History lectures around the UK. To advertise your lecture here, email the details to ihr.webmaster@sas.ac.uk.

The Churchill Lecture Series at The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms

The Churchill Lecture Series is presented by some of the world’s leading authorities on Churchill. They take place within the remarkable and historic setting of the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. Sponsored by Military History. October 2009 marks the centenary of the modern British Intelligence Community and the founding of the Secret Intelligence Service (sometimes known as MI6) and the Security Service, MI5. This lecture series, presented by some of the leading historians in the field of intelligence and based in part upon closed records, offers a fascinating insight into the wartime contribution of SIS.

Gary Sheffield, Fighting for Churchill? The ordinary British soldier in the Second World War
17 March 2010
In this lecture Professor Sheffield turns his attention to the Second World War, examining the impact of combat on the ordinary soldier and analysing their motivation for fighting. In the process he highlights the true, often misunderstood costs of war on the individual. Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies at the University of Birmingham. Author of numerous outstanding books and articles on the history of the two World Wars, he is famous for his work in demythologising accepted perceptions of the 1914-18 War.

Nigel Steel, With Winston Churchill at the Front
23 March 2010
From November 1915 to May 1916, Churchill served in the trenches of France and Belgium, enduring danger and hardship alongside the men he commanded. This talk will take a detailed look at his time ‘at the front’ and show how Churchill proved to be a very able, if unusual, leader of men, rebuilding their morale after the losses they had suffered some weeks before. Head of the Imperial War Museum’s Research and Information Department, Nigel Steel is currently working as Principal Historian on the Lord Ashcroft Gallery Project.

Adults £15, Seniors, Students and Friends of the Imperial War Museum £12. Guests can enjoy the site before and after the lecture. Doors open at 6.30pm with the lectures beginning at 7.00pm. Doors remain open after the lectures until 9.00 pm. To book tickets please visit our website  or call Melody Allen on 020 7766 0155 (a £1.50 handling fee applies to all telephone bookings).

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2010 Neale Lecture

Steve Pincus (Yale University), Reconceptualising the Origins of the British Empire
19 March 2010, 6pm

Steve Pincus is Professor of History at Yale University, and has published widely on the economic, cultural, political and intellectual history of early modern British. He is the author of Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1688 (1996), and 1688: The First Modern Revolution (2009). This lecture will be followed by a one day conference entitled Making The British Empire, 1660-1800 (20 March 2010). This lecture will be followed by a one day conference entitled Making The British Empire, 1660-1800 (20 March 2010).

For further details, see www.ucl.ac.uk/events, or contact: Dr Jason Peacey, Department of History, UCL.

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Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England: the Lens of Life: Medicine, Microscopy and the Royal Society

The Hunterian Museum presents a series of events that reveal the connections between microscopy and medicine. The Lens of Life programme has been organised as part of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary celebrations in 2010.

Lunchtime Lectures

Thursday 25 March, 1pm
Keeping it in the family: the Dollonds and microscopy

As their name disappears forever from the British high street, Neil Handley, curator at the British Optical Association Museum uncovers the remarkable history of the Dollond family of opticians and their contributions to the science of microscopy.

Plus free tour of the historic British Optical Association Museum, Craven Street, London. Tour dates: 26 March, 1–2pm; 29 March, 11am–12 or 30 March, 2–3pm.

Tuesday 20 April, 1pm
Blood under the microscope: William Hewson, an 18th-century anatomist

Join Tania Kausmally, historian and archaeologist as she lays bare the history of 18th-century anatomist and microscopist William Hewson, the father of modern haematology.

Plus free tour of Benjamin Franklin House, Craven Street, London, where Hewson lived and worked. Tour dates: 26 April at 12, 1, 2, 3.15 and 4.15pm.

Wednesday 12 May, 1pm
‘Would you ever have thought such a thing possible?’ Alexander Fleming and the FRS

Today, Alexander Fleming is famous for the discovery of penicillin. But Kevin Brown, curator of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum exposes the professional rivalries that threatened the career of one of the greatest medical microbiologists of all time.

Plus free tour of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, St. Mary's Hospital, London. Tour dates: 13, 18 or 19 May, 2pm.

Lunchtime lectures and museum tours are free but booking is essential on 020 7869 6560.

Evening lectures

Wednesday 10 March, 7pm
Robert Hooke, Micrographia, and experimental physiology in the early Royal Society
Dr Allan Chapman FRAS

Noted historian Allan Chapman brings to life the work of one of the Royal Society’s great figures, Robert Hooke, and his ground-breaking investigations into plant and animal physiology.

Wednesday 28 April, 7pm
Joseph Lister, surgeon and microscopist
Professor Harold Ellis CBE FRCS

Harold Ellis charts the story of Joseph Lister FRS, who followed in the footsteps of his father, a wine merchant and distinguished amateur microscopist, to develop the skills that led to a new understanding of wound infection and to the introduction of antiseptic surgery.

Tuesday 11 May, 7pm
Microscopes: a key role in transplant surgery
Professor Sir Peter Morris AC FRS FRCS

In the last 40 years microscopy has been crucial to advances in surgery that have transformed our ability to treat disease. Sir Peter Morris draws on his own experience to explore the role of the microscope in transplant surgery.

Evening lecture tickets cost £5. Free entry plus one guest to Royal College of Surgeons fellows/members; free to RCS Affiliates and medical students. Booking is essential on 020 7869 6560.

The Hunterian Museum and College Library will be open on the night to lecture ticket holders from 6–7pm.

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ICMA at the Courtauld Lecture 2009/10

Thursday 11 March 2010, 6.00pm, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

The Count of Clermont and the Case of Conques: Unravelling Some Mysteries of Medieval Enamelling
Barbara Drake Boehm (Curator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

This lecture is presented by the Courtauld Institute of Art in association with the International Center of Medieval Art, New York, and with the support of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum. The International Center of Medieval Art promotes the study of the visual arts of the Middle Ages in Europe. Its worldwide membership includes academics, museum professionals, students, and other enthusiasts.

Open to all, free admission. The lecture will be followed by a reception sponsored by Sam Fog.

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Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Series

Thursday 11 March 2010, 6.00pm, The Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London, NW1 2HD

Messianic Persia and the Fourth Beast: from Warfare to End Times in Late Antiquity
Yuri Stoyanov (School of Oriental and African Studies)

The lecture will explore the far-reaching effect of the last great war of antiquity on the growing end times expectations and agitation in the contemporary Near East and Levant. In this long collision between Sasanian Persia and the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the early 7th century, the dramatic defining role of end time adversary attributed to the Sasanians in the messianic and apocalyptic scenarios of the period enjoyed a lasting after-life, which, along with their impact on later European Christian images and perceptions of pre-Islamic Persia, will be charted and illustrated in the lecture.

Admission free, all welcome. Contact: 0207 3884539 or info@royalasiaticsociety.org.

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