
Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Autumn Venue Based Courses
September 2025 ~ December 2025
Britain's Withdrawal from the Middle East in the Post Second World War / Cold War Era
4 Tuesday Evenings
Tutors: Alan Sennett
Tuesday 30th September, 7th, 14th & 21st October 2025
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 am ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £26.00 Members, £30. Non-members
Alan will again try to explain the complexities of the Middle East and its relevance to today by looking at events in the 1950’s. This course will focus on the role of the UK as it comes to terms with losing its Empire and status. There will be a session on the power struggle between Mossaddegh (the nationalist elected Prime Minister) and the Shah which eventually culminated in a US and Uk backed coup that ousted Mossaddegh and restored the Shah’s power.
The second session will look at the ill fated attempt to retake the Suez Canal after nationalisation in 1956 and the consequences for Britain’s role in the area.
The third session will discuss the British withdrawal from the colony of Aden in 1967 after 128 years.
The final session will discuss decolonisation and how this fits into the complexities of the Cold War.

Suezs Blockade
US Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Film Day - Dr Strangelove
Saturday Day School
Tutors: Alan Sennett & Creina Mansfield
Saturday 19th November 2025
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
10.30 am ~ 3.30 pm Fee: £25.00 Members, £32.50. Non-members

From Milkmaids to Moderna - A History of Vaccines
2 Wednesday Evenings
Tutor: Bob Callow
Tuesday 27th September & 4th October 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £13.00 Members, £16.00 Non-members
“In 1796, Edward Jenner (1749~1823) tested the theory that milkmaids who had cowpox seemed to be immune from smallpox. The two diseases were so similar that immunity against one could be transferred to the other. Jenner coined the term ‘vaccination’ for a procedure whereby material from an infected skin lesion was inserted under the skin of a healthy recipient to provide immunity.
The pandemic of coronavirus in 2019 led to intensive efforts to produce a vaccine. Co-operation between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca led to the creation of a vaccine that was relatively cheap and thermally stable. in the USA an alternative vaccine involved the use of messenger RNA (mRNA). Initially it was expensive to make and had to be stored at very low temperature; later it became more stable and more easily stored. mRNA vaccines have a great advantage in being readily adaptable to new strains of pathogen. New mRNA vaccines are now being designed to tackle a widening range of human conditions including cancer.”

ASCOM Prefeitura de Votuporanga, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
"Isams" in Art
3 Thursday Afternoons
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Thursday 20th, 27th November & 4th December 2025
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm?????????????? Fee: £19 Members, £23 Non-members
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My mother said I should have an “Ology” but I disagreed and instead chose History. But I should have chosen Art instead of Lenin, Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin
This set of three lectures will take us on an Alice in Wonderland journey to discover and try to unravel the meaning of Art Styles that glory in the name of “isms”.
In the late nineteenth century with the development of Impressionism is the birth of twentieth century modernism and within this term a whole range of ways of seeing and creating which lay claim to their own idiosyncratic forms.
My father said he could do better with a pot of Dulux and a brush….perhaps I should have had an “ology”……We shall see
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WEEK 1
Impressionism
Cubism
WEEK 2
Futurism
Expressionism
WEEK 3
Constructivism
Abstract expressionism
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Henri Rousseau - A Centennial of Independence
Getty Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons