Branch contact All enquiries to Mrs Melissa Wright mwright@boltonschool.org.uk 07912369060

Venue: All talks start at 6.30pm on (mostly) the first Monday of the month, and take place in the Leverhulme Suite @ Bolton School Girls’ Division, Chorley New Road, Bolton, BL1 4PA. Parking free in the Girls’ Division Quad.

Associate membership £20 per year. Talks free to national HA members and students, visitors £5.

Branch website: www.boltonhistoricalassociation.wordpress.com

Twitter: @BoltonHistory

Facebook: Bolton Historical Association

Bolton Branch Programme 2025

Monday 6 January

Dr Dean Irwin – University of Lincoln

Details of the talk - TBC

Dean is a medieval historian who works on the records generated by, or in relation to, the Jews of medieval England. His doctoral work focused on acknowledgements of debt (1194-1276). Interests include all aspects of medieval Anglo-Jewish history as well as the history of medieval records (single sheet) and seals. Dean completed his PhD at Canterbury, Christ Church, where he considered the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities in Medieval England.
  

Monday 3 February

Dr Jonathan Spangler – Senior lecturer Manchester Metropolitan University

Details of the talk -TBC

My research is based on the aristocracy of France and its neighbours in the 16th-18th centuries, and the notion of frontier identities. In particular, I am working on a new history of the Duchy of Lorraine, a formerly independent state between France and Germany.

I am also interested in early modern royal courts, in France and elsewhere. I particularly focus on members of royal families besides the king: his wife, his brother, his mother, his cousins. In particular, I am a specialist on the role of the second son in the history of monarchy (the ‘heir and the spare’) and have published and spoken to the media frequently on this topic.
  

Monday 3 March

Professor Martin Alexander

Details of the talk -TBC

Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Aberystwyth, Martin attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School, then read Modern History at Exeter College, Oxford, and completed a research DPhil. He taught at the Sorbonne, Southampton and Salford universities, and at the US Naval War College. His recent publications include a book on his 1960s LRGS Headmaster John L. Spencer -- signals officer of 2nd Battalion, the Essex Regiment in Normandy in 1944, the project entailing a study tour of the beaches, bocage country and the villages near Bayeux and Caen where men and women of courage and spirit decided the destiny of modern Western Europe.