2012-2013 Lecture Series

Clore Learning Space,
Holburne Museum, Bath

Tuesdays at 6.00 – 7.30

Tuesday 22nd January
Dr Stella Tillyard
'Bright metal on a sullen ground': the idea of character in English biography, history and the historical novel.

The award-winning biographer and novelist, will trace the idea of character in English biography, history and the novel from William Shakespeare to Wolf Hall, and ask whether the historical novel has now eclipsed biography and history as our favourite way of learning about the past.

Please note this paper was cancelled due to inclement weather and will be rescheduled for May - date to be confirmed.

Tuesday 19th February
Adrian Tinniswood
Leaving Canaan: New Englanders in the English Civil War

Out of the dawn mist a fleet of longboats glides across the flooded meadows. The dark, sleek vessels bristle with guns and pikes, held aloft by a small army of Connecticut fighters and weather-beaten Massachusetts militia-men. Standing in the prow of the leading boat, like Washington crossing the Delaware, is a broad, barrel-chested man with long flowing hair and a blood-red banner emblazoned with the motto ‘Truth Conquers’.This isn’t the American Revolution. It isn’t even America. It is England in1644 and the war between King and Parliament is about to take a new direction. The Yanks are coming!

Tuesday 19th March
Paul Holden, House and Collections Manager, Lanhydrock.
'The Squire turn'd Ferret': Restoring the reputation of Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728)

In 1726, Samuel Molyneux and the Swiss surgeon and anatomist Nathaniel St André (1680-1776) applied their sceptical and analytical minds to the fraudulent claim that Mary Toft from Godalming was giving birth to live rabbits. Once exposed Molyneux was ridiculed by the popular press and pillioried by the satirists - within the year he was dead. Despite thirteen years loyal service to the Prince of Wales, later King George II, Samuel Molyneux has long been remembered for this private incompetence. Molyneux's disgrace epitomises the precarious nature of eighteenth-century private and public reputation. This lecture will aim to restore Molyneux's reputation as a vocational scholar of antiquities, architecture, art, landscape and science. In doing so it will discuss his intellectual circle, establish his role as a patron of science and technology and explore his posthumous reputation.

Tuesday 23rd April
Dr Brian Griffin
Battling Anti-Christ: Anti-Catholicism in Bath from the 1820s to the 1860s

This paper challenges the idea of some historians that harmonious relations prevailed amongst Bath's various religious denominations during the 'Age of Reform', from the 1820s to the 1860s. It reveals instead that the public expression of anti-Catholic opinion was a regular feature of the city's political scene in this period. An anti-Catholic 'crusade', directed against such local targets as Prior Park College and Downside Abbey, as well as 'Popery' in general, was sustained by a variety of local organizations and national organizations that had branches in Bath, as well as prominent Tory activists. A surprising number of Irish-born evangelical clergymen played a prominent role in this crusade. The paper will be illustrated by numerous extracts from the pamphlets, books and speeches produced by the leading proponents of the anti-Popery movement in Bath.