Past Events › Lunar Lecture Series
Lectures held on the night of the full moon
April 2024
Lunar Lecture – ‘For all our people’:the establishment of a public library service in Victorian Birmingham.by Steve Hewett
'For all our people': the establishment of a public library service in Victorian Birmingham. Steve Hewett is a retired university librarian with an interest in local and regional history. He is in his final year of doctoral research for a PhD, investigating the development of civic culture in Birmingham during the late eighteenth- and nineteenth centuries, in particular looking at the campaign for a free library service which began in the 1850s. Book tickets here
Find out more »May 2024
Lunar Lecture – An Evening with John Smedley by Jane Middleton Smith
The talk will outline the history of a remarkable, family-owned company which this year celebrates its 240th birthday. Producers of fine gauge, luxury yarns and knitwear from the late 18th century, John Smedley garments have a reputation for style, quality and longevity: attributes well-attuned to today's emphasis on sustainability. Based at Lea Mills, near Matlock since 1784 and sold in the company's London shops as well as exported to over 46 countries world-wide. John Smedley's garments have earned two Royal Warrants and…
Find out more »October 2024
Lunar Lecture – Boys will be Girls will be Boys, the theatre pre and post Restoration by Janet Tennant
Boys will be Girls will be Boys- the theatre pre and post Restoration by Janet Tennant By the 17th century a professional theatre was established in England. After the execution of Charles I and the Civil Wars, Charles II, the Merry Monarch, a keen theatre goer, succeeded to the throne in 1660. The talk looks at the theatre before the Restoration and how it changed, irrevocably, afterwards. Book tickets here
Find out more »November 2024
Cancelled – Lunar Lecture – Beyond the ha-ha: an eighteenth-century gardening revolution
Unfortunately this lecture has been postponed and ticket holders should receive a full refund shortly. We hope to able to announce a new date in 2025. The history of the garden in the eighteenth century is more than one of acres of grass, Palladian houses and glassy stretches of water. This talk jumps the ha-ha, that icon of the eighteenth-century landscape park, to consider a century that witnessed other leaps of innovation. It saw a gardening revolution that encompassed…
Find out more »December 2024
Lunar Lecture :Lunar Links: Erasmus Darwin and the importance of local networks in the Midlands Enlightenment.
Erasmus Darwin was at the centre of various networks which were central to cultural development in the West Midlands. Malcolm focuses on several of these connections to assess, for example, his contribution to the activities of the Lunar Society and provision of personal and intellectual support to individuals including Matthew Boulton, James Keir, Anna Seward, James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood. Dr Malcolm Dick OBE is Honorary Associate Professor of History and formerly Director of the Centre for West Midlands…
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