Robespierre and Danton
Prof William Doyle,
Emeritus Professor of Ancient History
University of Bristol
Christopher, write to your heart’s content here.
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
Your Title Goes Here
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
OTHER EVENTS

The Unlikely Spies of Medieval Europe
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.

A Historical Tour of Beaconsfield – LIVE
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.

The Search for American Vikings: Untangling Myth from Reality (Preceded by AGM)
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.

City Culture




