Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Autumn Programme of
Venue Based Courses
September 2023 ~ November 2023
The courses below have been completed and are here for reference purposes only.
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Click here to see our current courses.
Between the Dole & Subsidised Shipping
2 Tuesday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Birgitta Hoffman
Tuesday 26th September & 3rd October 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm
Fee: £12 Members, Non-members £14
Rome is one of the few pre-modern states that attempted to create a working logistics system of a city of over a million inhabitants. This was not out of a feeling of charity, but because food shortages translated straight into political unrest in the capital, which endangered the ruling families. So, instead they created on the one hand a carefully monitored dole system that provided 1,000,000 male Roman citizens with grain (and later oil and ham) on a monthly basis. The system continued in place for 400 years. In addition to this they also created a public/private partnership that allowed huge amounts of subsidised grain to be brought from Egypt, North Africa and Sicily to Rome where it was stored and released bit by bit as the need arose, creating a guaranteed affordable food staple that was always available. Organising this is a gargantuan task involving specialised harbours, warehouse districts on both sides of the Mediterranean, canal building, ship insurance, as well as a large number of staff who were trained to ensure that things didn’t go wrong.
Our tutor, Birgitta, will present this system and help us compare it with modern logistics systems and recent experiences of empty shelves and how resilient a system has to be to work like that – in the absence of trains and lorries.
The Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana, a horreum in Ostia built c. 145-150 AD
© Sailko, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The Art of Walking in Glossop & Beyond
Thursday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Morag Rose
Thursday 28th September 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: £6 Members, Non-members £9
Morag Rose is a walking artist, activist and academic based in Manchester. In 2006 she founded psychogeographical collective The LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement), whose manifesto states “our city is wonderful and made for more than shopping. The streets belong to everyone”. Morag facilitates free monthly communal wanders across Greater Manchester, together with a portfolio of creative working tours. With the ‘Our Irwell’ campaign, she helped save a public towpath along the River Irwell from being diverted through a hotel lobby. Morag is also a human geography lecturer at the University of Liverpool and was part of the research team for Walking Publics/Walking Art: walking, wellbeing and community during Covid-19. She has published, performed, and exhibited her work widely.
In this talk Morag will share how walking can be more than pedestrian and be transformed into an artistic, political, community building and radical act. You will meet poets, performance artists and revolutionaries as we wander through creative walking and explore exactly what psychogeography is. Together we will roam around the world, but there will also be a local focus, as last year Morag was an artist in residence at George Street Community Bookshop, where she produced a People’s Tour of Glossop.
Artist Designed Textiles in the 20th Century
Tuesday Afternoon Lecture
Tutor: Frances Pritchard
Tuesday 10th October 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR 2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm
Fee: £6.00 Members, Non-members £9.00
Artists have often been involved in the design of textiles, whether it was the cartoon for a tapestry or embroidery or the making of the end product. During the twentieth century art-school trained people sometimes went on to set up their own textile workshops but more often they received commissions for designs to be woven or printed. The former included mainly women, for example Phyllis Barron, Dorothy Larcher and Enid Marx, while Paul Nash, Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, John Piper, Eduardo Paolozzi, Elizabeth Frink, as well as Henri Matisse, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Victor Vasarely are among the latter. British firms that specialised in these commissions for commercial sale were Ascher, which produced limited edition scarves immediately after World War II, Edinburgh Weavers and David Whitehead Ltd.
This presentation will focus on artist-designed textiles in the collection of the Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
English: Drawing, Textile Design: Menuett (Minuet), designed 1920–21
George Gissing's: New Grub Street (1891)
3 Thursday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
Thursday 5th, 12th &19th October 2023
Glossop Labour Club, Chapel Street, Glossop, SK13 8AT 1.30 pm ~ 3.30 pm
Fee: £15.00 Members, Non-members £20.00
This novel captures a moment in British social history. George Gissing, who Chesterton described as a genius, gives the reader a unique insight into the massive upheaval in the publishing industry towards the end of the nineteenth century. His protagonist, Edwin Reardon, struggles to hold on to his ideals as he makes a living as a hack-writer. Reardon, and his more worldly friend, Jasper Milvain, might seem familiar to listeners of Radio 4.
A Moment of Madness: Dada & Surrealism
2 Tuesday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Tuesday 17th October & 24th October 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm
Fee: £12 Members, Non-members £14
Grand opening of the first Dada exhibition, Berlin, 5 June 1920.
The central figure hanging from the ceiling was an effigy of a German officer with a pigs head. From left to right: Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch (sitting), Otto Burchard, Johannes Baader, Wieland Herzfelde, Margarete Herzfelde, Dr. Oz (Otto Schmalhausen), George Grosz and John Heartfield.
At the end of the 19th Century new manifestations of Art and completely new ways of looking at the world developed. Dadaism, associated with madness, riotous behaviour and anarchy, was in fact highly structured and carefully conceived. In Paris, a group led by Andre Breton also established the more than real, the subconscious imagination ….the Surreal. A whole range of Avant Garde artists started to produce images of waking dreams, melting clocks, and contradictory images, that amused, confounded and shocked the viewers. The names of Magritte, Dali, and Man Ray became synonymous with the bold and daring and very soon the unmentionable and unspeakable became the collectable, especially amongst wealthy socialites like Peggy Guggenheim. This is not a pipe!
The English Civil War & the people living through it.
Thursday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Tim Cockitt
Thursday 26th October 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30p m ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: £6.00 Members, Non-members £9.00
In this presentation, Tim Cockitt will talk about what it was like for ordinary people to live through the English Civil War (the War of 3 Kingdoms), combined with the story of one of the most famous participants, Oliver Cromwell, who began as a minor noble, and became Lord Protector.
Bess of Hardwick & the Devonshires of Chatsworth
Tuesday Morning Lecture
Tutor: Judith Wilshaw
Tuesday 31st October 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 10.00 am ~ 12.00 pm
Fee: Members £6 , Non-members £9
Four times married, Bess of Hardwick outlived every husband, growing richer all the time. She and husband two, William Cavendish founded a dynasty by the knack of ensuring their offspring married the right heiresses to increase their wealth and real estate. This talk will explore the interactions of the Cavendishes with the Spencers, Lascelles, Mitfords, Macmillans, and the sister of President Kennedy, and will explain how they gained land and property in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Ireland, Eastbourne, and London, among other places. Not forgetting a little excursion into the wonders and beauties of our nearest and best stately home: Chatsworth House.
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Entrance Hall, Chatsworth House - Derbyshire, England.
Bess of Hardwick
The Life & Work of Marie Curie
4 Thursday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Bob Callow
Thursday 2nd, 9th, 16th & 23rd November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm
Fee: Members £20 , Non-members £26
Marie Curie, pioneer of nuclear physics and radiotherapy, was born Marya Sklodowska in Warsaw in 1867. Despite Russian suppression of the Polish language, ‘Manya’ received a good education and escaped to the Sorbonne, where she studied Physics and Mathematics, graduating at the top of her year. Her partnership with Pièrre Curie led to the discovery of the radioactive elements radium and polonium. During the first world war, Marie set up 200 X–ray stations on the western front, installing trained technicians as well as equipment. After the war, radiotherapy was increasingly used to treat cancer. As her fame spread, research centres and specialist hospitals were set up in Paris, Manchester, Warsaw and eventually around the world.
Week 1 - Over & under the rainbow
Week 2 - Elements, old & new
Week 3 - X-ray stations on the Western Front
Week 4 - Combatting cancer & celebrity
The Act of Union (1707) : The End of an Auld Song
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Tuesday 7th November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: Members £6 , Non-members £9
The Union of Scotland and England was not popular. In Scotland 'we were bought and sold for English gold.’ (Robert Burns, 1791) and in England there was considerable opposition, especially to its cost and the ‘privileged’ position of Scotland in parliament. The Act of Union remains a live issue in Scottish politics: the Scottish Independence Referendum (2014) and the continuing campaign in Scotland for it to leave the United Kingdom are its most recent manifestations.
The last act. On March 25, 1707, the Scottish Parliament voted to end its own existence. The Honors, the Scottish Crown Jewels, Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.
© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
A Nation Made Anew: The Hanoverians (1714-1783)
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Tuesday 14th November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: Members £6 , Non-members £9
The Britain of 1714 and the Britain of 1783 were only a few decades apart. Within one lifetime there was an acceleration in almost every aspect of life: social, economic, political, cultural. Britain was transformed at home and abroad, at a speed unheard of in human history. Yes, in many ways, the Britain of 1783 was a nation made a-new … the consequences of which we are still living with.
© Thomas Rowlandson, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Film Day - Denial
Saturday Day School
Tutors: Creina Mansfield & Alan Sennett
Saturday 18th November 2023
Partington Theatre, Henry Street,
Glossop, SK13 8BW
10.00 a.m. ~ 4.00 p.m.
Fee: Members £25, Non-members £32.50
An American professor of Holocaust studies has her speaking arrangement disrupted by David Irving, a writer on Nazi Germany. He files a libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom against her and her publisher for declaring him a Holocaust denier in her books. In the English legal system, the burden of proof is on the accused, therefore it was up to Lipstadt and her legal team to prove the essential truth that the Holocaust occurred.
The Incredible, but Little-Known World of HoneyBees: A Beekeeper's Story
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Frank Pleszak
Tuesday 21st November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: £6 Members, Non-members £9
Most of us are aware of how important bees and other pollinating insects are to our wellbeing, but few of us know much, if anything, about the complex life of the honeybee and all the products they can provide us with.
Frank’s talk will give an insight into this little known but incredible and fascinating world together with his experiences as a beekeeper.
© Creative_Commons_license.htm
Glossop Guild in Conversation with James Ellson - Retired Police Officer
Tuesday 28th November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: Members £6 , Non-members £9
James Ellson was a police officer for 15 years, starting in London and finishing as a Detective Inspector at Moss Side in Manchester.
He now wears three hats: writer, smallholder, and speaker.
His debut novel The Trail was published in 2020, the sequel Cold Dawn in 2022. James also teaches online short story and creative writing courses.
He lives in the Peak District with his wife, and manages their smallholding, which includes bees and an orchard.
To help us organise a varied and balanced conversation with James, any questions you may have in advance, can be sent by email to glossopguild@gmail.com by post to our Guild Secretary, 4 Cross Cliffe, Glossop SK13 8PZ or direct from this website using the button below. Of course, we are expecting you to have lots of questions and comments on the night too.
Bah Humbug - Christmas comes but once a year - a Study in Politics, Literature and Art
Thursday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Thursday 30th November 2023
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR 7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm
Fee: Members £6 , Non-members £9
Bah, humbug! Slogans on the Christmas tree at Wessex Place in Magrath Avenue, Cambridge.
This specialist residential home for frail elderly people with mental health problems was threatened with closure in 2009.
This lecture will consider the Christmas story from its religious origins to its absorption into the annual festival that sometimes detaches itself from its spiritual content and merges into a Facebook social media Fest in which hedonism outweighs the original message.
We will trace the way in which politicians have used the date to their own advantage and seek to understand why it is variously banned or promoted as political strategy.
Is the celebration of Christmas a nineteenth century fable or a twenty-first century consumer driven nightmare?
Artists and writers have portrayed the season of goodwill according to their whims and in some cases left us with indelible childhood memories of roaring fires, laughing families with faces illuminated by the candlelight, and delighted by the groaning table of excess surrounding a larger-than-life turkey.
Things have happened at Christmas and sometimes Christmas has been cancelled or been demoted, but it returns every year drawing in the believer and unbeliever alike.
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God Bless us one and all!……will the real Xmas please stand up!
© James Yardley, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons