We will be given an insight into the history behind the cards we use today. Playing cards originally date from 1377 and there are surviving decks from as early as 1475.

By the 1880’s women were founding associations as patrons of the arts.  Names familiar to us are Peggy Guggenheim, Gertrude Vanderbilt, Abbey Rockefeller and there are many more besides!

Effigies not only bring us face-to-face with the real inhabitants of the medieval world, they also provide a unique way for us to understand the art of the historical English armourer.

Doug Gillen will talk to us about Street Art in the City, there is more to it than sometimes meets the eye!

This lecture is divided into two parts looking principally at the changes to the famous City of London skyline viewed from across the Thames.

Tim lives in Exeter, and he will give us a fascinating insight into the world of professional classical singing and how the voice is trained, showing us how the vocal chords change with the notes, anecdotes and maybe even some stage secrets!!

Through the work of Cardinal Wolsey Henry VIII and Frances I of France signed the Treaty of London as a non-aggression pact between the major European powers of the time.  By 1520 this treaty was nearly falling apart and Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon met with Frances I in a field near Calais.  Both rulers tried to outdo the other in the sumptuousness of their encampments and the field became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Why were foreigner painters preferred by the aristocracy in London to native-born English painters, why did foreigners come in the first place, what was their motivation, and what was the impact of foreigners in London on English art and art practise?

“What is wrong with me”? is the most common question put to any doctor. The ability of doctors to respond meaningfully to the question “Doctor what is wrong with me” has progressed in the last 2,000 years from mythology to Galen’s four humors, bloodletting, endoscopy and MRI scans.