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The Arts Society Woking Talks Programme 2022
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All Speakers are carefully chosen based
on their reputation for attractive and
well-presented talks with good pictures. |
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Our talks are held on the second Tuesday
of the month except July and August
(when many members are on vacation). |
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They start promptly at 10.30 am but
doors open 9.45 am for tea and coffee |
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Our new venue is Normandy Village Hall. |
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Address: Manor Fruit Farm, Glaziers
Lane, Normandy, Guildford Surrey GU3 2DT |
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Members may bring a visitor, but
the same person may not be a guest more
than twice a year. While we do not
charge a Visitors fee, Visitors may want
to make a donation to the Society of
(say) £5. |
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The
January talk was on zoom, we expect the February
talk to be live at our venue. |
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Tuesday January
11th 2022 - On Zoom |
Talk: Clara, Rhino
Superstar and Wonder of the
Grand Tour
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Brought up as a house pet by a
Director of the Dutch East India
Company in India, from a young
age, a rhinoceros called “Clara”
was shipped to Holland in 1741
and spent nearly 20 years
touring Europe as one of the
wonders of the age. She visited
all the major Courts of Europe
including that of King Louis XV
of France. She died in London in
1758. Clara has been recorded in
paintings, prints porcelain,
bronze, clocks and even hair
styles. This talk explores the
charming story of this
magnificent beast, only the
third or fourth rhino to be seen
in Europe, through contemporary
records and works of art. |
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Speaker: Clive Stewart-Lockhart |
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Clive studied on the Sotheby's Works of
Art course and has now been working in
the fine art world for 40 years. He is
Managing Director of Woolley and Wallis,
the UK's leading regional auctioneers in
Salisbury and has been a specialist on
the BBC Antiques Roadshow for over 20
years. Has also talkd on cruise ships
as well as for many other groups, and
recently published a major article in
the Journal of the Decorative Arts
Society on Betty Joel. |
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Tuesday
February 8th
2022 |
Talk: Agatha Christie, Queen
of Crime
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Agatha Christie is undoubtedly the world’s greatest crime writer; her books sell over four million copies worldwide every year and there is a continual demand for new adaptations to be made of her work. She led a sheltered and privileged life in her native Torquay which was not dissimilar to the characters she invented. She was brought up in the comfort of upper middle-class society and she too had mystery in her life. To find out more about this remarkable author who created Poirot and Miss Marple book this biographical talk. It will surprise and enlighten you about how she developed her talent for writing having never attended a proper school
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Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
Portrait photograph by Professor John Hedgecoe in 1969
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Speaker:
Jane Tapley |
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Currently Special Events Organiser, Theatre Royal Bath. Interviews visiting actors, writers, directors. Lectures regularly to theatre going societies, NT and history and fine arts groups. West Country Tourist Board Registered Blue Badge Guide and Lecturer. Author and researcher of theatre programme notes on Hamlet, Sheridan's The Rivals and Jane Austen's Emma. Theatrical landlady! Home Economist. Consultant to various TV productions of Jane Austen adaptations on food in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hosts and cooks period meals in her Regency house in Bath for the Jane Austen Festival and other literary groups. |
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Tuesday March
8th 2022 |
Talk: The Artists of Montmartre:
Pilgrims of Babylon
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There is no name more evocative
of Bohemian life: of high
spirits, decadence, poverty, and
revolutionary art in Paris, than
Montmartre. In reality it was
little more than a rundown
suburb overlooking the city,
bristling with windmills. But
the garden cafes, the dancehalls
and cabarets, and the ramshackle
studios that spilled down the
hillside of Montmartre would
become the inspiration and home
to some of France’s greatest
artists.
From the Moulin de la Galette
where Renoir painted Parisian’s
dancing in the afternoon
sunlight, to Toulouse Lautrec’s
vivid images of the Moulin
Rouge, the smoke filled cabaret
where the can-can was danced to
Offenbach’s music, to the shabby
garrets of the Bateau Lavoir
where a group of artists headed
by Picasso would paint canvases
that would shake the foundations
of Western art, this lecture
charts the course of this
extraordinary artistic life. |
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“The Spirit of Montmartre”
By Henri Toulouse-Lautrec |
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Speaker: Douglas Skeggs |
Douglas read Fine Art at
Magdalene College Cambridge and
has been a lecturer on paintings
since 1980. In that time he has
given over 8000 lectures to
universities, colleges and art
societies. He was the director
of The New Academy of Art
Studies for three years and is
presently a regular lecturer at
The Study Centre, Christie's
course 'The History of Art
Studies' and other London
courses. Among his more
improbable venues for lectures
are the bar on the QE2, MI5
headquarters, the Captain's Room
at Lloyds, and an aircraft
hangar in a German NATO base.
Overseas he has lectured in
Belgium, France, Germany and
Spain, and has taken numerous
tours around Europe.
He has written and presented
various TV documentaries,
notably the Omnibus programme on
Whistler and the
exhibition video on William
Morris. Three one-man
exhibitions of his paintings
have been held in England and
Switzerland. He has published
five novels, which have been
translated into 8 foreign
languages, and his book on
Monet, River of Light,
has sold 30,000 copies in
England, America and France |
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Tuesday April
12th 2022 |
Talk: Katherine de Medici:
Poor Queen: The Story of Three
in a Marriage
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This is the story of this unfortunate young woman who left Florence to be Queen of France, and the unhappy life that
followed. She was a brave woman, who suffered every indignity at the French Court, but survived all her enemies. |
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Wedding of Catherine de Medici and Henry, Duke of Orléans
Painted byJacopo da Empoli
1551–1640 |
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Speaker: Carol Rayman |
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Carol has lectured for many
years to universities and art
organisations in America and on
cruise boats. She was an
official guide at the British
Museum and has published
articles on samplers. Her
lectures range from the role of
the royal mistress in history to
more scholarly lectures on
Frederick the Great of Prussia. |
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Tuesday May
10th 2022 |
Talk: Marathon !
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One of the world’s most popular
athletic events commemorates
Pheidippides’s epic run from the
battlefield of Marathon to his
native Athens. Apart from the
amazing courage of Pheidippides,
why remember a battle that took
place over two and a half
thousand years ago? Since the
19th century, historians have
argued that it was a crucial
event, one that had decided ‘the
whole future of human
civilisation’. As John Stuart
Mill put it, ‘the Battle of
Marathon, even as an event in
English history, is more
important than the Battle of
Hastings’. Rupert re-creates the
background and the battle itself
in thrilling detail. He looks at
the various ways in which
ancient Athens has influenced
our art and culture, and argues
that Marathon was, indeed, the
battle that saved ‘Western
Civilisation’. Eye-opening,
edge-of-your-seat stuff. |
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Pheidippides as he gave word of
the Greek victory over Persia at
the Battle of Marathon to the
people of Athens
Luc-Olivier Merson (1869) |
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Speaker: Rupert Willoughby |
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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 Tatar |
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Tuesday
June
14th 2022 |
Talk: The Making of
Landscape Photographs
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A fully illustrated talk with an
excess of 60 images exploring
the relationship between the
making of an image and the way
in which it is perceived by the
viewer. Further discussion
around the eye and the brain
being an extraordinary double
act
made up of visual references and
intellectual interpretation. |
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Landscape photograph by Charlie Waite |
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Speaker: Charlie Waite |
One of the world's leading landscape
photographers, he has lectured for 25
years throughout the UK, Europe and the
US.
Has held numerous one-man exhibitions in
London, exhibited twice in Tokyo, and
was awarded the prestigious honorary
Fellowship of the British Institute of
Professional Photographers, as well as a
Direct Fellowship by the Royal
Photographic Society. In 2007, he
launched LPOTY - UK Landscape
Photographer of the Year. Amongst many
publications, the most recent includes
Landscape; the Story of 50
Photographs (2005), and Arc &
Line (2011). He was invited by the
Royal Academy to exhibit in 2015's
summer exhibition. |
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July
2022 |
No Talk (Summer
break)
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August 2022 |
No Talk (Summer
break)
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September
13th
2022 |
Talk: The Era of Everything
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Many of us find contemporary art
challenging, strange,
provocative or downright silly.
How are we meant to respond to
and appreciate art that so often
seems to provoke, to reference
its own (sometimes arcane)
histories, to shock or confound?
This lecture helps to unravel
the step changes in art that
have taken place since the
1870s, exploring how we got from
Impressionist paintings of
light-dappled rivers that sought
to reflect the realities of
modern life in all its fleeting
beauty to the interactive,
immersive, ephemeral and
‘post-medium’ art of today. In a
world where anything now goes,
how we might learn to look and
confidently assess the latest
developments in art? This is a
highly informed but entirely
approachable guide to the very
best in contemporary art, giving
you the tools to appreciate,
critique and judge today’s art
for yourself. |
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Ai WeiWei, Sunflower Seeds,
2010
Tate Modern, London |
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Speaker: Jacky Klein |
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Jacky Klein is an art historian,
publisher, writer and
broadcaster, specialising in
modern and contemporary art.
After studying at Oxford
University and the Courtauld
Institute of Art in London, she
worked as a curator at a number
of leading galleries: Tate, the
Barbican, the Courtauld and the
Hayward. In 2008. She is the
author of a bestselling book on
British artist Grayson Perry
(Thames & Hudson, 3rd edition
2020) and co-author of a number
of other titles.
Jacky has presented and
contributed to a range of
television programmes for the
BBC and is a regular contributor
to BBC Radio 4's arts review
programme, Front Row. She has appeared on
Channel 5, the Travel Channel
and Bloomberg TV, and has
written and presented a number
of online films and livestreams
for Tate, Christie's, HENI Talks
and the Art Fund. |
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Tuesday
October
11th
2022 |
Talk: Coffee from Arabia to
the Coffee House. The Art and
History of Coffee Drinking
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Long before cappuccinos and
skinny lattes, all the world’s
coffee traded through the tiny
port of Mokha in Yemen.
Popularised in Constantinople,
Vienna and Amsterdam, the first
English coffee house opened in
the 1650’s and by 1700 there
were 500 in London alone.
Beginning as ‘sobering meeting
places’ they were frequented by
artists, authors and politicians
where the debating of literary
and political ideas was
encouraged, as seen in early
prints and lithographs. The
marketing of coffee went through
distinctive art nouveau and art
deco periods and we see it
included in works of the major
French Impressionist |
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An 18th century Coffee House in Fleet
Street |
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Speaker: Christopher Bradley |
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Expert in the history and culture of the
Middle East and North Africa. As a
professional tour guide and lecturer he
has led groups throughout the Middle
East and Asia. Has written extensively
on Arabia and is the author of The
Discovery Guide to Yemen,
Insight Guide to the Silk Road and
Berlitz Guides to Libya; The Red
Sea; Oman; Cairo; Abu Dhabi and
Nile Cruising. |
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As a photographer has pictures
represented by four photographic
libraries. A broad range of lecturing
experience, including to the Royal
Geographical Society and the Royal
Institute of British Architects. As a
film producer and cameraman he has made
documentaries for the BBC, National
Geographic TV and Channel 4. |
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Tuesday
November
8th 2022 |
Talk: The Art of Ceremonial
Music
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The UK provides some of the
biggest Ceremonial Events in the
world and arguably the best in
the world but why is that?
How do the military prepare for
major events such as State
Opening of Parliament, State
Visits, National day of
Remembrance, Royal Weddings or
even a State Funeral? |
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Trooping the Colour |
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Speaker: Graham Jones |
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Dr Graham Jones started his
professional life as a musician
in the British Army and over a
glittering career spanning
nearly forty years he retired as
the Senior Director of Music,
Household Division and Director
of Music, Coldstream Guards a
position unequalled throughout
military music in Great Britain.
During his illustrious career he
has recorded over 40 albums and
been responsible for the largest
commissioning programme of wind
band music in recent history
commissioning over 30 new works
for wind band. He pioneered a
music education programme with
the University of Salford for
military musicians resulting in
a new Master of Music in
performance degree. Graham was
made a Member of the British
Empire by Her Majesty the Queen
at Buckingham Palace for
outstanding service to military
music in 1993. |
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Having retired, at the start of
2012, from military service
Graham is enjoying a second
career as a guest conductor,
adjudicator, guest speaker,
lecturer, clinician, recording
consultant and educator. He is
also the Artist Director of
London International Band Week,
music consultant to Henley Music
Festival, resident conductor of
the British Imperial Orchestra,
visiting conductor in residence
at Troy University, Alabama, USA
and guest lecturer on cruise
ships. |
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Talk: The Three Kings, The Real
Story
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A light-hearted seasonal lecture for
Christmas, describing what we actually
know about the three kings – or rather
what we don’t know! For a start we don’t
know how many “kings” there were.
Matthew doesn’t tell us. We assume they
were 3 because they brought 3 gifts.
But why gold, frankincense, and myrrh?
Also, there’s no reason to suppose they
were kings of anywhere. We don’t even
know their gender – some of them might
have been women.
And since they gave away the location of
the baby Jesus to Herod the alleged baby
slayer, we can reasonably assume they
weren’t too clever – let alone wise! |
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Speaker: Tony Rawlins |
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Tony was educated at Highgate School,
starting his career in advertising in
1965 as a mail boy in J.Walter Thompson.
He graduated through the training system
there to become an account director and
subsequently worked in a number of
agencies before setting up on his own in
1985. There he handled primarily
Guinness advertising in Africa and the
Caribbean, where he produced many
commercials and print ads for them over
a period of 15 years. He remains active
as a consultant in the industry, but now
concentrates on more philanthropic
projects - producing a film in the rural
villages of Nigeria for the London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
More recently he has completed a
sanitation project in Haiti after it was
devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016. |
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He has been a member of The Arts Society
for many years. His earlier lecturing
experience includes presenting to client
groups, sales conferences, and students
of creative advertising in the UK and
overseas. |
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More recently he has been lecturing to
Arts Societies in the UK and Europe. |
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Prior Year's Talks |
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To see the activities in
previous years, click on the
year;
2024
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2023
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2022
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2021
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2020
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2019 /
2018 /
2017 /
2016 /
2015 /
2014 /
2013 /
2012 /
2011 /
2010 |
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Disclaimer |
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The Arts Society Woking cannot be held responsible for any personal accident, loss, damage or theft of members' personal property. Members are covered against proven liability of third parties. |
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