the history of botanical illustration from the early herbals 1,500 years ago to the present day, taking in the lives of both the artists and the plants immortalised in the artwork.

Jewellery has undergone a dramatic evolution since the 1960s. Whilst major jewellery houses have continued to work principally in traditional materials and forms, innovation has come from individual artist-makers trained at art schools and working independently. Approaching their work largely as a means of self-expression, they have challenged the notion of what jewellery is, through the use of new materials and radically different forms.  In this lecture curator Clare Phillips explores this changing approach to adornment through the lens of the V&A’s jewellery collection, with which she has worked for thirty years.

Ideal for Christmas time!  This talk ranges from Dickensian Christmas stories to traditional Victorian Christmas activities and the inspiration for ghost stories at Christmas.

The UK provides some of the biggest Ceremonial Events in the world and arguably the best in the world but why is that? How do the military prepare for major events such as State Opening of Parliament, State Visits, National Day of Remembrance, Royal Weddings or even a State Funeral?

Lidos and libraries, concert halls and cottage estates: the inter-war era was a time of bold and urgent experiments in social engineering through architecture. 

Against a backdrop of the Great Depression, ‘moral uplift’ and ‘optimism’ became the buzzwords of the day. What if civic architecture could change the lives of the people? How could the puny ‘C3’ Brits be transformed into an A1 nation? What could we learn from our European neighbours (including, whisper it, the Germans)?

Many Impressionist artists were well known for their images of female figures engaged in contemporary everyday activities, and a number of critics reviewing their exhibitions regarded Impressionism as a quintessentially ‘feminine’ style. But what can these images tell us about nineteenth-century lived experience and the choices and processes involved in image-making? This lecture explores these questions through a close engagement with artworks by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas.

This is a whistlestop tour of major artworks, key themes, important ideas and stylistic changes in Modern and Contemporary art from the late 1800s to today to serve as an introduction to the myriad of styles in art in the 20th century. This can also be done as a more in-depth series of talks, depending on your requirements. 

Few people nowadays give more than a second thought to their clocks: practical, sometimes beautiful, devices that form the background noise of our daily lives. But from their introduction in the thirteenth century onwards, clocks have held a variety of philosophical and social meanings. This talk explores the visual and literary uses of the clock, the varied meanings it could hold throughout the ages: as an ominous symbol of oncoming death, but also as a metaphor for the soul, for capitalism, and for the good use of time.

2027 will be the 300th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough was unquestionably one of the greatest portrait painters that Britain has ever produced. His ability to capture the inner lives of his sitters, his dramatic use of paint and his remarkable approach to colour set him apart from almost all of his contemporaries. Yet, although he was regarded in his lifetime as one of the preeminent portrait painters of his day, the genre that he truly loved was landscape. In this lecture we will look at the life and work of this unique artist, his experimental technique and his fraught relationship to portraiture, the genre in which he excelled. 

A lively and potentially interactive lecture on the world of Restoration Theatre: how did it come into existence, where was it performed and for whom, what distinguishes the plays and the players from those that went before the Interregnum? This lecture explores the bawdy, glittering and glamorous world of 17th century theatre, and also the darker side of the world of Charles II's court, with a fascinating array of actors, producers, writers and royals, all intertwined in a world we often underestimate.

The Persian empire exploded into life during the middle of the 6th century BC and was the largest empire in the world for the next two centuries. It stretched from the Mediterranean in the west to the Indus valley in the east, from the Eurasian steppes in the north to Egypt and Arabia in the south. In around 515, its third Great King, Darius I, commissioned the building of a new city, Persepolis, with his palace at its centre. We know a great deal about this palace, and one of its central features, the Apadana Staircase, can be seen in replica in the British Museum. What can this palace and its art tell us about the ideology of this extraordinary and influential empire?

Fashion in a Time of War explores the role fashion designers played in London and Paris during the second World War. Names synonymous with elegance and style pre-war were to play significantly different roles during WWII, some better known than others. Coco Chanel took a German lover and was viewed as almost 'untouchable' until 1954, Hardy Amis became a British spy in Belgium and used the names of fashion accessories as code words to communicate with resistance groups, Lucien Lelong dressed the wives of the German high command during the occupation of Paris whilst working tirelessly to save the lives of thousands.

In this amusing lecture I will talk about the seemingly happy world of professional, family pantomime - and what it’s really like. I’ll recount the bouquets and the brickbats. I’ll look at the famous names, the greatest Dames and the old routines that we all remember – and I’ll look at when it all works – and when it doesn’t.  And I’ll talk about why this most precious of British traditions will always endure, and why, surprisingly, every actor wants to do it. This is a revealing look at professional panto, from someone who was born into it.