HISTORY TALKS - WITH VICTORIA CLARK - VARIOUS DATES
History Talks with Victoria Clark
Series 2 - Britain's Inter-National Treasures
Other nations’ history books sometimes feature Britons who are household names ‘over there’ but barely or completely unknown here. Victoria Clark will examine the 17th to 20th century lives of 6 British men and women who are still more or less fondly remembered in Ukraine, Iraq, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Bosnia.
The talks are:
Thursday 24th September - The Saudis have the spy and explorer Harry St John Philby to thank for the al Saud tribe having secured their new state, along with its valuable oil reserves and guardianship of Islam’s Holy Places.
Thursday 1st October - ‘We will never be able to fully know or fully appreciate everything that woman did for Bosnia,’ said Yugoslavia’s Nobel prize-winning author of Miss Irby.’ Born near Diss, Adeline Paulina Irby devoted her life to a struggle to provide education for Bosnian Serb girls under Ottoman rule and is honoured with a street name in Sarajevo.
Thursday 8th October - John Hughes, a gifted Welsh metal worker, inventor and manager upped sticks to Ukraine aged 55, to found a coal mining and metal-working town named after him - Hughesovka. Today, fought over by Russia and Ukraine, the place is better known as Donetsk.
Thursday 15th October - Gertrude Bell - Arabist, civil servant, spy, archaeologist, photographer, explorer, mountaineer - devoted her last years to the creation of an an independent Iraq. Clear-sighted and honest she perfectly understood how and the British project of rearranging the Middle East would fail
Thursday 22nd October - A Scottish military mercenary, General Patrick Gordon made his mark in the Russia of Peter the Great by first mentoring the young tsar, then helping him onto his throne and finally, by modernising his army.
Thursday 29th October - After narrowly surviving an unconventional youth in pre- and wartime Europe, the painter, sculptor and writer artist Leonora Carrington discovered that Mexico best suited the development and expression of her surrealist vision.
Event Details:
Each talk is 6-8pm (with interval)
Doors open at 5.30pm and the event will promptly start at 6pm.
Please ensure you arrive before 6pm.
Tickets £8 per talk
Seated event
About Victoria Clark:
Victoria Clark is an award-winning journalist and author; a former foreign correspondent for the Observer from post-Communist Romania, from former Yugoslavia and Moscow (1990-1996). Her particular interest is in trying to present world events intelligible via a deeper understanding of the past.
