Life and Times of King William III and Queen Mary II A survey of the Life & Times of Britain’s only Joint Monarchs. They came to power in what was called the Glorious Revolution and although they only reigned a short while they laid the foundations for Modern Britain. It was also the period of…
Life and Times of King George II I ran this workshop at Crayford Manor (Bexley College) in November 2002 as part of a series on the Kings and Queens of England. I subsequently ran it at the City Lit in June 2019 and as a zoom class in February 2021. The slides from this are…
Life and Times of King George III I ran this workshop at Crayford Manor (Bexley College) in November 1999 as part of a series on the Kings and Queens of England. I ran a new version at the City Lit on 22 March 2015. I also ran it online during the pandemic on 13th and…
Life and Times of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Queen Victoria was our longest reigning monarch (so far). She gave her name to an Age and her family life set the moral standard that is still referred to today as the ideal. Her family called her “more a pocket-sized Hercules than a pocket-sized Venus” and…
Life and Times of Charles II Known to History as the Merry Monarch, Charles II is perhaps better remembered for his love of life than his politics. However, his reign saw momentous events ranging from the Plague and Great Fire of London to the founding of the Royal Society and the Royal Greenwich Observatory. His…
The first version of this course was about the invasion and settlement of post-Roman Britain by Germanic tribes contrasting the role of Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and archaeology in interpretation. It provided an introduction to the wealth of treasures in the British Museum from burial sites and other archaeological digs in England dating from the…
Handel and Royalty An examination of how closely his music and career was bound up with the British royal family from Queen Anne to George II (course originally run at Crayford Manor to coincide with a workshop on George II). George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) was one of the first composers to make a successful career independent…