Date: 19th of November 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Dr Simon Elliott, Managing Director, Sentinel Communications

Septimius Severus was Rome’s black emperor. Born in the blistering heat of a North African spring in Leptis Magna, AD 145, he died in the freezing cold of a northern British winter in York in AD 211. A giant of an emperor, whose career can be counted in superlatives, Severus was in power at the height of Rome’s might. He led the largest army to ever campaign in Britain, comprising 50,000 men, part of a Roman military establishment which peaked at 33 legions under his rule.

Date: 17th of December 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Prof Richard Whatmore, School of History, University of St Andrews

The Enlightenment is popularly seen as the Age of Reason, a key moment in human history when ideals such as freedom, progress, natural rights and constitutional government prevailed. In this radical re-evaluation, historian Richard Whatmore shows why, for many at its centre, the Enlightenment was a profound failure.

Date: 21st of January 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Dr Sara Lodge, School of English, University of St Andrews

A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation.

Date: 18th of February 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Dr Antony Harkins, Western Kentucky University, USA

The Appalachian region in the United States comprises the range of mountains stretching from north Georgia up to the state of Maine. It has been celebrated as an area of natural beauty and long-distance walks as well as a major centre of bluegrass music. However, it is also a very misunderstoodarea as evidenced by JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.

Date: 18th of March 2026
Time: 20:00
Venue Zoom
Speaker: Prof Susan Whitfield, University of East Anglia

We think of the Silk Roads as a luxury trade route from East Asia to markets such as Damascus in Syria. But there is much more to this story. This trade involved diplomatic, religious and other contacts between different cultures as far as Europe.

Date: 15thof April 2026
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Dr Angela McShane, Hon Reader in History, University of Warwick

Partying like it’s 1679 in Stony Stratford, Or Mable Graves’s Very Bad Day. In 1679, the landlady of The Cock in Stony Stratford was visited by agents of the powerful local magnate, Sir Richard Temple of Stowe. They were investigating a seditious pop song that had created a local and national sensation – and libelled their master. Did she know anything about it? Trouble was … Mabel did know … a lot. Come and hear the story of that sensational song, the era’s huge pop song trade in general, and find out what happened next for Mabel and her family.

Date: 20th of May 2026
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Prof Jenny Benham, Medieval History, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University

Spies were a common feature of political, diplomatic and courtly life in the period of early medieval Europe. In this article, Jenny Benham explores some interesting contemporary representations of spies, in both literature and art. These stories and images reveal key features of the culture and practices surrounding these so-called ‘little birds’ who listened to and passed on important secret information.

Date: 17th of June 2026
Time: TBC
Venue: TBC
Speaker: David Green

David Green has been leading walks for the Bucks Historical Association since he was the Historic
Landscape/Townscape Characterisation Officer for Bucks County Council. This year he will be taking
us through the historic town of Beaconsfield.

Date:15th of Ocotober 2025
Time: 20:00 (19:35 for AGM)
Venue: Zoom
Speaker: Martyn Whittock, Independent Researcher and Author

For a thousand years, Norse sagas (written in 13th-century Iceland) claimed that Vikings migrated from Greenland to reach a land to the West called ‘Vinland.’  It was, and is, a claim that stimulates the imagination and controversy, for it insists that Vikings influenced lands very far from Scandinavia. In this talk – based on my book American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America – I explore the evidence for this in the literary sources and archaeology (most notably on Newfoundland); claims regarding runestones ‘discovered’ in the USA; and  the way this idea of ‘Vinland Vikings’ has fed into the cultural DNA of North America and especially the USA.  In recent times that has led to their co-option by the US far-right as seen in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally at Charlottesville (2017) and on January 6th at the US Capitol. This talk will explore both the evidence for Norse settlement in North America and why it became (and remains) so important in the ‘deep story’ of contested US identities.