Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Autumn Venue Based Courses
September 2022 ~ December 2022
Film Day - Our Man in Havana
Saturday Day School
Tutors: Creina Mansfield & Alan Sennett
Saturday 17th September 2022
Partington Theatre, Henry Street, Glossop, SK13 8BW
10 a.m. ~ 4 p.m. Fee: Members £25, Non-members £32.50
Our Man in Havana (1959, Carol Reed) A film that laughs at the world of spying! M16 recruits a poor vacuum-cleaner salesman called Wormold to be their eyes and ears in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Wormold, like his creator Graham Greene mixes spying and fiction. The 1958 novel was soon adapted for the screen, with Carol Reed (The Third Man) as director and starring Alec Guinness as the spy whose inventions come disturbingly to life. Greene’s tale too – of secret installations in the Cuban mountainside – anticipates the Cuban Missile Crisis. We compare the novel and film, their historical context and narrative devices. Production history, character, narrative and plot are all explored.
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This course has been completed.
Tuesday 27th September & 4th October 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £12.00 Members, £14.00 Non-members
The Rise of Social Media
2 Tuesday Afternoons
Tutor: Georgina Gregory
Two sessions which will cover the development of social media; right to privacy?; ethical issues with some high profile examples; the dark web and the consequences of how people treat each other on social media.
The Popularity of Facebook.com
Tuesday 27th September 2.30 – 4.30pm
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AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA
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In less than a generation, social media has evolved: from direct electronic information exchange, to a virtual gathering place and major retail platform. This session looks at how social media is defined, how it began and how it has affected our lives and the lives of those around us. We will explore how the medium evolved - looking at the earliest attempts to communicate quickly across long distances, as well as the post-war developments which led to contemporary social media and the arrival of the ‘dark web’. The session examines the social impact of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and how practices such as ‘Twitter Bombing’ and ‘Hashtagging’ are changing the nature of communication.
Tuesday 4th October 2.30 – 4.30pm
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THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN A DIGITAL AGE
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In addition to being viewed a basic human right, the right to privacy is a central issue of many mass media ethics cases. More so today with the advent of the internet and social media, where easy access to private information is leading to more opportunities for privacy to be breached. This is of particular importance in relation to rights of celebrities and public figures, most of whom are reliant on the media to further their careers. For years, the tabloid press has made its reputation on "exclusives" involving celebrities' private lives and stars often take out injunctions against the media to prevent indiscretions being revealed. In this session we will examine notions of privacy within a historical context. Through case studies of high profile cases some of the legal considerations pertaining to leading a private life can be explored. We will also consider the complexities of privacy in an age of mass media where it is almost impossible to remain anonymous.
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This course has been completed.
Monarchs, Dictators & Charlatans: God Bless and keep the Czar…. far away from us!
5 Thursday Afternoons
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Thursday 29th September, 6th, 13th, 20th, & 27th October 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £25 Members, £32.50 Non-members
A series of five lectures examining the levers of power and the mind set of those who seek to operate them. The motivation of this Dramatis Personae varies from an innate sense of duty to an all-consuming and narcissistic desire for self-aggrandisement; from glory, pomp and wealth to squalid loss of reputation; the self-sacrifice of the patriot to the selfishness of the tyrant; the poisoned chalice of political life which so often ended in self-destruction or annihilation. Why did they do it?
29th September – Weaponising Art 1440-1640 Henry V11 to Cromwell
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6th October – Send Her Victorious – Boadicea to Elizabeth 11 – Queens Throne in at the deep end.
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13th October – Hubris: A Study of Prime Ministerial Power – The Greasy Pole
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20th October – The “Grate” Dictators – Was it something in the water?
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27th October - School for Scandal – Politicians in a state of disgrace
This course has been completed.
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The Fatal bombing of New Mills & Hayfield
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Frank Pleszak
Tuesday 11th October 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, Non-members £9.00
July 2022 was the 80th anniversary of the fatal bombing of New Mills and Hayfield in which two German bombers also bombed a quarry in Stoney Middleton and machine-gunned Chatsworth House. They had unsuccessfully tried to attack a propeller factory in Bolton but couldn’t find it. They made their getaway over Manchester and Stockport before dropping bombs on the Derbyshire villages of New Mills and Hayfield. They were eventually shot down over Lincolnshire by Spitfires of the most famous Battle of Britain fighter squadron – 303 Polish Squadron.
Springvale Road, Hayfield bomb damage, 1942
This course has been completed.
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‘Man is wolf to man’ in the Tudor Court as personal desires intersect with politics and religion. The King needs a male heir and so wants to annul his twenty year marriage in order to marry Anne Boleyn. The lowly-born Thomas Cromwell is given the task of making this possible, despite opposition from the papacy and the political establishment. How he sets about doing this reshapes England.
It will be advantageous to have read Hilary Mantel’s book Wolf Hall (2009) set in the period 1500-1535. This was the first in Mantel’s trilogy and was followed by Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020)
Wolf Hall~ Thomas Cromwell
Saturday Day School
Tutor: Creina Mansfield & Michael Tunnicliffe
Saturday 15th October 2022
Partington Theatre Clubroom, Henry Street, Glossop, SK13 8BW
10.00 am ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £25 Members, £32.50 Non-members
This course has been completed.
The High Peak Dambuster
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Frank Pleazak
Tuesday 18th, October 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £9.00 Non-members
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A chance discussion with a neighbour turned into an incredible journey of discovery for Frank into what really happened during the most famous of all wartime stories – The Dambusters. Jack Davenport (the uncle of Frank’s neighbour) was one of the Dambusters and served as a flight engineer. He was sadly but mysteriously killed on his way home from the Dams. Though everybody has heard of the Dambusters, in reality most people know very little. What is generally known is based on the 1955 film, and as good as it is, it has lots of inaccuracies and, at the time it was made, some of the details of the raid were still subject to the Official Secrets Act. In the film, Jack’s Lancaster was shown crashing near to the Eder Dam, but in reality it had dropped its ‘Bouncing Bomb’ and managed to fly part of the way home before being shot down as it approached the Dutch border.
Frank will describe Jack’s life and the true derails of what happened on the night of the 16/17th May 1943 when he and 52 of his fellow airmen lost their lives.
This course has been completed.
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
5 Tuesday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
Tuesday 25th October, 1st, 8th, 15th, & 22nd November 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £25 Members, £32.50 Non-members
Truman Capote lived an extraordinary life: his childhood friend, Harper Lee, immortalised him in To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote also became an acclaimed writer, creating a new genre with his ‘nonfiction novel’ In Cold Blood, on which Lee collaborated. Befriended by the rich and famous, he treated their secrets as material for his writing, and paid a heavy price for his perceived betrayal. We shall discuss In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote and Swan Song (2018) by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, which is a fictional account of how Capote ‘blew 1970’s New York society wide open’.
This course has been completed.
Glossop Guild in Conversation With Celia Bonner - former Director/Producer for the BBC
Thursday 3rd November 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £9.00 Non-members
Celia joined the BBC as a Studio Manager straight after leaving university. She moved into production, first in radio and then in television and continued this both as a freelancer and on BBC staff. In BBC Children's TV in Manchester she worked on a variety of programmes such as Umbrella and Chucklevision before moving into adult education programming, where her work included a series on matching beer with food and a trip to Kazakhstan.
To help us organise a varied and balanced conversation with Celia, any questions you may have in advance can be submitted by email to glossopguild@gmail.com ,by post to our Guild Secretary, 4 Cross Cliffe, Glossop, SK13 8PZ. Or by using the button below. We are also looking forward to lots of questions and comments on the night.
This course has been completed.
Mass Extinctions
Thursday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Pete Webb
Thursday 10th November 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £9.00 Non-members
How life on Earth suddenly blossomed out from a very limited range of forms, all with soft bodies, to a wide variety of forms with hard parts in an event called the ‘Cambrian Explosion’. From there we might have expected that life would continue to radiate and diversify. Instead, there were five major events where a large percentage of the forms just simply and suddenly became extinct. Pete Webb will look at those events and their causes and speculate as to the future.
This course has been completed.
The Textile Collection at the Whitworth Art Gallery
Thursday Afternoon Lecture
Tutor: Frances Pritchard - former Curator at the Whitworth
Thursday 17th November 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £9.00 Non-members
Textiles have always had a central role in the collections of the Whitworth since it was founded in 1889. The first acquisitions were Flora and Pomona, which were tapestries designed by William Morris and Edward Burne Jones. They were followed by a large collection of mainly Renaissance-period woven and embroidered fabrics from Italy and Spain, purchased from John Charles Robinson, who had formerly been the superintendent at the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria & Albert Museum). At the last moment, a group of textiles from Egypt was included and subsequently several complete garments from early Christian burials were given by William Flinders Petrie, who is often known as the father of Egyptology in Britain. Throughout the twentieth century the collection grew and the Whitworth now holds one of the foremost collections of world textiles in the UK.
An overview of the collection and some of its highlights will be presented in this talk.
This course has been completed.
Film Music by British Composers
2 Thursday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Tim Mottershead
Thursday 24th November & 1st December 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £12.00 Members, £14.00 Non-members
Tim will present music by two British composers who made a significant contribution in the field of film music. Respectively from the jazz and classical genres, they each wrote a score for the 1960s Harry Palmer series: The Ipcress File and Billion Dollar Brain. The talks will aim to demonstrate the positive contribution the music made to the proceedings, illustrated by both excerpts from the films and live examples played on the piano.
Thursday 24th November
The Music of John Barry – concentrating on his work for the James Bond franchise.
Thursday 1st December
The Music of Richard Rodney Bennett – whose many notable scores include the locally filmed Yanks and the Thomas Hardy classic Far From the Madding Crowd.
This course has been completed.
Winning the War on Terror: An assessment of a Twenty years' conflict
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Tuesday 29th November 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £9.00 Non-members
Twin Towers and attacks in Madrid, Manchester, London, Bali, Paris, and elsewhere; Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; Al-Qaeda and ISIS….. Is the ‘War on Terror’ being won? Indeed, what is ‘terrorism’? After all, yesterday’s ‘freedom fighter’ is tomorrow’s ‘terrorist’ and yesterday’s ‘terrorist’ often becomes today’s ‘statesman’! Perhaps it is time to assess this new – now ageing – conflict. What have been the consequences of this ‘war’ in terms of civil liberties, the extension of state power, and the proliferation of terror groups in international society? Islamist groups have been most prominent in successful attacks, but some recent assessments of terrorist threats within the Western societies have identified Far Right groups as the fastest growing terrorist threat today.
This course has been completed.