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 QUIZ

Soory folks the pub quiz is now FULL.

The Eldon House pub Lower Clifton Hill

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.

Professor Ronald Hutton, Dr Tracy Borman and Dr Sean Cunningham

SIXTH FORM TUDOR HISTORY CONFERENCE

Over 200 students and teachers from ten schools are involved in this conference.

This conference is now fully booked

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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…

• 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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Sunday 3rd May 2026. 2-4pm

Dr Evan Jones. University of Bristol

WALK. A humorous walk around Millerd’s Bristol.

Evan Jones will lead a walk around the old city of Bristol as it would have been in 1673. James Millerd’s 1673 map of Bristol is the best known and most widely used representation of the pre-modern city. Evan has researched Millerd’s map and has discovered four jokes. The walk will bring these to life. We will start at Bristol Bridge (where Millerd lived) then wend our way through Bristol, going up Stony Hill and St Michael’s Hill, before cutting across to the Bristol Volcano (aka Brandon Hill). Warning: it will be steep.

There are 25 places. Pre booking is essential. Please contact Rob to book a place.

THE WALK IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

To find out more about Evan’s research please go to the BRISTOL HISTORY RESOURCES page of this website.

Here is a draft map of the route: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1OkGR2wP4T0JlQsgyiBE1TbC_LLrZrqY&usp=sharing

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Wednesday 13th May 2026. 7.30pm

Eugene Byrne Bristol Post journalist and local historian

Which side are you on? Bristol in the 1980s 

The 1980s in Britain was a time of bitter political discord, and growing social divisions resulting in many communities being “left behind” even today.

It was either a time of heartless estate agents, designer suits and Harry Enfield yelling “Loadsamoney!” or it was the era of the miners’ strike, inner-city riots and growing unemployment (shorthanded as “Thatcher’s Britain”). 

For Bristol, it was a decade of two halves, the first angry and confrontational, the second more materialistic and hedonistic.

Eugene Byrne invites you to don your Dig Deep For The Miners badge (or red braces and shoulder pads) and come on down in your hot hatch (or Citroen 2CV with the nuclear-free zone sticker) to look back on the decade that shaped modern Bristol.

We’ll meet Sloaney students, lager louts and the odd yuppie. We’ll see how social media addiction was invented here (yes, really!) and witness the hugely symbolic Big Bang that demolished the old Bristol to make way for the new one.

Don’t miss it – put the date in your Filofax now!

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Wednesday 10 June 2026. 7.30pm

Professor William Doyle. University of Bristol

The American and French Revolutions: Links, similarities and differences

This lecture is not in the usual place. We will be in the Reception Room of the Wills Memorial Building. Refreshments at 7pm. Lecture at 7.30pm.

Description: In the year the USA celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence Professor William Doyle examines the links, similarities and differences between this revolution and the French Revolution which began in 1789 and shook Europe to its core.

How to book: Please contact our treasurer Rob Pritchard (robpritchard1957@gmail.com) so we can monitor the numbers as we will be meeting in smaller room

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