Wednesday 24th September 2025 7.30pm

Professor Selina Todd University of Oxford

The First Women Doctors in Britain

Professor Selina Todd is Professor of Modern History at Oxford and a specialist in the history of modern Britain, particularly during the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research has focused on the history of working-class life and women’s lives. She is interested in ordinary people’s experience and memory of the past. She is the author of Young Women, Work and Family in England (2005) and The People: The rise and fall of the Working Class (2015). Her current research is focused on the experience of the first women doctors in Britain. 

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Wednesday 15th October 2025 7.30 pm

Professor Ronald Hutton. University of Bristol

Witch hunting: Past and Present

After his brilliant lecture on the History of Christmas last year our patron Professor Ronald Hutton returns to look at “Witch-hunting past and present?”  Professor Hutton is a specialist in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. He is the author of numerous books including The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (1999), Witches, Druids and King Arthur (2003), Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (2009), The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (2017) and Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation (2022).

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Wednesday 12th November 2025. 7.30 pm

Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe Emeritus Professor University of Oxford

Emerging from the mud: The discovery of Roman Bath

Professor Cunliffe began his distinguished career as an archaeologist in the early 1960s as lecturer at Bristol University.  He revisits the pioneering excavations that brought the Roman Baths of Bath back into the spotlight. Beginning in 1963, his work marked the start of a new era in the understanding of Roman Britain and remains a cornerstone of modern archaeological practice. He has seen been involved in excavating sites across Britain and the rest of Europe including Iron Age, Bronze and  and Celtic sites. 

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A Wednesday 19th November 2025.

Bristol Historical Association

Bristol Schools Sixth Form History Quiz

The next quiz will be in GH01 at 7 Woodland Road. Doors open at 5pm. Schools taking part should send their teams to Maryfeerick58@gmail.com. by 4th November.

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Wednesday 3rd December 2025. 7.30pm

Andrew Foyle. Author of the Bristol Pevsner Architectural Guide

Bristol’s distinctive buildings

Dr Andrew Foyle is a buildings & social historian working mainly in the West of England: Bristol, Bath, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. Andrew produces heritage statements and associated documents for historic buildings. He works with listed buildings, scheduled monuments, parks & gardens, and sensitive sites within conservation areas. Andrew has written two volumes in the Pevsner Guides (Buildings of England) series.

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Wednesday 21st January 2026. 7.30 pm.

Professor Ian Hamerton. University of Bristol

The Arts and Crafts Movement –   “What You Can
Remember Is Your Own, What You Sketch You Steal” exploring C.F.A.
Voysey’s individual approach to decorative design in the Arts and Craft
Movement

Professor Ian Hamerton is Professor of Polymers and Composites in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering but he is also a well-established expert on the Arts and Craft Movement.  He was the Chairman of the Society for the Arts and Crafts Movement in Surrey for many years. The Society aims to promote the appreciation, understanding and conservation of  all aspects of design, including buildings and gardens, of the period of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Professor Hamerton will be talking about the influence of the work of CFA Voysey.

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Wednesday 28th January 2026 7.30pm

Bristol Historical Association PUB Pizza QUIZ

The Eldon House pub

Doors open 6.30pm. £3 per person. Teams of four.

Please book your teams in advance by contacting Rob with a team name and the names of no more than four team members. If you are not in a team please contact Rob and he can find a team for you.

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Wednesday 11th February 2026 7.30 pm

Dr Vivian Kong. University of Bristol

Multiracial Britishness in Hong Kong 1910-1945

Dr Vivian Kong is a Senior lecturer at Bristol University. She is a historian of Hong Kong and is interested in how its global connections and multi-ethnic urban setting shaped identities and social dynamics there. She has been working on a new book about an Anglo-Chinese Eurasian woman, and the web of family relationships. Her latest book published in 2024 is called Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong 1910-45

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Wednesday 18th March 2026. 7.30pm

Professor Adrian Bingham University of Sheffield   

‘Politics is something outside everyday life’: Understanding democratic engagement in twentieth-century Britain

Professor Adrian Bingham is head of the History School at Sheffield University where he has taught since 2006.  His research has focused on modern British History with particular interest in popular culture, the media, sexuality and how the public engage with politics.  He has written extensively about the national popular press since World War I including his work with Professor Martin Conboy Tabloid Century. His most recent book, Everyday Politics, Ordinary Lives: A New History of British Democracy, 1918-1992 (2024) examined how British citizens understood politics and how they viewed its relationship to their lives from 1918 to 1992

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Wednesday 25th March 2026.

Sixth Form Tudor History Conference.

The conference is for students preparing for A level. Priority will be given to year 13 students. If you are a teacher who would like to bring students please contact Mary Feerick.

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Wednesday 29th April 2026. 7.30pm

Professor Richard Grayson Oxford Brookes University

The Easter Rising in Dublin and Cork and its First World War Context

Professor Grayson has specialised mostly recently on Ireland’s First World War and the Irish Revolution. Two of his most important books on Ireland and the First World War are…

• Irish Revolution: Belfast Boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War (2009)
• Dublin’s Great Wars: The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution (2018).

He is currently working on a study of County Cork during the Irish Revolution. 

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Wednesday 6th May 2026. 7.30pm

Professor Adam Smith University of Oxford

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg and the long shadow of the Declaration of Independence

Professor Smith is the Edward Orsborn Professor of US Politics & Political History and the Director of the Rothermere American Institute. Born in the Northeast of England, after Durham Johnston Comprehensive School he went to Oxford, Sheffield, Harvard, and Cambridge universities. He taught for sixteen years at UCL before returning to Oxford. His specialism is the American Civil War, its causes, and consequences. His book The Stormy Present: Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics, 1846-1865, (2017) won the Jefferson Davis Prize for the best book on the Civil War era and was a finalist for the Lincoln prize for the best book on Lincoln.

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Wednesday 24th June 2026. 7.30pm

Professor Meleisa Ono-George. University of Oxford

Amelia Newsham; Science, Art and the Making of Race

Professor Ono-George is a social-cultural historian of race and gender, with a focus on Black women’s histories in Britain and the Anglo-Caribbean. She is interested in the everyday ways people oppressed within society negotiate and navigate structures of power and inequality, as well as the legacies and politics of writing such histories within contemporary society. She is also working on community-engaged research practices, as well as creative and Caribbean storytelling methodologies. Her debut book My Name is Amelia Newsham: Science, Art and the Making of Race is being published by Viking who triumphed in a six-way auction to publish it.

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