THE PAINTED HALL AT GREENWICH

The Painted Hall in the Royal Naval College at Greenwich is a masterpiece often called Britain's Sistine Chapel. Inside you will find paintings covering over 3,700 square meters of the hall's walls and ceiling, created by the artist Sir James Thornhill. In this lecture we tell the story of the hall and explore some of the 200 images on display, explaining their significance and meaning as they mark the state of Britain in the early 17th century.

NICK SALMOND

Biography

Nick is a London Blue Badge Guide and a lecturer in History and the Arts. He qualified as a London Blue Badge Guide in 2019, winning the award as Guide of the Year. In 2021 he gave the annual Katrine Prince Lecture to members of the Institute of Tourist Guiding. Before guiding he joined the BBC where he worked for over 30 years in both television and radio. He helped cover some of the great events of History, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the terrible events of 9/11, from the fall of the Thatcher Government to the celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Awards, Qualifications & Memberships:

Member of the Institute of Tourist Guiding.
Qualified as a London Blue Badge Guide 2019
Winner of the Katrine Prince Prize as Guide of the Year

SHEPARD’S CHRISTMAS

E H Shepard loved Christmas, and this lecture describes, including his own words much of the magic and joy of successive festive seasons, from those of his own childhood to others throughout his long life. We see a range of artistic styles from full colour images to pen-and-ink personal Christmas cards, with cartoons, drawings and watercolours, some featuring the iconic images from the Wind in the Willows (the snow in the Wild Wood…) and Winnie-the-Pooh (Pooh and Piglet from The House at Pooh Corner). Many of the images have not been published for over fifty years.

JAMES CAMPBELL

Biography

James Campbell has a BA in History and an MA in the History of Art and a particular interest in the work of the artist, illustrator and cartoonist E H Shepard (1879-1976). He has been lecturing for over twenty years, and has lectured across the UK and overseas to Literary Festivals, Art Societies, military museums, and to private clubs and community groups. He has been a Trustee of the E H Shepard Estate since 2010, as was involved in the ground-breaking Victoria and Albert Museum 2017 Exhibition marking the 90th birthday of Winnie-the-Pooh. His books Shepard’s War and The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh were published in 2015 and 2017 respectively. His new joint biography of A A Milne and E H Shepard - The Men Who Created Winne-the-Pooh: The Lives of A A Milne and E H Shepard - commissioned for the centenary of the Winnie-the-Pooh books was published in September 2025 by Michael O'Mara Books.  

‘THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEN AND NOW’

What is the Bayeux Tapestry really all about? A power struggle, dynastic rivalries, broken promises, diplomatic relations in peril, military prowess and the building of a super power? How was this amazing document in stitch made, when and possibly why? What has been the history of this brilliant but fragile object throughout its life? Its conservation has brought new data to light. How important is this piece of history as an object to foster 'entente-cordiale' and to link nations today? 

HILARY WILLIAMS

Biography

Formerly a curator and Print Room Superintendent at the British Museum, then the Art History Education Officer and Events Manager for Adult Programmes in the Dept of Learning & National Partnerships at the Museum. Now a Visiting Academic in the Asia Dept at the British Museum. Lectures for the Wallace Collection. Founding Artistic Director of The Arts Society of North Kent Evening. Specialist in 17th century art and has published on Rembrandt. Hilary has vast experience of giving gallery talks and of lecturing in museums and galleries. She has led art history tours in UK, Europe, New York and Boston. For the Royal Collection Trust, she has guided Special Interest Private Tours of the State Apartments at Buckingham Palace.

‘ART OF JOHN PIPER’

From cathedrals to churches, cottages to coastlines we are never very far from a place John Piper has painted, written about or undertaken a commission for. One of the most versatile British artists of the twentieth century - painter, designer, stained glass artist, photographer and writer on the arts - a man of many parts.

ALEXANDRA EPPS

Biography

Official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Guildhall Art Gallery. Qualified Guide to the City of London, offering walks, talks and tours about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. Member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association. Co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). Alexandra’s background is in design having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years. BA Saint Martins School of Art, MA London College of Printing.

‘THE ART OF THE MOVIE POSTER’

Movie posters have helped us decide how to spend our hard-earned cinema money for over a century, from the art deco attractions of Metropolis, though the widescreen promises of the mid-century, all the way to the formulaic multiplex offerings of today. Some are timeless works of art, some are downright deceptive, some are startlingly original. And today, some change hands for half a million pounds. Join lecturer Christopher Budd to find out what we can learn from a hundred years of movie posters.

CHRISTOPHER BUDD

Biography

Christopher Budd is a writer, teacher, and musician, with a specialism in music for film. His research interests range from silent cinema to electronic music via Hollywood from the studio system to the experimental ’70s, and British and European film and music of the 1960s and 70s, as well as special effects, movie posters, and fashion on film.

He lectures for various community arts and adult learning organisations including The WEA, U3A, many local groups within the Cambridgeshire Alliance of Lifelong Learners, and further afield including the French and Italian film clubs at the Letchworth Settlement and the Kings Lynn Film Festival.

Christopher has written on diverse topics for publications including EMC Media Magazine, Music Teacher, Classical Music, Bass Guitar Magazine, and US record-collecting bible Goldmine, and contributes regularly to music magazine Shindig!, penning a monthly column on album covers. He also teaches private instrumental lessons and records as a session musician.

SEX AND SUBVERSION – THE TRANSGRESSIVE BRILLIANCE OF C18TH PORTRAITIST ELISABETH LOUISE VIGEE LE BRUN

In 1862, the historians the brothers de Goncourt wrote The Woman of the Eighteenth Century, a book acknowledging the un-enfranchised but nevertheless genuine power of women in that era. In Paris and Versailles, women were pulling strings behind the scenes, influencing society, politics and culture. One historian has called this period in French history the Mundus Muliebris - or Women's World - a state of affairs that some consider one of the triggers for the French Revolution. 

In this 45 minute illustrated lecture, Franny Moyle reveals Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun as not only one of these powerful taste-makers, but also the painter who recorded the 'femmes fortes 'of the ancièn regime in a series of celebratory portraits. Indeed her own self portrait in a Straw Hat, shown in 1783, is a bold inversion of Rubens' painting The Straw Hat. In contrast to the Old Master's depiction of a passive, submissive woman Vigée Le Brun paints herself as a protagonist, the creator and curator of her own image. 

During the 1789 revolution, Vigée Le Brun advocated for women in her powerful Self portrait with her daughter Julie, executed in that year. It is a work that overtly challenges Jacques-Louis David's paintings dedicated to depictions of male glory and duty. Her portrait of the Duchesse d'Orléans, also made in 1789, heralded by critics as a vision of the 'people's princess' and a reflection of the 'gloire of her husband', conceals in plain sight a commentary on men's abuse of women, designed to undermine and contextualise a straight forward interpretation of the work. 

Whilst in exile from France's new revolutionary government, Le Brun began to explore how allegorical and classical figures might be referenced in her portraits of the eminent women she encountered on the Continent.  However she uniquely subverted the traditional associations of classical heroines to provide witty, topical and appropriate commentaries on her sitters and the state of women more generally. Thus the standard depiction of Ariadne as forlorn and distressed, is cast aside by Le Brun in order to show a triumphant Emma Hamilton as a 'Happy Ariadne'. Meanwhile a reference Sappho - more often shown in despair - is rejected in favour of showing Madame de Stäel in a more positive version of the classical poetess - at her lyre, mid-recital. 

Meanwhile in the 1790s Vigée Le Brun extensive record of the women of the Russian aristocracy, shows a group keen to cast off the inhibiting clothes and traditions of the Russian court in order to embrace more liberal sartorial expressions of their desire for greater social freedoms. Taking over from where the women of France's ancién regime left off, the portraits show a group of forward thinking, hopeful and impressive women ready to flourish under the right circumstances. 

FRANNY MOYLE

Biography

Television producer turned author, lecturer and curator, Franny has been called “one of the most gifted living writers of artistic biography”. 

In 2009, Desperate Romantics, her serial biography of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was dramatized for BBC2. She subsequently delivered acclaimed biographies of J M W Turner and Hans Holbein the Younger. Her Biography of Turner was described as 'compelling' by The Economist, 'immaculate' by The Times, and ' exemplary' and 'enthralling' by The Sunday Times. Meanwhile, The King's Painter - her account of the life and times of Holbein the Younger - was a Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2021.  In 2022 Between the Sheets, her revelatory exhibition of Turner’s erotica, drew national attention. Her account of eighteenth-century painters Angelica Kauffman and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was published in 2025. 

Franny has appeared in her capacity as an art historian on TV and is a regular contributor to radio. 

She is a trustee of Turner’s House in Twickenham, and a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. 

She lives between Bristol, London and Nice, France

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEWLYN SCHOOL (1880 – 1910)

Lecturer: Alison Bevan

In the 1880s, the fishing village of Newlyn in the far West of Cornwall became a mecca for rural realist painters, who documented the lives of the local community in their beautiful and moving paintings. This talk will outline the key characteristics of this famous art movement, introducing the ‘father of the Newlyn School’ Stanhope Forbes and his talented wife Elizabeth (nee Armstrong), along with a host of their fellow artists, including Frank Bramley, Walter Langley, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Henry Scott Tuke tales, as well as some of the real-life characters they depicted.

ALISON BEVAN

Biography

Alison Bevan is an acknowledged expert on the Newlyn School, and her book 'The Art of the Newlyn School: Paintings of Cornish Life and Light' is being published by Sansom & Company in October 2026 to accompany a national touring exhibition she has curated.

Since graduating in History of Art from Nottingham University in 1986, Alison Bevan (née Lloyd) has spent her entire career working in public art galleries. Starting out at the Graham Sutherland Gallery in her home county of Pembrokeshire, she then spent ten years organising and curating exhibitions at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, where she honed her broadcast media skills, including presenting a weekly Arts News feature on BBC Radio Wales, 1995-6.

In 1999, Alison took up the role of Director of Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance. It was here that she gained her expertise on the Newlyn and Lamorna artists' colonies (1880-1930), a subject on which has lectured in the UK, USA and France. She raised the profile of this area of art through initiating national and international touring exhibitions, and contributing to numerous publications and television programmes, and in 2013 was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to Cultural Heritage in Cornwall.

From 2013-2024, Alison was Director of the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) – Britain’s only regional Royal Academy of Art: an extraordinary historic institution whose Academicians have included leading figures of the Newlyn School and Bloomsbury Group, and today include Sir Peter Blake, Sir Frank Bowling and Eileen Cooper.

Now based in Chepstow and working as a freelance lecturer, curator and consultant, she is also Chair of Bristol Museums’ Oversight Board; a Fellow of the Museums Association, and an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Bristol.

‘LIFE ON A HARP STRING’ – THE HISTORY, DESIGN AND MUSIC OF THIS UNIQUE INSTRUMENT

A jam-packed hour of information and entertainment. Take a trip with Margaret as she delves into the 5000-year history, development, design, music, and lore of this fascinating instrument. Boasting over 1400 working parts, you will learn how the complex pedal mechanism was introduced and perfected into the instrument played today together with slides of the extraordinary designs as the instrument developed over the centuries. Indulge in the lavishly decorated Rococo harps made for Queen Marie Antoinette, the fashion statement that became associated with the instrument - and listen as Margaret plays her harp for you on this unique musical journey.

MARGARET WATSON

Biography

Margaret studied harp under the late Sidonie Goossens OBE and Sussex harpist Helen Arnold. She holds a Diploma in Music Performance on the harp and is also a Fellow of The Guild of Musicians and Singers. Now one of the busiest harpists in the Southeast, Margaret has played for Royalty, given concerts at National Trust properties, played at City Guildhall, Clarence House, The Garrick Club, The Savoy, Ritz, Dorchester and Hilton Langham Hotels in London, Glyndebourne Opera House, Covent Garden and for many weddings, private parties, group meetings, receptions, launches, corporate, civic and charity functions. Margaret is a very active member of the charity ‘Music in Hospitals and Care’ and gives bedside concerts for patients and mentally or physically disabled people in hospitals, hospices, and specialist care centres and nursing homes. With her very varied repertoire and often resplendent costumes, she has delighted numerous audiences throughout the UK.