Jazz is one of music’s most important genres: a fascinating blend of rigorous structure, free-wheeling creativity, close-knit ensembles and imaginative improvisation. Drawing on his experience both as musicologist and gigging musician, Sandy can shed light on jazz from the inside. His talk covers the early years of jazz up to the Second World War, and touches on the disparate influences which lay behind the emergence of jazz. Musical illustrations range from the blues, ragtime and the very first jazz recordings through to classics by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the dawn of the Swing Era.

Sandy Burnett

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing; he was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19 season.  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. He has directed a complete performing cycle of Bach’s sacred cantatas and is a first-call double bass player on the London jazz scene. Since 2013 he has devised and led cultural holidays all over the world, taking music lovers to venues as diverse as the opulent Leipzig Opera House and the intimate jazz clubs of New Orleans. He runs an online classical music appreciation Listening Club, and is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music.

Although Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) often complained about the tedium of painting one portrait after another, his delight in depicting animals radiates from his work. In landscapes, portraits and sketches, Gainsborough’s animals are beautifully and affectionately observed and overflowing with character and meaning. 

Gainsborough lived and worked at a time when animals were far more visible in town and country and when the idea of dogs and cats as pets - friends and companions rather than mere servants - was emerging.  At the same time, scientists and landowners were fascinated by the possibilities of breeding, developing new, more efficient cattle and horses and a different dog for every need. As Ellis Waterhouse observed: “the number of dogs which diversify his human portraits is surprisingly large and many of them are more memorable than their masters.”  In this lecture we will meet some of those memorable dogs, as well as cats, horses, and even donkeys, cows and pigs. 

Amina Wright

Amina has three decades of experience as a curator of historic art collections and exhibitions. She has produced several major exhibitions on eighteenth-century British Art and Old Masters and published and lectured widely in these areas.  As Senior Curator at the Holburne Museum in Bath she was a leading member of the team that delivered the museum’s highly successful 2011 redevelopment. She has recently completed a brand new one-of-a-kind museum, the Auckland Project’s Faith Museum in County Durham.  Amina has also worked for English Heritage and the National Trust and has an MA in Christianity & the Arts from King’s College London. 

Image: Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough - The National Gallery, Public Domain

Georgians of all classes dined out in pubs, coaching inns, French ordinaries and confectioners. They also ate all kinds of street food and had an almost insatiable appetite for buns. On a journey through London we will discover the early morning drinks consumed on the street before dawn, ‘nunchions’ served at coaching inns, Billingsgate dinners, confectioners’ cakes, syllabubs and ices, the proverbially thin ham dished up to diners at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, as well as the Jewish takeaway foods of the East End and even London’s first ‘Indian’ restaurant. Our journey will be illustrated from prints, paintings and broadsides of the period, some long neglected as a source for a forgotten but fascinating part of our Georgian ancestors’ way of life.

Peter Ross

Peter has a BA in the History of Art, an MA in London History, and a PhD in the cultural history of the early eighteenth-century criminal, Jack Sheppard. Until 2023, he was the Principal Librarian at the City of London’s Guildhall Library. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Peter has appeared on television and radio as a consultant on crime in eighteenth-century London, the history of English food, and Shakespeare’s First Folio. Peter’s The Curious Cookbook, Viper Soup, Badger Ham, Stewed Sparrows, and a Hundred more Historic Recipes was published in 2012 by the British Library and subsequently published in the US, China and Taiwan. Peter is currently engaged in writing a book - Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London to be published by Bodleian Library  in 2026.

Image: Hero's recruiting at Kelsey's, Library of Congress - Wickimedia Commons, 

In the 19th century, Denmark lost territory and regional power but produced its finest art. This lecture looks at how landscape painting was powerfully used to re-imagine a new, smaller Denmark, to create a different sense of the nation and to unite its diverse regions. To those unfamiliar with Danish art, these works will prove a revelation.

In particular, we examine paintings of Jutland - a part of Denmark overlooked by Copenhagen for centuries, but suddenly seen as a land of opportunity, sublime beauty and fin-de-siècle leisure opportunities. We concentrate on works of the great Danish Golden Age by artists such as C.W. Eckersberg, J.T. Lundbye, Martinus Rørbye and Vilhelm Kyhn, then the great shift away from academic painting to the Skagen School of painters including Michael Ancher, P.S. Krøyer and Carl Locher, and late 19th century painters including Harald Slott-Møller, L.A. Ring and Vilhelm Hammershøi . We'll decipher the hidden nationalistic fervour and psychological angst in selected works and show the allusions to Denmark's history and economic progress.  

The presentation considers the breakthrough of the landscape genre, the change in painting styles over the century, the creation of new iconic Danish scenes, the incorporation of Jutland into the genre, and the importance of agricultural motifs. We'll look at the dilemma between painting the truth versus a beautiful lie. James also introduces recent theories on how to interpret landscapes in art and reflects on how these historical works are interpreted in Denmark today.

James Vaux

James is a researcher and lecturer specialising in Nordic arts, culture, design and history. He has presented extensively on diverse topics throughout his career to demanding audiences across the globe, including CEOs and government ministers. His talks now focus on understanding art through its historic, cultural and political context.  

James aims to question conventional art world narratives about painters, designers and movements, to unveil the hidden forces that lie beneath great art.

James took a law degree at Oxford with First Class Honours and qualified as a solicitor before switching career. As a managing director of the international bank Rothschild, he advised governments and corporates worldwide. He set up and ran the bank’s Nordic operations, living and working in Scandinavia and immersing himself in the countries’ arts, culture and history. James then gained an MA (Distinction) at UCL in Language, Culture and History (Scandinavian Studies). His dissertation was on Swedish design, and he specialised in landscapes, the Viking Age, politics and literature. 

He studied interior design and art history at the Inchbald School, Mid-Century Modern at Sotheby’s Institute and electronic music at Point Blank. He has also been a DJ, promoter, record label owner, hosted a local radio show for four years and ran a pop-up community cinema. He is currently chairman of the Oxford University Society of West Sussex.

Image: Lundby Zealand Landscape

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian culture had come of age. The reign of Nicholas II saw a creative explosion during which Russian creativity flourished as it never had before and was for the first time recognised abroad. Carl Fabergé opened a branch of his Petersburg jewellery business in London, Rachmaninoff performed in New York, Chagall exhibited in Berlin, and Diaghilev's long crusade to win recognition for Russian culture abroad culminated in the creation of the Ballets Russes in Paris.

Rosamund Bartlett

Rosamund is a writer, lecturer and translator whose work ranges across the arts, and across the cultures of Europe, from Italy to Norway.  She began her career as an academic in Slavic studies after completing her doctorate at Oxford, and has held fellowships both in the UK and at the European University Institute in Florence.  In 2024 she became a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. 

The author of several books, including biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and a study of Wagner's influence in Russia, she is also well known as a translator - her publications include acclaimed editions of Anna Karenina and Chekhov's stories for Oxford World’s Classics.  She has written on music and literature for institutions including the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Salzburg Festival, and about art for Apollo and The Burlington Magazine.  She is currently writing a book about the revolution in the arts which took place in early 20th-century Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Odesa, and its connection to modernist developments in Paris, Munich and Milan. 

Image: Firebird by Ivan Bilibin - Wickimedia Commons

Fake News has been around since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and art has always been one of its favourite media. In this talk I will be uncovering the subtle art of spin and propaganda in art from the glories of Ancient Mesopotamia to the Norman Conquest and then onto Elizabethan England and the dark days of Nazi Germany. Every picture tells a story - whether it is true or not is an entirely different matter.

Geri Parlby

Geri Parlby's career spans across diverse fields. She started as a news and investigative reporter via Mirror Group newspapers before becoming Head of Press for United International Pictures, handling major blockbuster publicity campaigns from Paramount, Universal, MGM & UA studios throughout the 1980s. She then set up her own London based film and video PR agency which she ran for 8 years before retiring to start a family. 

Driven by her passion for art she studied for an MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute before gaining a theology PhD from the University of Roehampton. 

Geri's extensive knowledge and engaging speaking style led her to become an accredited NADFAS/Arts Society lecturer, and she has been lecturing both across the UK and internationally for the past 18 years.  

Image: Bayeux Tapestry, scene 57 the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings - Wickimedia Commons

This talk is on how magicians have appeared in art throughout the centuries, whether in paintings, satirical prints or cartoons. Early artists used the magician to symbolise the mysterious and the unknown, associating them with astrology. In the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch produced two of the most famous and striking pictures of the conjurer performing the Cups and Balls trick. The 18th and 19th century saw a proliferation in engravings and lithographs showing the magician both indoors and on the streets. Bringing it right up to date there are examples of how cartoonists and satirists delight in linking politicians with skulduggery with images of them featuring Sawing a Woman in Half, Vanishing illusions or pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat. Some of the tricks talked about are performed by Ian.

Lecturer: Ian Keable gained a First Class degree from Oxford University, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then became a Professional Magician. In 2014 he published Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters & Literature. His latest book is The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth-Century England.

He now divides his time between performing magic, giving talks and researching and writing. He is a Member of The Inner Magic Circle and in 2024 was appointed the Archivist of The Magic Circle. He is presently writing a biography of David Devant, the first President of The Magic Circle and considered to be England's greatest ever magician.

Image: Zan Zig performing with rabbit and roses, including hat trick and levitation. Advertising poster for the magician (who seems to have left no other trace behind).

The past decade has seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile British designer with his acclaimed Olympic cauldron, the iconic new London bus and designs for a spectacular new HQ building in King's Cross for Google. Over the last thirty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world. This talk looks at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded. Lecture only – but see study day: Brilliance of British Architects and Designers

Ian Swankie - A Londoner with a contagious enthusiasm for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a freelance London tour guide. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

Image by Ian Patterson - 2012 Olympic Cauldron and Flame, as design by Heatherwick Studio 

In an age where women had little public power, Isabella d’ Este (1474 – 1539) stands out as a formidable figure. She was one of the first and greatest female patrons and art collectors of the Renaissance. And her court in Mantua was filled with writers and poets of distinction. Her clever, educated and entitled voice sings out from thousands of letters which she composed in her meticulously designed study, and images – from Da Vinci to Titian – bring alive a woman whose eye for fashion was every bit as keen as her eye for art.

Sarah Dunant - Novelist, broadcaster and critic. Sarah read history at Cambridge, then worked for many years as a cultural journalist in radio and television on such programmes as Kaleidoscope (BBC Radio 4), The Late Show (BBC 2), and Night Waves/Free thinking (BBC Radio 3). She has published thirteen novels, taught renaissance studies at Washington University, St Louis and lectured around the world at festivals and conferences.  She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s A Point of View and these talks, alongside her series on history for Radio 4, When Greeks Flew Kites are available on podcast or BBC sounds.  Her last six novels have been set within the Italian Renaissance, including the lives of women and the - true - story of the Borgias. Isabella d'Este, an illustrated novel about the life of the first ever female patron and collector is published in June 2025. And Sarah delivers a series of vie 15 talks to BBC Radio 4 "Unearthing the Past" as book of the week to coincide with publication.

Image: Isabella in Black by Titian – Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank

From those gorgeous 1930s travel posters, through nationalisation of the railways in 1948, with their bright regional colours, to the creation of the famous BR Double-Arrow symbol in the 1960s...it's surprising how British railways have led the way in terms of design. In this lecture we reminisce over those beautiful graphics, bygone days of railway architecture and travel. We'll pay homage to the wonderful Tube map by Harry Beck and look to the future of train and station design. So get your tickets ready for inspection: we're on the right track! 

Mark Ovenden - is a broadcaster and author, and specialises in the subjects of industrial design and architecture - especially in the world of public transport. Since he became AS accredited in 2018 he's delivered scores of lectures to societies all over Britain and also in Europe.

He has worked at the BBC producing programmes for Radios 1's John Peel and Annie Nightingale, in commercial radio as a journalist and newsreader, and in television as a researcher and even for MTV as a music programmer. Mark recently fronted a TV his own documentary for BBC Four (on the subject of typefaces) and he presented another documentary for BBC Radio 4 on architecture. 

Image: Kings Cross rebuild - photograps by Mark Ovenden

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. We will consider medieval manuscripts and frescoes, poetry by Dante and Jean Froissart, still life and genre paintings, satires by Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Hogarth. We will consider nineteenth-century ideas about power and the working day, in portraits of emperors and seamstresses and novels by Dickens. Finally, we will consider the breaking down of temporal certainties in the twentieth century, with Dali, Chagall, Harold Lloyd, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Christian Marclay.

Dr Christina Faraday - is an historian of art and ideas, specialising in Tudor and Stuart Britain and the wider 16th and 17th-century world. She is an Affiliated Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Cambridge, a Trustee of the Walpole Society for British art history, and a BBC New Generation Thinker, appearing regularly on BBC Radio 3 and in other popular media. She is the host of British Art Matters podcast, and from 2020-2025 she was a Research Fellow in History of Art at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is an experienced lecturer, teaching for the History of Art Department at the University of Cambridge, The Wallace Collection, the National Gallery, London, and for Professional and Continuing Education at Cambridge, where she is Co-Director of the MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture. Her first book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England, was published in 2023 by the Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press. Her latest book, The Story of Tudor Art, was named a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. 

Image: Edvard Munch, Wiki Commons - Edvard Munch Self Portrait  'Between the Clock and the Bed'

Wallpaper is often regarded as the Cinderella of the Decorative Arts – the most ephemeral and least precious of the decorations produced for the home. Yet, the history of wallpaper is a long and fascinating subject that dates back to the 16th century and encompasses a huge range of beautiful patterns created both by anonymous hands and by some of the best-known designers of the 19th and 20th centuries. This lecture explores the history and development of this product from earliest times up to the present day. It includes a discussion of the changing ways in which wallpaper was made and a survey of designs from the first black and white patterns, the creation of elegant flock hangings, the fashion for Chinese hand-painted papers, the introduction of machine-printing, the designs of Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the taste for Modernist and Contemporary designs in the 20th century. It also includes a discussion of the ways that wallpapers were used within grand and more ordinary homes and hopes to justify the claim that they were indeed a truly Decorative Art.

Joanna Banham - Jo 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. She 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. She recently curated an exhibition on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement for the Juan March Fundacion in Madrid and the Museu Nacional d’Art Catalunya in Barcelona and she is currently writing a book on the History of Wallpaper. She is also Director of the Victorian Society Summer School.

The Camden Town Group was an innovative circle of painters united by the desire to paint works of a modern character. They combined the techniques and visions of European Post-Impressionism with the changing modernity of Edwardian London. This lecture introduces the core members of the group, led by Walter Richard Sickert, and tells the story of their brief but significant association. We will examine the key themes addressed within their work: urban life, popular entertainment and the lower social classes, as well as Sickert’s infamous series of paintings inspired by the notorious Camden Town murder.   

Nicola Moorby - is Curator of British Art, 1790-1850 at Tate. An art historian specialising in British art of the nineteenth century she studied at the University of York and Birkbeck College, London. She has curated a number of exhibitions including, most recently, Constable: The Dark Side at The Arc, Winchester in 2023 and Turner's Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts for Turner's House in 2025. She has published widely,  including as co-editor and author of How to Paint Like Turner (Tate Publishing, 2010) and as a major contributor to the online catalogues of the Turner Bequest and the Camden Town Group. She is an experienced lecturer and regularly teaches short courses at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has appeared as an expert on television and radio including ‘Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr’ (2020 and 2021) and ‘Art on the BBC’ (2022). She is the author of Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape, published by Yale University Press in 2025.

Image: Little Dot Hetherington at the Old Bedford by Walter Sickert (Wikicommons)

Rome, as we all know, was not built in a day.  It took centuries to construct the eternal city, and Rome’s glorious monuments and those who created them are the focus of this new talk. Monument in Latin means a remembrance and all the temples, baths, arches, theatres, arenas and stadiums, in addition to their specific functions had another broader purpose – to glorify the Emperors that built them. From Augustus and Nero to Hadrian and Constantine, we’ll look at these eternally fascinating rulers the good, the bad and the downright mad, finding out  how and why these monuments were built, and their impact on the people and city. We’ll also learn the often sad story of why they look like they do now.

Dr Paul Roberts - is Research Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University.  Paul has been a lecturer with the Arts Society/NADFAS for over twenty years, has travelled extensively to societies across the UK, and has also lectured on numerous cruises in and around the Mediterranean. Like all of us, he enjoys the immediate contact of face to face meetings, but is happy to provide online lectures if desired.  

He studied Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Classical Archaeology at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.  He then lived in Italy for several years, teaching and researching.  He has travelled throughout the former lands of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria, and has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya, Turkey and in particular Italy, where he is currently working on a Roman Villa in the Molise region of the Central Apennines. 

His research focuses on the daily life of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds, and he has written books and articles on Greek and Roman daily life, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Sicily, Roman Emperors, mummy portraits, and Greek and Roman ceramics and glass. In 2024 his book "Ancient Rome in Fifty Monuments", looking at the history of Rome through its monuments and the Emperors who built them, was published by Thames and Hudson.   

From 1994 to 2015 he was Senior Roman Curator in the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum, where he curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013). Arriving in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2015, in 2019/20  he curated Last Supper in Pompeii, a tribute to the Roman love affair with food and wine.

Image:  Panoramic view of the Roman Forum. Picture taken from Capitoline Museums -  Wikimedia Commons - 

Please note date of lecture - week earlier than usual

The reputation of Velásquez has long eclipsed the others who painted for the Hapsburg Court. Velásquez joined the court of Philip IV, who on the one hand had inherited a collection of immense value, and on the other, had enthusiastic artistic interests himself. Velásquez had the benefit of Rubens, Titian, Poussin to study in the royal collection and he was also allowed artistic freedom in his own compositions to find a modern idiom in his work. Goya had similar experiences in the Bourbon Court; both men accepted the traditions of the courts but also explored the ‘everyday’ and allowed ordinary experiences to filter into their subject choice. Both painters had a tremendous effect on the modern painters that followed, especially Edouard Manet in nineteenth century Paris. Manet spotted in the work of the Spanish Masters something that the critics misunderstood in his – broad handling of paint, and the celebration of ordinary people.

Lecturer: Alice Foster

Alice has lectured for Oxford University Department of Continuing Education since 1998. She lectures regularly at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Her busy freelance career includes organising History of Art study days with colleagues, and regular weekly classes in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. In 2004 Alice joined The Arts Society and has lectured in Britain and in Europe. In 2025 she undertakes tours of Australia and New Zealand. Since 2003 Alice has been a tutor on study holidays in Italy. Currently, Alice is a residential tutor at the Argyll Hotel on the Isle of Iona, specialising in Scottish art. In 2010 she was elected President of Banbury Fine Arts Society.

Image: Bacchus 1629, Prado

The story of two remarkable Victorians and the birth of English comic opera. Their quarter of a century long partnership began in 1871, when the pair were brought together by the remarkably entrepreneurial theatre manager Richard D’Oyly Carte, with whom they collaborated on fourteen unique comic operas.  Perhaps best known for The Mikado, H.M.S Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe, their satirical brilliance can still inspire and impress today. Enjoy the bouquets, brickbats and their extraordinary popularity and fame. Their success was unprecedented in the history of music theatre and their creativity inspired the likes of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Their legacy not only inspired amateur companies to flourish but also left London with three great theatres and three world famous hotels.

Jamie Hayes -  After training at RADA Jamie graduated as a Stage Manager and subsequently 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 and soon began directing productions of his own. He has directed many new opera productions in the UK whilst other new opera productions overseas include Reykjavik, Malta and Melbourne. Jamie was Associate Director on the original production of the hit musical Miss Saigon in the West End and on Broadway. He has directed productions in all the major UK conservatoires and 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. Jamie is a regular enrichment programme lecturer for various leading cruise ship companies. He is married to the mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby and they have three sons.

Image: Portrait montage of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan  -  Wikimedia Commons

Authors: Ellis & Walery/ Elliott and Fry