Reading Branch Programme 2024-25

 

 

Branch Contact: All enquiries to Chris Sexton sexton44@gmail.com 07957 184342.

Venue: Lecture Theatre, Reading School, Erleigh Road, Reading RG1 5LW (gate code essential and obtainable from above contact).

Associate Membership: £10 per annum, Lectures free to national and associate HA members, students and school pupils. Visitors £3 per lecture. (Fees subject to possible review)

 

Friday 18 October 2024 – Prof. Malcolm Barber (Emeritus – University of Reading), Why did the West fail to recover the Holy Land after the loss of Acre in 1291?

For the Christians of the Latin West the loss of the city of Acre was the most traumatic event of the thirteenth century. For nearly two hundred years at immense human and material cost they had defended the states in Palestine and Syria established after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. Previous disasters such as the loss of Edessa in 1144 and the terrible defeat at Hattin in 1187 had produced the huge armies of the Second and Third Crusades, but in 1291 there was no co-ordinated response and, consequently, the Latins never regained a foothold in Palestine, let alone recovered Jerusalem. This is an attempt to explain why this was so and to assess the long-term significance of the events of 1291.

 

Friday 8 November – Prof. Alexandra Walsham (University of Cambridge, and HA President), Landscape, Ancient Monuments and Memory: Perceptions of the Prehistoric Past in Early Modern Britain

This lecture explores perceptions of the pre-historic past in seventeenth-century Britain. It considers how reformers and antiquaries understood and explained ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury, together with the ways in which these sites were the focus for religious and political passions and tensions before, during and after the Civil Wars. It traces how legends and myths about the making of the landscape evolved and the mark that they continue to leave on contemporary understanding of these evocative and mysterious places.

 

Friday 6 December – Dr Bernard Regan (St Mary’s University and SOAS), Palestine and the British Empire, 1917- 1948

In 1917 the British army entered Palestine. The British government had been conducting discussions with three different groups of people, the French, the Arabs and the Zionist Organisation, as to the future of Palestine – and proposed different solutions to each. What influenced Britain’s thinking on Palestine? This talk will explore the factors that shaped British policy on Palestine from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Palestine War in 1948.

 

Friday 10 January – Dr Mark Williams (University of Cardiff), Drunken, Dissolute Lives? Life in the Early English East India Company, 1600-1757’

What was daily life like for an average employee of the English East India Company in its early days? Much of what we know and what circulates in the media focuses on the exceptional and ‘great’ parts of the Company story: the tentative first steps of ambassadors like Sir Thomas Roe, but also the ambitious and calculating manoeuvres of ‘great men’ like Robert Clive. But were these sorts of lives ‘typical’? 

In this talk, Dr Williams explores more ‘everyday’ questions about life in an EIC factory. For instance, when, how, and with whom did they socialise? What might they have read and done for entertainment? How did they learn languages? How (if at all) did they maintain a religious life? What did they eat and drink? These are crucial questions to answer if we are to understand how early trade and imperial ambitions unfolded in and around the Company in its early decades.

 

Friday 28 Feb – Dr Christopher Gerteis (SOAS), Playing with History: Exploring the Past through Video Games.

Historical video games blend immersive experiences of the past with potential educational value, offering detailed and accurate environments. This talk will introduce the idea of historiographical video games and explores their benefits and drawbacks as research and educational tools, with a particular focus on games based on Japanese history. It will explore how video games can engage players by immersing them in the complexity of the past, from ancient civilizations to modern conflicts, and bridge the gap between history and technology, considering how video gaming can enhance understanding of the past for both adults and youth.

 

Friday 28 March – Dr Sean Lang (Anglia Ruskin University ), Jeeves and the British Empire - PG Wodehouse and the Decline of Imperialism.

The whimsical works of PG Wodehouse, with their none-too-bright young men in spats and their fearsome aunts, might seem an idyllic world away from the hard realities of British imperialism. Yet Wodehouse was himself the product of colonial Hong Kong and of Dulwich College, proud alma mater of the Empire hero Sir Ernest Shackleton.  This talk will show how Wodehouse's view of Empire reflected and contributed to a fundamental change in British attitudes towards the Empire in the 'long weekend' of the inter-war years and beyond.