Sunday 8 September, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
Blenheim Palace: A Duke, a Battle and a Palace
SPEAKER: Melanie King

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was quite rightly proud to be descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. One of the greatest military leaders in history (he never lost a battle), John Churchill spent many decades at the heart of English politics and European history. He survived various political intrigues and even trumped-up charges of insurrection, a stint in prison, and a spell of exile on the Continent.                      

This talk will focus not on his military genius, but on how he overcame tremendous personal and political difficulties to triumph as one of the most vital figures in eighteenth-century English history.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 22 September, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
Odd Men and Necessary Women – Servants of a Great Palace
GUEST SPEAKER: Antonia Keaney

This talk provides insight into the colourful life and work of those who have served at Blenheim Palace through the ages, both inside and outside—in the gardens, park, and forests. At Blenheim Palace, there were all the traditional servants found in any great house, but also some unique to the Palace. For instance, the 1st Duke had a servant to clean his teeth and another paid to dress his blisters! The 4th Duke had a running footman to run ahead of his coach to announce his arrival, and the 4th Duchess had a French hairdresser whom she paid £42 per annum—twice what she paid her footmen.

Antonia Keaney holds a degree in Italian and European Studies from the University of Sussex and joined the Education Team at Blenheim Palace in 2008. She is now the Palace’s social historian and researcher. In these roles, she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions at Blenheim, including ‘A Passion for Fashion – 300 Years of Blenheim Style’ upon which her latest book of the same name is based. Antonia gives talks at literary festivals, history societies, and museums and has made various TV appearances, including on BBC’s Country File, Channel 4’s Phil Spencer’s Stately Homes, and Channel 5’s The Cotswolds with Pam Ayres.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 6 October, 2024
7pm (GMT)
The Duchess of Well-Being: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough’s Pursuit of Health and Happiness  
SPEAKER: Melanie King

At the age of 17, Sarah Jenyns, daughter of an MP for St Albans, married John Churchill, a dashing officer whom she had met at Court. A forceful and controversial figure, later the Duchess of Marlborough and a close friend of Queen Anne, Sarah was an inveterate seeker after wellness at a time when medicine was still at a fairly primitive stage. Sarah’s obsession with finding cures for her various conditions—gout, scurvy, erysipelas and excruciating rheumatism—gives us a glimpse into eighteenth-century medical practice and also medical tourism. Sarah took the waters at various spas around England, braved Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘Great Cordial’, and treated herself with snail water and ass’s milk.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 20 October, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
A Crystal Vision of Victorian Britain: The Great Exhibition of 1851
GUEST SPEAKER: Dr Simon Wenham

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was one of the most ambitious and spectacular events ever staged in Britain. It showcased, on a grand scale, the sheer economic, technological and global might of the nation. The vast attraction, which captivated visitors from around the country (and beyond), provides a fascinating window in so many sides of Victorian life. This talk will explore what we know about this great spectacle and what it tells us about the nation as a whole.

Dr Wenham teaches courses on the Victorian period at University of Oxford’s Continuing Education Department. He is the author of two books, Pleasure Boating on theThames: A History of Salter Bros 1858- Present Day (published in 2014 and updated in 2017) and Hobbs of Henley: A History (published in 2020). He is an experienced speaker and offers illustrated talks on social history to history societies and museums. He offers online history courses and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Oxford and has appeared on Channel 4 and Channel 5.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 3 November, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
Historical Inaccuracies of Napoleon (the movie)
GUEST SPEAKER: Jem Duducu

Ridley Scott’s movie Napoleon (2023) starring Joaquin Phoenix and Virginia Kirkby is a long film—over three hours. So you would think it would be historically accurate. Unfortunately, as with many Hollywood historical blockbusters it is not.

Join Jem Duducu, the author of Hollywood and History: What the Movies Get Wrong from the Ancient Greeks to Vietnam (2023) and The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts (2015) as he delves into the new 2023 film Napoleon. Jem highlights how closely the film portrays real events with some fun insights to both the history of the age and the making of the film.

Jem studied Archaeology and Medieval History at the University of Wales College Cardiff and is a freelance trainer, but is also the host of the Condensed Histories Podcast and author of over 12 books of non-fiction and 2 novels.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 24 November, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
Not Just Napoleon and Jane Austen: Lesser Known Episodes From the Year 1815
SPEAKER: Melanie King

The Battle of Waterloo was not the only major event of 1815. Teeth extracted from cadavers, a crashing comet, and the public dissection of a prophet—all were some of the events recorded in the year 1815. Join Melanie King as she shares some of the lesser-known episodes of an eventful year that included everything from exploding volcanoes to Napoleon impersonators and angry mobs ransacking the houses of the politicians of London.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 1 December, 2024  
7pm (GMT)
The History of the Bubonic Plague
GUEST SPEAKER: Paul Crystal

Bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), it seems, has always been with us and, as modern outbreaks still attest, has never really gone away. In Britain, Samuel Pepys’ death carts – ‘God preserve us all!’ (1665); Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (1772); Albert Camus; and the immersive, almost experiential, doom village and its museum at Eyam in Derbyshire have seen to that. The plague lurks in the dark corners of our collective mind and resurfaces every now and again with 21st-century pandemics like SARS, MERS, Zika, Ebola, and, of course, COVID-19.

This talk outlines the insidious history of the bubonic plague across the world and in world history, starting with the classical period, through the boom and doom years of the Middle Ages (the Black Death, 1346 – 1353); and plague in London, Amsterdam, Naples, and Moscow in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In the 19th century, plague ravaged the Ottoman Empire and Hong Kong, while in the last century the pestilence wreaked death from Bombay to Porto, from Kashmir to Manchuria.

The talk concludes with a survey of plague events in the 21st century, covering a wide swathe of the planet from the USA to China, from Madagascar to Afghanistan.

Paul Chystal has a degree in the Classics from the University of Hull and an MPhil from the University of Southampton. He is author of over 120 books on local and social history, including The History of the World in 100 Pandemics, Plagues and Epidemics (2023). He has been a history adviser to the National Trust in York, has written features for history and archeology magazines, BBC radio 4 and the World Service and blogs and podcasts.

£10 individual talk

Sunday 8 December, 2024 
7pm (GMT)
The Lost Horses of Cairo
GUEST SPEAKER: Grant Hayter-Menzies

In 1930, wealthy Scottish socialite Dorothy Brooke followed her new husband to Cairo, where she discovered thousands of suffering former British war horses leading lives of toil and misery.

Brought to the Middle East by British forces during the Great War, these ex-cavalry horses had been left behind at the war’s end, abandoned as used equipment too costly to send home. Join Grant as he tells us about Dorothy Brooke and the horses and mules who found respite at the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital in Cairo, which Dorothy established.

Grant Hayter-Menzies is a Canadian author of over a dozen books celebrating the lives of extraordinary humans and animals. He is the literary executor of playwright William Luce (1931-2019), the award-winning author of the Broadway classic The Belle of Amherst.

£10 individual talk