Bookings 14 January 2026 and 11 February 2026

Vivaldi is the one Baroque composer whose music is a direct reflection of the city in which it was composed.  Listen to a Vivaldi concerto and hey presto you are transported directly to the heart of 18th century Venice.  The reasons for this are many - Vivaldi's passion for colour, display and spectacle in his music; the unusual way in which Venice solved its problems with the poor and the homeless; Vivaldi's health problems and his eccentricities as a man and a priest. Against the luxurious backdrop of 18th century Venice, this study day explores the amazing world of Vivaldi's music - music that is as intrinsically Venetian as the canvasses of Canaletto.

Biography:

Peter appears in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar, giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music and the arts.  He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Bookings 13 August and

10 September 2025

In 1925, 16 million visitors witnessed PARIS'S EXPO - The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. What would we have seen in this landmark exhibition if we had been one of those visitors? What drew the crowds? And how did this seminal exhibition play a fundamental role in giving rise to a new international and truly GLOBAL style that we have come to know as ART DECO?

Image:  Pamela Campbell-Johnston

MA Hons Art History, St Andrew's University. Over 30 years of lecturing experience to undergraduates, adult groups, and to Friends and Patrons of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the RA's Adult Education Department.  Also conducted numerous guided tours, residential trips and focused gallery talks on individual works of art. Specialises in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art - with a particular love for the 1920s and 1930s.  A permanent career at Royal Academy of Arts for 12 years. Work experience also undertaken at Bonhams, Art Loss Register and National Trust.

Bookings 8 January and 12 February 2025

In this Study Day we examine the artistic tastes and art collections of three kings.  King Charles I, King Charles II and King Charles III.

Without King Charles I's passion for collecting we would not have the Royal Collection, the largest privately-owned art collection in the world; without King Charles II we would have lost the magnificent collection his father had amassed, and King Charles III is the owner of the Royal Collection today.

Image:  Barbara Askew

Historian and London Blue Badge Guide since 1988, Lecturer, Examiner and Course Director on Blue Badge Guide Training Courses and an acknowledged expert on Royalty and Windsor Castle.  The only Blue Badge Guide accredited to guide the Albert Memorial.  Offers guided visits and walking tours linked to her lectures.

Bookings 14 August and 11 September 2024

The story of Indian Modern Art

At the birth of Indian Independence in 1947, a group of talented and determined artists set out to create a new art for a new country.  They drew on ancient artistic traditions but also had a radical view of how Indian art could speak to its audience. This movement, known as the Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, created an art very much for and of its time - acting as witness to a country in turmoil and relating the fascinating story of transition and growth of the new India.  This talk offers an exploration of how art in the subcontinent threw off the yoke of colonial influence to create modern masterpieces and a thriving global business.

Koh-i-Noor - the most famous diamond in the world

From an Indian river bed thousands of years ago to the Tower of London - the fascinating story of the 'Mountain of Light'.  The story of this celebrated diamond is not only intriguing but also full of surprises; it has been the subject of desire, jealousy, intrigue, passion and political chicanery.  This lecture follows the journey of this fabulous diamond from the depths of early Indian history through the bloody history of the Mughals to the power and politics of the British Empire, illustrated by extraordinary artists who were committed to describing the events and emotions of their time.

Georgina Bexon holds a BA in Art History from Southampton University, a MA in Arts Management and Policy from City, University of London, and a MA in Art History from SOAS, University of London. Georgina is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Bookings 13 December 2023 and 10 January 2024

This lecture explores gardens through the senses of the Impressionists from three continents - Europe, North America and Australia - enjoying the essentially similar pleasures of the garden, but engaging with the light from their skies in order to create very different sensations.  The enclosure of the garden acts like a picture frame showcasing a living canvas that exudes the individuality, vision and taste of its tenants, their family, friends, lifestyles and, in the simple words of the greatest Impressionist and gardener Monet, providing motifs to paint.

Image: Plum Tree, Camille Pissarro

Caroline Holmes has lectured in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe, Japan and on cruises to the Baltic, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Caribbean and Indian Ocean.  In 2017 she returned to The Arts Society in New Zealand.  University of Cambridge ICE Academic Tutor and Course Director; lectures for the Royal Horticultural Society, museums, specialist travel companies and online for The Gardens Trust.  Consultant designer specialising in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references.  Author of 12 books including Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet's water lilies; Impressionists in their Gardens; Follies of Europe; Architectural Extravaganzas; Monet at Giverny and Icons of Garden Design. Contributions to Viking TV include Monet's Garden at Giverny https://viking.tv/live/monday/explore-claude-monets-life-in-giverny-with-guest-lecturer-caroline-holmes.  Presenter and contributor on television and BBC Radio 4, 2017 recipient of the Herb Society of America 'Elizabeth Crisp Rea Award'.

Bookings 9 August and 13 September 2023

Lilian Baylis, the supremely pragmatic manager of the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells, is a theatrical enigma.  The founder of English National Opera, the National Theatre and the Royal Ballet, she is still remembered as a comic Cockney with a talent for devastating one-liners and frying supper for her employees in the wings.  This talk covers new ground.  Based on a collaboration with Zoe Anderson, ballet critic and writer, we've discovered another Lilian.  A woman who constantly reinvented herself to keep her theatres going, she comes across as extraordinary as ever, but considerably more formidable.  Zoe is occasionally available to join us as an expert guest and add her contribution to this lecture - at no extra cost.

Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre; her principal employers are the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera.  She writes programme articles, radio and play scripts, gives lectures on the operas and ballets in the rep and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radios 3 and 4.  She is also a cartoonist.  All Sarah's talks come with audio and/or video clips. 

Bookings 11 January and 8 February 2023

The Grand Tour was a largely eighteenth century phenomenon, akin to the Gap Year of today, which reached the height of popularity in the years between 1715 and 1789.  Thereafter, Thomas Cook and the railways took the exclusivity out of Continental travel.  In its heyday, scores of young men (and a sprinkling of enterprising women) were dispatched by parents and guardians, to acquire at least a veneer of culture.  Some, at least, returned, armed with paintings and sculpture, determined to remodel their houses and estates into a semblance of the Italy that haunted their dreams.  This lecture follows the progress of a Grand Tourist through Europe, largely through contemporary paintings, gives examples of some of the sourvenirs they returned with and tells of some of the difficulties facing the intrepid traveller in the pre-railway age.

Image: Mediterranean Style Garden

James Bolton Inchbald School of Design 1990 (Dip ISD).  Head Gardener, Old Rectory Farnborough 1990-92. Faculty Director, Design History, Inchbald School of Design. Garden Designer 1992.  A lecturer for The Arts Society since 1995. Organiser of The Arts Society's garden study days and tours in UK and Europe. Organises tours to the best privte gardens in the UK, France and South Africa. Garden Mania, a book on garden ornaments, published in 2000.

Booking dates 10th August and 14th September 2022

Chinese Emperors and philosophers traditionally regarded their country as ‘The Middle Kingdom’, situated at the centre of the world. As they cultivated their minds and spirits, they faced inwards. In contrast, merchants in China’s border regions faced outwards. On the western frontier the ancient Silk Road witnessed an exchange of luxury goods: silk, perfumes, exotica and Persian glass carried by camel caravans over vast distances. On China’s eastern frontier stretched the sea on which ivory, jewels and porcelain were traded along with tea, lacquer and painted wallpaper. Merchants, dancers and acrobats from central Asia thronged China’s capital Xi’an. Arab merchants settled in China’s port cities to be followed by ‘red-haired foreign devils’ from Europe, who brought Indian opium, gunboats and the new architectural styles of the Treaty Ports.

Anne Haworth

Lecturer at the V&A. Guide for private tours of the State Rooms and The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Lecturer in British Painting for American students resident in London. In Autumn 2002, catalogued collection of Chinese porcelain at Kensington Palace. From 2002 2005, a committee member of the French Porcelain Society. From 1995 2002, was resident in Shanghai, China, visited ancient kiln sites and lectured to expatriate groups. From 1981 to 1995, trained and became a senior ceramics specialist at Christie's and Bonhams head offices.

Image: Anne Haworth

Chinese Emperors and philosophers traditionally regarded their country as ‘The Middle Kingdom’, situated at the centre of the world. As they cultivated their minds and spirits, they faced inwards. In contrast, merchants in China’s border regions faced outwards. On the western frontier the ancient Silk Road witnessed an exchange of luxury goods: silk, perfumes, exotica and Persian glass carried by camel caravans over vast distances. On China’s eastern frontier stretched the sea on which ivory, jewels and porcelain were traded along with tea, lacquer and painted wallpaper. Merchants, dancers and acrobats from central Asia thronged China’s capital Xi’an. Arab merchants settled in China’s port cities to be followed by ‘red-haired foreign devils’ from Europe, who brought Indian opium, gunboats and the new architectural styles of the Treaty Ports.

Anne Haworth

Lecturer at the V&A. Guide for private tours of the State Rooms and The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Lecturer in British Painting for American students resident in London. In Autumn 2002, catalogued collection of Chinese porcelain at Kensington Palace. From 2002 2005, a committee member of the French Porcelain Society. From 1995 2002, was resident in Shanghai, China, visited ancient kiln sites and lectured to expatriate groups. From 1981 to 1995, trained and became a senior ceramics specialist at Christie's and Bonhams head offices.

Booking dates 12th January and 9th February 2022

Lights, Camera, Action! – inside stories of the art and artifice of the early decades of Hollywood. Two lectures cover the work of stills photographers, costumiers, publicists, actors and actresses and the movie moguls who made it all happen.

Geri is a former Fleet Street journalist and film PR. She has a first-class honours degree in History and Theology, a Masters in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and a Theology doctorate from Roehampton University in London. She has been lecturing for the past 14 years both in the UK and internationally. She is also principal lecturer on the Arts Society South West Area’s History of Art course and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Roehampton University.

Image: Geri Parlby

Lights, Camera, Action! – inside stories of the art and artifice of the early decades of Hollywood. Two lectures cover the work of stills photographers, costumiers, publicists, actors and actresses and the movie moguls who made it all happen.

Geri is a former Fleet Street journalist and film PR. She has a first-class honours degree in History and Theology, a Masters in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and a Theology doctorate from Roehampton University in London. She has been lecturing for the past 14 years both in the UK and internationally. She is also principal lecturer on the Arts Society South West Area’s History of Art course and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Roehampton University.

Booking dates 8th August and 11th September 2019

This lecture takes a look at life backstage at London's Royal Opera House and the tribulations and triumphs of working with The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet companies. We look at the way artistic inspirations, the people involved and the very special Victorian building all function together to create world-class opera and ballet in a unique environment.  Includes several performance video clips. The lecture will include details of the history and architecture of the building.

Nigel Bates is the Music Administrator of The Royal Ballet and has been a performer for nearly forty years in and out of the Royal Opera House, including seventeen years as Principal Percussionist with the Orchestra. He has worked with many of the leading figures in the classical music industry and was also a producer for both the BBC's Maestro at the Opera and Pappano's Classical Voices documentary series. He is a regular contributor to the printed and online content of the ROH.
He has given lectures for over twenty years, including arts societies and conservatoires in the UK and across Australia.

 

Booking dates 9th January and 14th February 2019

As a young reporter working for the Lahore Gazette Kipling took a journey through Rajasthan during 1888 during which he produced some magical and evocative descriptions of the buildings he saw there. Nowadays he is overwhelmingly associated with the world of the Empire and the British Raj in India. But as the son of the Principal of the Bombay Art School and a talented artist himself, Kipling’s ‘seeing eye’ and his love of India provide a wonderful way in to the world of the Moguls and Maharajahs. In his company we explore some of Rajasthan’s magnificent architectural splendours and gain some insights into the rich cultural history of the ‘Land of Kings’. 

Elizabeth has over 25 years' experience lecturing on a range of subjects including classical art and architecture, aspects of the visual arts and the links between literature and art. Has lectured for the WEA, the Universities of Bristol and Southampton Departments of Continuing Education, Royal Society of Arts, Dillington House, Jane Austen Society, Thomas Hardy Society, Brussels Brontë Society, Finzi Society, the Art Fund, Dorset County Museum and literary, historical and philosophical societies nationwide. Has also lectured on study tours to Rome, Aachen, Cologne, Brittany and the Dordogne, as well as all over the UK. Lectured in Australia and New Zealand in 2011 and is returning to Australia for two further lecture tours.

 

Linda Collins
Lecturer for Historical Royal Palaces, National Trust, Tate Modern and National Gallery. This SID has been delivered to another local arts society which gave it a top rating.

Booking dates 8th August and 12th September 2018

We start in the Paris of 1850 – the lively city of cabaret’s, can-can girls and artistic bohemia. We follow the course of art from academic pictures, through the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists and beyond, looking at how the thread of art leads ever forward towards the present. We go on to look at the huge number of artists in Paris at this time and at the lively life they lived there. We consider the five major art groups comprising the Ecole de Paris, the Ecole Francais, Purism, Dadaism and Surrealism. We leave Paris for this session with WW11 approaching and many of our artists departing for New York. Then we look briefly at the history of modern art in New York before rejoining our French artists in the city. We see how Peggy Guggenheim looked after her old French pals and introduced them to her New York set. The French artists influenced the New York based artists such as de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock. From Abstract Expressionism we move on to Pop Art before finishing the day with Warhol's famous cans - and some lively debate. Hence, 'Can-Can to Soup Can'. 

Lecturer Historic Royal Palaces & National Trust. Freelance lecturer Tate Modern & National Gallery, London. Independent lecture organiser. Member of the Association of Art Historians. 

Anthea Streeter (who lectured to us in 2017 on Thomas Heatherwick)

Booking dates 10th January and 14th February 2018

Art Nouveau was the first attempt to create an international modern style. It had its fullest flowering on the European Continent during the 1890s. At this time progressive architects and designers renounced the tired formulae of historicism in favour of a ‘New Art’. 
The lectures begin with examples of Art Nouveau set alongside pieces from the following Art Deco period, so that a clear distinction can be made between the two styles. We will then look at how the English designers such as William Morris, Charles Voysey and Aubrey Beardsley were the first to break with the past. Influenced by nature, and the clarity and simplicity of Japanese artefacts, their work pointed a new way forward. We then consider how the various countries in continental Europe responded to the New Art, firstly looking at Belgium and France. Hector Guimard’s organic, plant-like forms for the Paris Metro as well as Rene Lalique’s naturalistic jewellery demonstrate the mainstream of Art Nouveau. The famous Paris World Fair of 1900 is highlighted.
Then we go to the USA to look at the exquisite glass designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The work of his contemporary, the American architect Louis Sullivan, is brought into context before we move to Scandinavia, taking a close look at the prevailing National Romanticism of Finland. Moving down through Central Europe, we finish the morning with Gaudi’s fantastical designs in Barcelona.
Then we will examine quite a different manifestation of Art Nouveau. This comes in the rectilinear forms of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland and his Austrian contemporaries, Olbrich and Hoffman in Vienna, closing with the Palais Stoclet, the Wiener Werkstatte’s design masterpiece.

Studied the Fine and Decorative Arts in London and continued her studies at Harvard University. It was while at Harvard, where there was great enthusiasm for American design, that she became interested herself in 20th century architecture. Since returning from America she has taught on courses in Oxford and London, lectured on the Country House course in Sussex, and for several private groups around the country. Special interest in the architecture and design of 20th century.

Mary Alexander
Freelance Lecturer

Booking dates 9th August and 13th September 2017

Since the 19th century English high society had 'wintered over' on the Côte d'Azur, but always left by April. In the early 1920's, however, an intoxicating mix of artists, writers, musicians and international visitors, inspired by a mythological seascape of luminous colours, created a new summer season. Sun tans and sportswear soon became 'de rigueur' in the chic new coastal resorts, villas and hotels. This liberating playground of ideas across the visual design arts was stimulated by impresarios Serge Diaghilev and Paul Poiret. Traditional boundaries were torn down. Matisse, Picasso, Dufy, Cocteau, and Chanel merged the worlds of fashion, theatre and interiors. Cole Porter, Scott Fitzgerald, and the intriguing Gerald and Sara Murphy, introduced an American perspective and attracted an influential new set of discerning atrons and collectors. We will 'time travel' to meet them.

Mary Alexander has thirty years' experience as a lecturer, with a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London.

Douglas Skeggs
Writer, Lecturer and TV Presenter

Booking dates 11th January and 8th February 2017

Synopsis to follow.

Douglas Skeggs: Cambridge Fine Arts. Writer, Artist, TV Presenter. Lecturer to many London art courses. Director of the New Academy of Arts. Author of 6 Novels.

Vivien Heffernan 
Artist and Lecturer, supported by an actor from RSC

The lectures will focus on six of Shakespeare's plays, covering tragedy, comedy and history, and the large number and variety of artists who have been inspired to paint scenes from these plays including Blake, Landseer and Millais.

The language is brought to life by a Royal Shakespeare Company actor

Bookings 13th Jan and 10th Feb 2016

Eveline Eaton
Guide and Lecturer

Eveline Eaton is a graduate of the Courtauld Institue of Art, London University where she obtained her B.A. She has a diploma from the Study Centre for the History of Fine & Decorative Arts. She is an accredited NADFAS lecturer and a freelance lecturer in Fine Arts and a tour-guide to Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Cote d’Azur and New York.

After unification of Germany in the early 1990s, there was a Call from Dresden to ask the world for help to rebuild the city and the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in particular. After the rebuilding of Dresden’s most beautiful church was completed in 2005, the Trust has concentrated on further projects of reconciliation between the UK and Dresden in the fields of education, culture, visits and exchanges. Eveline Eaton is the current Chairman of the Trust with HRH The Duke of Kent as its royal patron. 

In 2006, Dresden celebrated its 800th anniversary. Renowned as the Florence of the North, its 18th century buildings have been faithfully restored after World War II. The famous Green Vaultsdisplay an array of dazzling artefacts. The Oldand New Masters Picture Galleries are among the finest in Europe. Superb oriental and Meissenporcelain is on view in the historic Zwinger Palace, a jewel of Rococo architecture.

Nor far from Dresden, the talks will also cover the medieval town of Meissen and its famous porcelain factory. The Renaissance castle atColditz is of particular interest due to the ingenious PoW escape attempts. The Saxon rulers’ Hunting Lodge at Moritzburg and the Decorative Arts Museum at Pillnitz on the Elbe are further attractions. A short look at the Market and University City of Leipzig is fascinating as well.

As chairman of the Dresden Trust, lecturer Eveline Eaton is involved with Dresden’s rebuilding. This gives her the opportunity to combine the best aspects of the country of her birth - Germany - with those of the country she loves to live in since 1973 - the United Kingdom.”

Bookings 12th Aug and 9th Sept 2015

Linda Smith 
Guide and Lecturer

Bookings 14th Jan and 11th Feb 2015

Linda Smith is a well-qualified art historian with a broad range of knowledge, and a special interest in British art, and the art of the twentieth century. 
She is an accredited NADFAS lecturer, and an experienced gallery guide, especially at Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, where she works as a Guide and Lecturer. She offers illustrated talks, presentations and study days on a variety of art-historical topics, and has worked at public galleries, secondary schools, universities, cruise liners, and private arts societies in the UK and overseas. 

The talk is very much a social history: carefully placing the works of art in their proper historical context, which reveals many little nuances and meanings in well-known works which might not otherwise be immediately apparent to the modern eye. It ranges from the 17th century up to the present day, covering painters such as Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Manet, Degas and Renoir and more recently Picasso, Vlaminck and Sickert. It is, of course, also full of scandalous stories and anecdotes.

Oliver Everett Author, Lecturer and Librarian, and former Private Secretary to members of the Royal Family

Bookings 13th Aug and 10th Sept

Bookings 8th Jan and 12th Feb

Dr. Anne Anderson
Fellow of the Huntington Library

Booking dates: 14th August and 11th September 2013

Alexandra Drysdale
Artist and Lecturer. A variety of fun and stimulating artistic activities for everyone, which involve pulling famous pictures apart into colour, light, form, composition and subject matter. By the end of the day you will be far more aware of the visual language that artists use.

Booking dates: 9th January and 13th February 2013

Gail Turner is an historian, art historian and painter. She has lectured for NADFAS since 1992, and lectures regularly for The Art Fund, Cambridge University International Summer Schools, the V&A, and has led tours to Spain. She lectured in the Prado and Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid 1983-5.

Frank Woodgate is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and for Tate on cruises. He is a lecturer at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Dr. Rosamund Bartlett
Writer, lecturer and translator specializing in Russian cultural history, literature and music—books include Wagner and Russia, Shostakovich in Context, Chekhov: Scenes from a Life and Literary Russia: A Guide—has taught at universities in the UK and the United States and led tours throughout Eastern Europe—currently completing a new translation of Anna Karenina, editing the Cambridge Companion to Russian Music, and writing a cultural history of opera in Russia.

Copiously illustrated with slides and musical examples, the Special Interest Day portrays not only the high art of court masques, music-making and dancing among the gentry and nobility, and the Shakespearian stage, but also the broadside ballads, country dances and theatrical jigs of popular culture; demonstrated too is the way Shakespeare and other dramatists drew on both strands for material in their plays.

After studying at Trinity College Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, Jeremy Barlow worked at first chiefly in the theatre as a musical director, flautist and composer, and at the BBC as a radio producer and broadcaster. He then focused increasingly on early music as a performer, playing baroque flute, recorder and harpsichord, directing first the Barlow Baroque Players, and then from 1979 the Broadside Band.
From 1986-1999 he was Music Director at London Contemporary Dance School, and he has also been involved in many projects, seminars and conferences on the links between historical dance and music. He has a special interest in English popular and dance music from the 16th to 18th centuries (see other pages of the website), and has worked closely with historical dancers on several of his Broadside Band albums.
His audiovisual presentations and lectures are much in demand from organisations such as the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies and U3A; he has toured widely in Britain, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Writing on musical topics ranges from the scholarly (including his recently published book The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery for Ashgate (www.ashgate.com) to the humorous (The Cat & the Fiddle: Images of musical humour from the Middle Ages to modern times, just published by the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

Nicholas Bagshawe has over 15 years experience as a lecturer. He has lectured for Southampton University, Southampton Solent University, Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sotheby’s Institute and numerous affiliated groups of the National Association of Fine and Decorative Art Societies (NADFAS). His lectures cover subjects in the Fine Arts from the 18th century to the early 20th century.

Booking dates: 13th January and 10th February 2010

Jo Walton
After university, began teaching and lecturing combined with a career in art book selling. Set up and ran the Atrium Bookshop in Cork Street and worked at Christies the auctioneers. Now a freelance lecturer and a guide at both Tate galleries.