The fascinating story of the history and development of the harp in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany: how it differed from harps and their music in England and the rest of Europe, and how it evolved into a symbol of proud identity with political significance. Sarah illustrates this lecture with live music and songs on medieval, Regency and modern Celtic-style harps.

Sarah is a graduate and prize-winner from the Royal Academy of Music and in 2015 was elected an Associate. She performs, writes and lectures about the harp regularly in America, Australia, Europe and UK. Her lectures include live music and songs on harps and other instruments. 

Lectures begin at 11am and usually end by 12.15pm.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is well known for its intricate brocades and unique weaving tradition, unmatched anywhere else in the world. Textiles are woven into every aspect of Bhutanese life, they represent status, wealth and expressions of spiritual devotion. The weavers (always women) are renowned for their stunning mastery of colour, pattern and design; whilst the men (usually monks) are highly skilled in embroidery and applique used to create Buddhist images, monastic furnishings and dance costumes. 

Bhutan had no currency before the 1960s, so cloth was the major form of wealth. It was used to pay taxes, to bestow as diplomatic gifts and to mark any social occasion. This lecture will introduce this outstanding art form and explain how textiles are crucial to Bhutan’s cultural identity.

Zara Fleming is a freelance lecturer, art consultant and exhibition curator specialising in the art and culture of Tibet, the Himalayan areas and Mongolia. Zara has worked with, amongst others, the Central Asian Department of Bonn University, the Orient Foundation, the Royal Academy, the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and the V&A. Zara has published many articles in the field of Buddhist art and culture.

Lectures begin at 11am and usually end by 12.15pm.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) is one of the greatest British artists of the twentieth century. Although less well known than his imaginative paintings, portraiture was also an important part of Spencer’s artistic practice, especially in his final decade, when he was in high demand as a commercial portrait painter. This lecture will explore Spencer’s views on portraiture, and the role it played in his life and work. Through his paintings, we will meet many of the people around him, from friends and neighbours to figures of national importance. 

Dr Amy Lim is an art historian and curator, specialising in British fine and decorative arts from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. She is curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, and a Departmental Tutor at Oxford Lifelong Learning. She has curated and contributed to numerous exhibitions, including British Baroque: Power and Illusion (Tate, 2020), Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920 (Tate, 2024) and Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk(Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury and the Stanley Spencer Gallery, 2025-6). Amy has degrees in History, and Literature & Arts from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and has published articles and essays on a variety of art-related topics from gothic garden monuments to female patronage.

Lectures begin at 11am and usually end by 12.15pm.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The past eminence of Ravenna has left a legacy of richly decorated early Christian buildings which has earned it UNESCO World Heritage site status. This lecture will explore some of these buildings and their magnificent mosaics: 

• The domed church of San Vitale - home of the celebrated portrait panels of the emperor Justinian I and his wife, the notorious empress Theodora.

• The basilica church of S. Apollinare Nuovo - decorated with spectacular processions of male and female saints, and with surprising evidence of its past life as the palace chapel of Ostrogoth King Theodoric.

• The basilica church of S. Apollinare in Classe, featuring a magical starry sky apse mosaic; and

• The jewel-like cruciform oratory of imperial princess Galla Placidia, with its heavenly blue ceiling strewn with 567 shimmering gold stars.  

Dr Helen Rufus-Ward is an accomplished art historian. She has published on Late Antique and Byzantine ivory carvings, plaster casting of art works, and on 19th century collecting. Helen is a member of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, the Society of Jewellery Historians, and is the Chairman of Eastbourne Arts Circle that has raised significant sums of money for the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

J.M.W. Turner is famous for his scrutiny of environmental and weather conditions, and loved to experiment with colours, textures and techniques. Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, born 1967, rocketed to fame when two million people visited his Weather Project at Tate Modern (2003-04). 

This lecture focuses on the two environmentalists and innovators and includes Turner's sublime landscape where geology,  light and weather play a major role, and photos of  Eliasson's work inspired by Iceland's volcanic landscapes and extreme weather conditions. The lecture concludes with Eliasson's abstract paintings created in 2014  in response to seven of Turner's late works.

Susan Wood is a cultural historian and practising artist. During her career as a university lecturer Susan submitted over 60 international conference papers on German and European culture. After retiring in 2007 she volunteered as a guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Dulwich Picture Gallery. She regularly exhibits at Northern Print in the North East of England.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The mansions built during America’s “Gilded Age” came in all shapes and sizes, but a significant number of them were inspired by - some may say copied from - a varied selection of classic English houses. They were all resurrected and lived in by an eclectic mix of millionaires, all with their own aims and ambitions staked within. Through the splendour of the architecture on both sides of the Atlantic we’ll dive into the characters, quirks and stories behind these truly international treasures; and, we’ll discover that in almost every case - though centuries apart and unbeknownst to them - the builders of the English and the American houses shared remarkably similar backstories.

Mark is the founder of HouseHistree.com and lectures regularly in Europe and the United States, notably at the New York Historical Society. Mark delights in 'telling a story’. Packed with facts and laced throughout with humour, he takes a particular joy in bringing to life the stories behind the people that shape houses. His area of special interest lies in the great American houses and American social history, from pre-revolution to the end of the Gilded Age. 

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Take a gourmet's journey through the origins of festive fayre and the traditions we have adopted and adapted from Georgian and Victorian times. From the turkey stagecoach to the drinking of Port with Stilton cheese and the custom of wiping one's mouth on the tablecloth (!) - all revealed in the fascinating portrayal of our Christmas customs.

Jane Tapley gives lectures to theatre going societies, National Theatre and history and fine arts groups. She is a consultant to various TV productions on food of the 18th and 19th centuries and regularly hosts and cooks period meals in her Regency house in Bath for the Jane Austen Festival and other literary groups.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

One of the remnants of the great lost estates, Cassiobury Park is the largest park in Hertfordshire and of Watford. But this is no ordinary town park. In 1661, Arthur, the 2nd Baron Capel, was made the Earl of Essex and, by 1668/69, he had moved to Cassiobury. By 1707, Cassiobury was a significant estate. In 1800 the 5th Earl of Essex employed James Wyatt to rebuild the house. Humphry Repton was employed at Cassiobury, and the landscape was captured by J. M. W. Turner. By the beginning of the twentieth century, large areas of the park had been sold off for public parkland and by 1927 Cassiobury House was demolished. Much of the remaining land was bought to add further parkland for the expanding Borough of Watford. This lecture tells the significant story of a remarkable estate, family and parkland.

Paul Rabbitts is currently Head of Parks at the City of Norwich. He is a passionate advocate for public parks and, in particular, the Victorian and Edwardian bandstand, and is a prolific author on the subject. His first of now 34 books was published in 2011 on the iconic bandstand and was followed rapidly by books on the Royal Parks, Great British Parks and ‘Parkitecture’, Grinling Gibbons and Sir Christopher Wren. His latest book is called 'People's Parks - The Design and Development of Public Parks in Britain. Now a UK leading expert on bandstands he has been asked to assist in localised restoration projects nationwide and has been a regular and popular speaker on bandstands and public parks for many years.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Domenicos Theotokopolos, better known as El Greco, is often seen as an artist out of his correct place and time. At first glance his dramatic, expressionistic paintings with their sinuous figures seem more at home in a modern art museum than among other Old Masters. In this lecture Isabelle Kent will explore how his distinctive style came to be, and how it was received by his intrigued, and sometimes bemused, contemporaries - from his early years painting Byzantine icons in Crete to his studies in Venice and Rome, and finally his decades among the medieval splendour and humanist thought of Toledo.

Isabelle Kent is an academic and educator specialising in the baroque, with a particular focus on Spain and its empire. She received a BA and MPhil in History of Art from Trinity College, Cambridge, where she is currently completing her PhD on the art of Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán. Isabelle teaches regularly for the V&A, Art Fund, Royal Academy, Chelsea Arts Club, Wallace Collection and University of Cambridge. Her book, Collecting Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in Britain and Ireland, was published in 2020.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

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, discuss what his influence has been on the art market today, and look at what his legacy, if any, might be.

Pepe Martinez specialises in the graffiti and street art of East London. Prior to becoming a London blue badge, Pepe was a tour manager for 15 years travelling extensively all over the world.   

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Henry Moore established his unique approach to sculpture based on Michelangelo, Cubism, abstraction and central and south American Aztec and Mayan cultures. 

Anthony Caro studied sculpture in the 1940s, taught by traditional sculptors.  He later became Moore’s studio assistant for two years. In 1959, influenced by American abstract artists, Caro changed his approach, using sheets of steel to produce non-figurative sculptures. 

Subsequently Caro publicly criticized Moore for being a showman and thwarting younger talent. Moore took it badly and relations between them never fully recovered. This lecture traces the career of both Moore and Caro, and describes their time together, their falling out, and their respective impacts on modern sculpture. 

Raymond Warburton has had a life-long love of art. In 2011 Ray became a guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. From 2014 to 2017 he studied Art History at the Open University followed by the University of Buckingham, from where he gained an MA in the History of Art.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

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

After training at RADA Jamie Hayes worked for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Bristol Old Vic and the BBC. He became an Assistant Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Kent Opera and English National Opera. He was Associate Director on the original production of the hit musical Miss Saigon in the West End and on Broadway. 

Jamie has directed many new opera productions in the UK and overseas. He was Director of Productions for British Youth Opera for over a decade, a company devoted to promoting the talents of our finest young opera singers in the UK.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll wrote a short but seminal article in “The Garden” in which she urged the readers to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”.  As an accomplished watercolour artist, Miss Jekyll was familiar with the principles of using colours, but she felt that in gardens these principles “had been greatly neglected”.  This talk looks at how to apply these principles in designing a border, but it also looks at the ways in which a border is different from a painting.  However, it goes further than this and looks at how contemporary work of the likes of Turner, Monet, Rothko, Jackson Pollack evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should look like.

Timothy Walker read Botany at University College Oxford and was previously director (Horti Praefectus) at the Oxford Botanic Garden. In 2010 Timothy was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London and in the same year presented a 3-part series of films on the history of botany on BBC4. Since 2014 he has been a tutor in Plant Biology at Somerville College, Oxford. 

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Behind the front door of a modest terraced house in Cambridge lies an extraordinary Victorian hand painted interior. Working class decorative artist David Parr (1854-1927) spent many years decorating the finest churches and grandest homes in the country. In his precious spare time, he painted the walls of his own home with designs inspired by those he had worked on professionally, adapting them to create his own palace of art at 186 Gwydir Street. 

The David Parr House is a unique example of Arts & Crafts workmanship layered with 20th century social history. The house was subsequently lived in for 85 years by his granddaughter, and only discovered in 2009. The property is open for guided small group tours, but interior photography on tours is prohibited. However, with the permission of David Parr House our lecturer, Fiona Rose, has created a talk that will visually take you inside the property. We will learn about the lives of those who lived there, the commissions David worked on and the inspirations behind his wall paintings. 

Fiona Rose has been lecturing about topics she feels passionately about since 2010 including William Morris and his circle, the Arts & Crafts Movement, Frida Kahlo and Frank Lloyd Wright.  Fiona has a BA in Social Psychology and aims to include the human story behind the artistic endeavours of her subjects. Fiona is a member of the Museum Collections committee for The William Morris Society and a former Trustee serving as Chair of their Communications and Business Development committees. She is also a regular contributor to the Society’s Magazine and a book reviewer for the Journal of William Morris Studies. Fiona is a House Guide and specialist lecturer for the David Parr House in Cambridge.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

This lecture considers the extraordinary artistic ability of Eadfrith who is thought to have made the Gospels single-handedly in c.700. It also discusses why the Lindisfarne Gospels were made. The book is much more than a copy of the sacred text and a thing of beauty: it was made for distinctly political reasons that were closely connected to the fall-out from the Synod of Whitby and the struggle for survival by the once powerful community at Lindisfarne. The lecture includes discussion of the gloss added by Aldred ('most miserable and unworthy priest') nearly 300 years later.

Imogen Corrigan studied Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art and has an MPhil from the University of Birmingham. She currently works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe and runs study tours and courses. Imogen has written Stone on Stone: the Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published in 2019.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Wool, cotton and silk have each played a crucial role in the fortunes of Central Asia. Wool created the clothing and housing needed by the great nomadic cultures that were to dominate Middle Asia. Silk was more valuable than gold and used as currency, creating a network of trading routes that led to the first outbreak of globalisation. Cotton was the cause of Russian, later soviet colonisation and continues to cause controversy today. The felts, carpets, embroideries, robes and veils of the Silk Road stratified wealth, displayed religious and political entrenchments and changed the fortunes of this fascinating part of the world; a meeting place between Mohammed and Marx.

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying Media and Journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was expelled as part of an anti-Western purge, and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. He later moved to Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Everyone knows the ingredients of a traditional Christmas: the Christmas tree, pulling crackers, eating Christmas pudding and mince pies. Those last-minute cards sent to people you’ve not seen all year. These are the festive celebrations with which most of us grew up and they still hold a special magic as representing the timeless Christmases of days gone by. But where did they start? This lecture looks at the characters and personalities of the people who began those traditions or introduced them to this country.

Alan Read has a masters and First-Class Honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a gallery guide at Tate Britain and regularly lectures at both London Tates. For twenty years he was a gallery guide and lecturer at the National Portrait Gallery and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He also works as a London Blue Badge Guide.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

In a letter sent from London in 1874 Vincent van Gogh wrote: “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.” 

With this lecture Caroline explores the central role given to the natural world in van Gogh’s paintings. Depicted with the brightest colours, flowers, setting suns, fields and cypresses are recurrent motifs in his works. While van Gogh closely observed and represented the natural scenery that stood in front of him, he also imbued it with a greater meaning.

Dr Caroline Levisse is an art historian based in London. She was born in France where she studied art history before moving to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen she focused on research work and completed a PhD on the relations between art and religion in contemporary Scandinavian art. After graduating in 2013, she moved to London and taught art history with adult education providers. Caroline has published articles in French and English in academic journals as well as magazines and newspapers such as Church Times and Arts Sacrés.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

So many of our historical references for musical instruments can be found in works of art. Not only can these windows into the past show us what the instruments looked like, but also the social context in which they would have been played. Music and different instruments also play a strong role within symbolism in art. Sophie explores the instruments in selected works and then gives live demonstrations on replicas of the instruments depicted.

Sophie Matthews is a musician well-known for her prowess on the English border bagpipes and has become one of the foremost players of the instrument in the UK. She also plays a variety of early woodwind instruments such as shawm, rauschpfeife, crumhorm and recorder. She’s also one of a handful of British players of the baroque musette, an 18th century French bagpipe similar to the Northumbrian smallpipes.

When not touring with GreenMatthews, Sophie also makes instruments (she made her own baroque oboe) and works with respected luthier Tony Millyard on his flutes. Sophie is self-taught on all of her instruments

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Affordable art in the form of woodblock prints became popular in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1868), and was known as Ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the Floating World” for their ephemeral nature. 

When Japan opened its doors to the west in the mid-19th century, many of these prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and other artists were introduced to Europe for the first time and were received with great enthusiasm by the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists in Paris. This lecture traces the history of Ukiyo-e with examples from famous masters.

Dr Meri Arichi studied Art History in London and Florence, and worked at Christie’s, London, from 1989 to 1993. She later took her Post-graduate Diploma in Asian Art, MA in History of East Asian Art, and PhD in Japanese Art at SOAS. She has taught the History of Japanese Art at SOAS as a Senior Teaching Fellow from 2007 to 2016. Dr Arichi is a trustee of the Japanese Women’s Association in Great Britain and the Chair of the Circle of Japanese Art London.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The history of wallpaper is a long and fascinating subject that dates back to the 16th century. Joanna’s lecture explores the history and development of this product, from earliest times up to the present day. She discusses the changing ways in which wallpaper was made, and surveys designs from the first black and white patterns to the Contemporary designs in the 20th century.

Joanna Banham is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer. From 2006-2016 she was Head of Adult Learning at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and before that Head of Learning and Access at the National Portrait Gallery and Head of Public Programmes at Tate Britain. Joanna has also been Curator of Leighton House and Assistant Keeper at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She has published on many aspects of Victorian and early 20th century decoration and interiors.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

This lecture takes examples of a range of artists from the 15th to the 18th century and puts into words what it is that tells us a picture is a Rubens rather than Rembrandt. Chantal will demonstrate some of the distinctive characteristics of artists such as Mantegna, Bellini, Canaletto and Gainsborough. In this lecture Chantal will show you how to gain the great satisfaction of looking at an unfamiliar painting and realising that you can instantly recognise the artist.

Chantal has an MA in the History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years' experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby's Institute of Art since 1989 on Fine and Decorative Arts and has been a freelance lecturer for a number of societies and institutions, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The link between art and literature is crucial to an understanding of much of the art of the past. For centuries, the closer art was to literature, the greater the art. There were also practical reasons for creating ‘visible poetry’, thus raising the status of artist above that of a mere craftsman. In her lecture, Val will reference artists including Blake, Turner, Bosch, Burne-Jones, Delacroix, Poussin, Rossetti and Millais.

Val Woodgate lectures at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, the National Trust, U3A, City of London libraries (Barbican and Guildhall) as well as other organisations. Val was a Tate Guide for many years and a member of the Teaching Team at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Julia’s lecture guides us through the process of conserving paintings, before focusing on two individual altarpieces from the Early Northern Renaissance which were conserved recently in her conservation studios in Chiswick. The lecture takes us into a background history of the period, the wealth in Flanders, and of other artists working at the same time, both in Italy and the Low Countries.  It also provides insight into the unexpectedly early use of perspective, and by a process of comparison and contrast, shows how conclusions are reached as to the likely painters of these charming works.

Julia Korner is a specialist and lecturer in fine art conservation and the restoration of paintings, sculptures and frames. She is also a valuer, passionate collector, advisor and curator of paintings and works of art. 

Julia trained in art history and conservation before working at Christie's for 20 years as a paintings’ specialist, building extensive knowledge of Old Masters and of British, European and American paintings from the 1700s onwards. In addition to her role as a lecturer for The Arts Society, Julia also lectures for Sotheby’s Institute, Christie’s and Fine Art Societies.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

John Benjamin traces how man has mastered the technique of cutting and polishing diamonds, the hardest substance on earth. With historical slides, the various styles of cutting through history are discussed. The lecture also covers diamond jewellery through history; the use of silver, gold and platinum and their impact on design, and how diamonds are today identified and assessed; the role of the diamond laboratories; and the potential repercussions of imitations and synthetics. The lecture ends with a discussion of fancy diamonds and famous diamonds through history.

John Benjamin is a jewellery historian, lecturer, author and broadcaster. Formerly International Director of Jewellery at Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers, since 1999 he has been an independent jewellery consultant on behalf of the private client network. John is well-known from his appearances over 30 years on BBC Television’s ever-popular Antiques Roadshow. He is a Freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company, a Court Assistant and Founder Liveryman of The Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and in 2021 was appointed Honorary Jewellery Adviser to the National Trust.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The Ancient Greeks invented the human portrait and their sculpture formed the basis of European art. Arguably, it has never been bettered. They produced statues of such beauty and realism that men are said to have fallen in love with them. A Classical scholar and teacher, Rupert elucidates some of their finest artistic expressions, including the controversial Parthenon or ‘Elgin’ marbles (the story of which is recounted in detail) and the Venus di Milo, celebrated survivor of a craze for ‘naked Aphrodites’. Here is a chance to meet the Ancient Greeks in the raw. Contains nudity!

This lecture will be followed by the Society Annual General Meeting.

Rupert Willoughby is an historian and Classicist, a poet, a father and a wild swimmer with a passion for castles, lakes and uncovering the layers of the past. A graduate with First Class Honours in History from the University of London (where he immersed himself in the ‘Byzantine’, or medieval Greek Empire), he is the author of the best-selling Life in Medieval England for Pitkin, and of a series of popular histories of places, including Chawton: Jane Austen’s Village, and the whimsical, yet scholarly Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture. Rupert also contributes regular obituaries to The Daily Telegraph. Accredited to the Arts Society since 2011, he is an experienced lecturer, who is known for his light, humorous touch, his love of narrative and his vivid evocations of the past. Rupert’s forefathers were Vikings and his foremothers were Tatars.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Michael Praetorius’s music was celebrated again in his anniversary year of 2021, and thanks to a wonderful 1994 disc from the Gabrieli Consort, his music for Christmas has become his most loved calling card. Described as “Lutheran music at its most beguiling” as well as “community music at its best’, allowing amateur singers, congregations, children’s choirs and local instrumentalists to join in. Through his settings of the great carols Von Himmel hoch, In dulci jubilo, Puer natus in Bethlehem, Quem pastores laudavere and Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, we will travel through the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany stories, while exploring contemporary art and history.

Patrick Craig is a Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral. For twenty years he combined this with an international career singing over a thousand concerts with the world-renowned early music consort The Tallis Scholars. He also sings with the award-winning group The Cardinall’s Musick. He founded and conducts this country’s leading all-female professional choir, Aurora Nova. He has conducted concerts for the BBC Proms, the Brighton, Lichfield and Aldeburgh Festivals, and with the City of London Sinfonia.

As a Cambridge history graduate with a lifelong interest in the arts, he has gone on to lead choral workshops for amateur singers across the world, where he places music in its historical and cultural context. He regularly lectures for the St Paul’s Adult Education programme and for John Hall’s Venice Courses, which have allowed him to incorporate his interests in theology, art and poetry. 

In 2020, when his singing and conducting work disappeared overnight as a result of the Covid pandemic, Patrick poured all his experience into online presentations which have raised vital funds for the Help Musicians Charity.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

Overshadowed in her lifetime by the achievements of her illustrious father, today May Morris is recognised as a leading figure in the Arts & Crafts Movement. She was Head of Embroidery at Morris & Co. at the age of 23. May also designed wallpapers, made jewellery and was a talented amateur watercolour artist. She was instrumental in founding the Women’s Guild of Arts, with the aim of supporting women working in the arts and crafts field at a time when they were excluded from similar organisations. May spent her later years editing the 24 volumes of her father's collected works.

Fiona Rose has been lecturing about topics she feels passionately about since 2010 including William Morris and his circle, the Arts & Crafts Movement, Frida Kahlo and Frank Lloyd Wright. She has a BA in Social Psychology and aims to include the human story behind the artistic endeavours of her subjects. After an early career in public health Fiona founded and runs a home interiors business featuring the work of the great 19th century designers such as Morris, Dearle, Voysey and Mackintosh. Fiona is a member of the museum Collections committee for The William Morris Society where she served as a Trustee. She is also a contributor to the Society’s Magazine and Journal of William Morris Studies. Fiona is a volunteer Tour Guide with the Arts & Crafts gem The David Parr House.

Tickets for the lecture for non-members can be purchased at the cinema. Alternatively, visit the Broadway website page here.

The 1700s was a period when the people of England seemed to be especially gullible. They believed that a woman could give birth to rabbits; a man could climb inside a two pint bottle and sing inside it; and that a blond-haired European could write a book claiming that he was born in Taiwan. These hoaxes weren't just written about extensively in newspapers and journals but also brilliantly and amusingly depicted by satirical artists such as William Hogarth and James Gillray. In this entertaining talk, Ian demonstrates how 18th century hoaxes are memorable, not only for their imaginative nature, but also because of the differing motives of the tricksters.

Ian Keable gained a First Class degree from Oxford University, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then became a professional magician. He is a Member of The Inner Magic Circle. In 2014 he published Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters & Literature. He now divides his time between performing magic, giving talks and researching and writing. His most recent book, The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth-Century England, was published in September 2021.

A survey of a hundred years of Art in Britain from the Victorian Leopold Augustus Egg to Francis Bacon.  Lydia’s talk examines ways in which Britain’s isolated position resulted in an art which, while occasionally showing European influences, for most part remained steadfastly and uniquely British. Expect a tongue in cheek analysis of such popular British archetypes as the "stiff upper lip", a "nice cup of tea", "no sex we are British" and of course "the weather"!

Lydia Baumann was born in Poland. She studied for her BA in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (John Christie Scholarship and the Hatton Award) and obtained an MA in History of Art from Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Lydia has since divided her time between painting and exhibiting as well as lecturing. She has taught at London's National Gallery for more than 35 years, and intermittently at Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery as well as collections such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the latter as a guest speaker for travel companies. Since the pandemic began in March 2020 Lydia had devised and delivered a programme of upwards of 180 online lectures to her own group Art For The Uninitiated.

Nicole’s lecture explores the treasures, experiences and symbols of Medieval and Renaissance art, in particular, it looks at favourite saints and their emblems.  We will discover how to recognise the saint who will find your lost car keys!

Nicole Mezey studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris. She was Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast until 2009, working primarily with adults, managing and teaching on both the Part-Time degree and Extra-Mural programmes and conducting annual, international study-tours. She also established and was first Director of the Department of Art History, the first in the north of Ireland. Nicole now lives in central London and is a freelance lecturer, working for organisations including the National Museums, universities, the National Trust and private companies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy and her publications focus on adult education and the arts.

Dissolving into Light, and its representation, has always been a central concern for artists. This lecture considers the treatment of light in the late 19th century. The Impressionists, who were fascinated by visible phenomena, investigated the ways in which light shifts in colour and intensity from moment to moment, and its effect on the appearance of objects, figures, and landscapes. Most important of all, they wanted to work out how they as artists might communicate the perception of light in an oil painting. Their experiments would be the starting point for an increasingly systematic study of light in nature, which ultimately revolutionized modern art across Europe and beyond.

Kathleen McLauchlan is a lecturer specialising in 19th-century art history and currently a course director at the Victoria & Albert Museum organising courses and study days on the history of art and design. Kathleen teaches at several institutions, including Art Pursuits. She is a graduate of Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute with a PhD on French 19th-century painters in Rome.

This lecture traces the history of Faber and Faber through its illustrations, covers and designs. Early years brought innovations like the Ariel Poems – single poems, beautifully illustrated, sold in their own envelopes. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an emphasis on typography, led by the firm’s art director Berthold Wolpe; his Albertus font is still used on City of London road signs. In the 1980s, the firm started its association with Pentagram, responsible for the ff logo. Along the way, it has employed some of our most celebrated artists as cover illustrators – from Rex Whistler and Barnett Freedman to Peter Blake and Damien Hirst.

Toby Faber is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has been accredited by The Arts Society since 2012. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. He is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press.

Toby has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; and Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, as well as a novel, Close to the Edge. Of these, only the obvious one is published by the family firm.

The National Gallery's collection comprises works from the early 13th century up to masterpieces by the Impressionists of the 19th century.
The stories behind the pictures are interesting, amusing, unexpected and sometimes surprising. Details such as a peeing child in a beautiful Canaletto, or a portrait of a female rhinoceros who toured London and set a fashion for having one’s hair styled ' a la rhinoceros' - or why the working classes of Paris are happily bathing in the sewage of the city - or why it took 12 years for Renoir to finish a painting. 
The lecture also looks at technical details such as the sort of wood chosen for the panels and then the subsequent change to canvas in the late 1590s - or the fact that so few frames are original. No more than a handful of pictures in the NG are in the frames originally chosen for them. 
Restoration, cleaning and display all change how we view a painting and it is important to remember that none of these pictures were produced to hang on the walls of a London gallery. - they have all lived other, often surprising lives.

Linda Collins is a lecturer for the Historic Royal Palaces & National Trust, a freelance lecturer at Tate Modern & National Gallery, London, a member of the Association of Art Historians and President of The Arts Society Harpenden Area.

Her publications include The Tudors: The Crown, The Dynasty, the Golden Age.  Linda Collins & Siobhan Clarke,  Andre Deutsch Publishing, 2019;  King & Collector: Henry VIII and the Art of Kingship, Linda Collins & Siobhan Clarke, The History Press, 2021. and Gloriana: The Art of Elizabeth I, Linda Collins & Siobhan Clarke, The History Press, 2021. Release date to be confirmed. 

A personal look by Irving Finkel, an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, at the twelfth-century ivory Lewis Chessmen, which have bewitched him in the Museum for some fifty-five years, and the adventures to which they have led him: bilingual books, films, explorations, adventures, replicas - and even H. Potter and his peer group.

Irving Finkel is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He is currently the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia. Irving is the author of several academic articles and books on ancient Babylon. He also studies the history of board games, and is on the Editorial Board of Board Game Studies. Among his breakthrough works is the determination of the rules of the Royal Game of Ur. Irving founded the Great Diary Project, a project to preserve the diaries of ordinary people. In association with the Bishopsgate Institute, he has helped to archive over 2,000 personal diaries. In 2014, the V&A Museum of Childhood held an exhibition of the diaries of children written between 1813 and 1996. Irving has written a number of works of fiction for children, including The Princess Who Wouldn't Come Home and Swizzle de Brax and the Blungaphone.

Born in Bonn in December 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven became one of the greatest and most disruptive figures in the history of classical music. This talk presents an overview of this brilliant, cantankerous, visionary and astonishingly original composer, someone who tore up the rule book of classical music; visual illustrations include a selection of contemporary portraits, while musical examples are drawn from his genre-busting piano sonatas, quartets and symphonies, and from the revolutionary opera Fidelio. It reveals how Beethoven became a true Romantic artist, or as he preferred to describe himself, a “poet in sound.”

Sandy Burnett is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. Combining engaging scholarship with hands-on expertise, he devises and leads cultural holidays all over the world, is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music, is a highly sought after double bassist on the London jazz scene, and was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19 season.

A pictorial history of drinking glasses through the ages, studied through images of actual objects and through paintings. The lecture will focus particularly on the development of the wine glass, but will also look at glasses designed for other beverages, such as: beer, cider, ale, cordial etc. It will consider the drinking habits of different countries and the types of glass associated with those countries, e.g. the Venetian wing-stemmed glass, the German roemer, the Dutch flute and the English baluster-stemmed glass; and will discuss the association of fine glass drinking vessels with feasting and conviviality.

Jane Gardiner has an MA History of Art from the University of London and trained at the V&A where she continues to lecture there. Jane was previously Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for 17 years, becoming a Deputy Director of Sotheby's, UK. She has also lectured for the National Trust, the Art Fund, London University, Buckingham University, l'Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts in Paris, a private women's college in Saudi Arabia, on cruise ships and at antiques fairs and interior design conferences in America.

Worshipped by Aesthetes, and cultivated by Impressionists, the sunflower casts its golden rays across art and culture. As a personification of the divine and the regal, we trace its history from classical myth to twentieth century painting via Van Dyck and Van Gogh, Clytie and Klimt, Monet, Rivera, Wilde and Watts. Green and gold, human and divine, the adoring and the adored - the Sunflower.

Twigs Way is a professional researcher and writer fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. 
Her work explores themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature...and she enjoys following lesser known paths in garden history towards the unexpected. Her original work was on the history of women in the garden and she retains an active research interest in this topic.
Recent publications include the art and culture of specific flowers including the carnation and the daffodil and her book on the Chrysanthemum in Art and Culture was published October 2020 by Reaktion Press, and she is currently working on the Daffodil in art and culture.

Sargent was the great society portraitist of the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, but he was much more than that. His art was extremely varied and the breadth of his work can still surprise people. As well as his wonderful portraits, the lecture includes examples of his landscape paintings, inspired by the Impressionists, his work as an official War Artist in World War I, and his extremely beautiful and delicate watercolours.

Frank Woodgate is a lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and lecturer for the Art Fund, the National Trust, U3A and other organisations. 

Because he had ‘no faith in coteries’, Brown refused to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but nevertheless was responsible for some of the most powerful paintings of the period such as Work (1852-65), The Last of England (1852- 55) and the haunting 'Take Your Son, Sir!’ (1851). This lecture looks at the life and work of this influential artist, together with his family relationships and his relationship with the P.R.B.

Alan Read holds Master’s and First Class Honours degrees in History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London. Is a gallery guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery and has lectured at many galleries including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Plymouth City Art Gallery and the NPG. He is also a London Blue Badge Guide and City of London Guide.

The Nazis looted over 20% of Western Art during World War II, confiscating art from Jewish families and emptying museums throughout Europe. This lecture will provide an overview of Nazi looting by setting the scene in Nazi Germany, discussing Hitler’s obsession with art and how the Monuments Men recovered art after the war. Several landmark cases will be discussed in detail, including Gustav Klimt’s celebrated Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the stash of over 1200 artworks found in possession of the son of a notorious Nazi dealer.

Shauna Isaac has been active in World War II art restitution for several years and has worked with families and government organisations to recover Nazi looted art. She set up the Central Registry on Looted Cultural Property and served as a member of the Working Group for the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague. Shauna studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the UK and Smith College in the USA. She is a regular lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Her publications include articles for The Art Newspaper, The Times Literary Supplement and Art Quarterly. She is a contributor to the book Insiders/Outsiders: Refuges from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British Visual Culture.

Augustus and Gwen John were brother and sister, born in the west of Wales in the 1870s. Both studied at the Slade School of Art in London. His work has been called brash and shallow, and hers dismissed as fussy and spinsterish. These assessments are not really fair to either artist, and this lecture takes a careful look at their lives, up to the point of Gwen’s death in 1939. At that time, she had no public reputation whatsoever, and her brother was enjoying enormous professional and critical success. By the time he died, however, the positions had been reversed.

Linda Smith holds two first-class degrees in Art History. A broad knowledge of art historical subjects, but specialises in British Art and twentieth century art. An experienced lecturer and guide, especially at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Linda has lectured to a wide variety of audiences in different venues, including school and university students, and independent arts societies in the UK and overseas

This lecture takes us from the earliest days of extant examples of embroidery in this country through several high points in the art of embroidery including Opus Anglicanum, literally meaning English work; it was sought out by Popes, and considered the best embroidery in the western world at the time. Through the sixteenth century when embroidery was worked by Queens (Katherine of Aragon, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I) on to the new influences from the east, which influenced 17th century embroidery when exquisite pieces were made by girls of just 11 or 12, and on to the 18th century, when botanic art was the height of fashion that could be rendered in water colours or silk threads.

Dr Susan Kay-Williams is the Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework a post she has held since 2007. As part of that role she is archivist and curator to the RSN and writes and lectures on the history of embroidery. This year the RSN is celebrating its 150th anniversary and she had just published An Unbroken thread which tells the story of the RSN. She is also interested in colour in textiles and has written The Story of Colour in Textiles. She was made a Fellow of the Society of Dyers and Colourists in 2015 for her colour work. 

Bandstands are a distinctive feature of public parks and seaside promenades all over Britain. But what do we actually know about them? Why did they appear in our earliest parks? When were they erected, and who made them? This lecture explores and provides answers to these questions, showing how the bandstand evolved from the buildings and ‘orchestras’ of the early Pleasure Gardens of the eighteenth century, and how they appeared in nearly every public park and seaside promenade of the time, and how its design was influenced by the great landscape designers, and importantly how a very small number of Scottish foundries cornered the market across the world, from Bradford to Brazil and Aberdeen to Australia. From parks, seaside resorts and civic spaces, bandstands have appeared and disappeared - but are once again re-appearing, being restored and enjoying a new lease of life. This lecture will appeal to those interested in architecture, design and social history.

A graduate of Sheffield City Polytechnic with a degree in Geography, followed by a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh University, Paul Rabbitts has worked extensively across the UK, from Jersey, to Carlisle City Council, Middlesbrough Council, Halcrow Group, with 11 years as Head of Parks, Heritage and Culture at Watford Borough Council. He moved in Jan 2022 to take up a post as the Head of Parks and Open Spaces at the new City of Southend-onSea. He is a published author of over 28 books on the subject of parks, local history as well as icons such as Decimus Burton, Grinling Gibbons and Sir Christopher Wren. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Historical Society and The Landscape Institute, he lectures frequently on the subject of public parks and the historic icon of parks – the bandstand. 

The Wallace Collection owns over 330 miniatures dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. In a British context it is unique in the range and quality of its French miniatures, though it also contains some fine and important examples by artists of other schools, particularly the British, Swiss and Italian. This lecture explains the formation of the miniatures collection and looks in depth at some its greatest works, including examples by such artists as Samuel Cooper, Richard Cosway, Peter Adolph Hall and Jean-Baptiste Isabey. The many famous people depicted include Holbein, Louis XIV, the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon and Nelson’s famous mistress, Lady Hamilton. 

William Morris is renowned as wanting to make art and beauty available to everyone, not just the very rich. He also wanted to overthrow Victorian capitalism and create a more equal society without masters and servants or rich and poor. Yet much of the work produced by his decorating firm was too expensive for anyone but the wealthy to afford. And without their patronage he would not have been able to maintain his own artistic lifestyle or to support his many socialist causes. This lecture examines the ideas and contradictions inherent in Morris’s life and ideas, and the tensions between his two roles as revolutionary socialist and highly-successful businessman and entrepreneur.

This lecture tells the Christmas story through a selection of well-loved paintings and illuminated manuscripts by Italian and Flemish artists, including Botticelli, Fra Angelico and Jan van Eyck, together with many less well-known images. From the Annunciation to the Nativity, the Journey of the Kings and the Flight into Egypt, it explores the rich symbolism of Christmas imagery, highlights the ways in which spiritual ideas and devotional practice shaped the depiction of the narrative, and introduces some less familiar aspects of the story, such as the Midwives and Joseph’s stockings. 

The story of several extraordinary women who ventured to the Near East when travelling beyond Europe was still largely a male preserve. Lady Mary Wortley Montague scandalised London society by joining her husband on his posting to Turkey in 1716. Lady Hester Stanhope, the first European woman to visit Palmyra, left England in 1810 and died 29 years later in the Lebanon. Isabel Burton followed her husband Richard on his missions abroad and immersed herself in his passion for archaeology. Jane Digby’s life was a quest for love – she found fulfilment with an Arab sheikh and is buried in Damascus. 

Alexandra will talk about the extraordinary story of the rebuilding of the Cathedral as a symbol of peace and reconciliation and its inspiring commitment to the modern. She will discuss the work of many of the world-class artists associated with its treasure, including Jacob Epstein, Elizabeth Frink, John Piper and Graham Sutherland. 

Founding President of the new Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds saw it as his mission to establish a new golden age for British art. He came home from formative years of study and painting in Rome convinced of the superiority of the grand style of Italian History painting. Unfortunately there was not much of a market in London for vast canvases featuring classical stories painted by Englishmen. What English patrons wanted from English artists were suitably flattering portraits to display their personal charms and status. So Reynold's clever compromise was to elevate the portrait to the top rank of art in the 'great style' and of course to elevate his clients at the same time. It is not surprising that he enjoyed huge success as artist and leading figure in the British cultural establishment.

500 years of Portraiture, Materials and Techniques

Details of the zoom link will be sent to members nearer the time

A talk by Arts Society lecturer Janet Gough

Details of the zoom link will be sent to members nearer the time

Hogarth brings pots, crocks and all manner of chinaware onto his stage as bitpart players in his social dramas. From the harlot's dingy garret to milord's swanky mantelpiece, ceramics teeter, tumble or merely stand helplessly by, symbolic commentators on the goings-on around them. We will delve into the stories, we reveal and even identify particular ceramics and show how Hogarth's images themselves became sources for the ceramic workshops of Europe and China. You will look at Hogarth and ceramics with new eyes.

Members will be sent the zoom link nearer the time

The Alhambra of Granada, the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Alcazar of Seville are the three most impressive monuments to the architectural creativity of the Moors in Spain, but there are many other examples worthy of mention too.

Details of how to join this zoom lecture will be sent to members nearer the time.

Feedback link  -  https://forms.gle/9pJaZjghTf1ts5CdA   - the feedback is anonymous just one question

This lecture retraces the story of blue in the Western arts from antiquity to the present day. We will reflect upon the changing meanings given to the colour blue.

Details of how to join this zoom lecture will be sent to members nearer the time.

This lecture examines the unique buildings and structures associated with the UK’s canal network, with a vast array of distinctive designs, landmark features and unusual artefacts: only the National Trust and the Church of England have more listed structures than our canals.  Look out for lock flights and lighthouses; cottages and clock towers; warehouses and lots of whimsical architecture – our canals delight the eye and refresh the spirit.

Details of how to join this zoom lecture will be sent to members nearer the time.

A pictorial history of drinking glasses through the ages, studied through images of actual objects and through paintings. The lecture will focus particularly on the development of the wine glass, but will also look at glasses designed for other beverages, such as: beer, cider, ale, cordial etc. It will consider the drinking habits of different countries and the types of glass associated with those countries, e.g. the Venetian wing stemmed glass, the German roemer, the Dutch flute and the English baluster stemmed glass; and will discuss the association of fine glass drinking vessels with feasting and conviviality.

Nazis looted over 20% of Western Art during World War II, confiscating art from Jewish families and emptying museums throughout Europe. This lecture will provide an overview of Nazi looting by setting the scene in Nazi Germany, discussing Hitler’s obsession with art and how the Monuments Men recovered art after the war. Several landmark cases will be discussed in detail, including Gustav Klimt’s celebrated Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the stash of over 1200 artworks found in possession of the son of a notorious Nazi dealer.

Augustus and Gwen John were brother and sister, born in the west of Wales in the 1870s. Both studied at the Slade School of Art in London. His work has been called brash and shallow, and hers dismissed as fussy and spinsterish. These assessments are not really fair to either artist, and this lecture takes a careful look at their lives, up to the point of Gwen’s death in 1939. At that time, she had no public reputation whatsoever, and her brother was enjoying enormous professional and critical success. By the time he died, however, the positions had been reversed.