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…

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…

For centuries printing in Britain had been a male dominated industry routed in technology that had changed little since Gutenburg's lifetime. This status altered in the early 1900s, when advancements were made, and a woman invigorated the industry. This individual was Beatrice Warde, who through her expertise and connections to leading figures from the industry, art, culture and politics, became one of the most influential figures in printing and publishing. Her ideas continue to resonate in the twenty first-century, with…