Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Spring Term Courses
January 2018 ~ April 2018
New Ways to Kill Your Mother : Writers and Their Families ~ 5 Afternoons Course
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
Monday 29th January, 5th, 12, 19th & 26th February 2018
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00pm ~ 4.00pm Fee £32.50 (Member £27.50)
Using Colm Tóibín’s collection of essays, we shall discuss the intricacies of family relationships in literature and writing. From the importance of aunts in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, we shall explore the intimate connection between writers and their families. If there is such an entity as the normal family, would it be an asset or disadvantage to a writer?
​
-
New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families, by Colm Tóibín, published by Viking (2012)
The Great American Song Book ~ 5 Evenings Course
Tutor: Les Berry
Monday 15th, 22nd, 29th January, 5th & 12th February 2018
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30pm ~ 9.30pm Fee £32.50 (Members £27.50)
This course will concentrate on American popular song 1900-1960, the Golden Age of American song-writing. The emphasis will be partly on the songs and partly on the writers and their historical and social setting. This was the music of the urban melting pot with its roots in blues, jazz, vaudeville and Jewish entertainment.
After an introductory week on the roots of American popular song we will spend a week each on Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hart illustrated by a range of different performances and interpretations of the material.
Humboldt's View of the Cosmos ~ 10 Evenings Course
Tutor: Bob Callow
Wednesday January 17th, 24th, 31st, February 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, March 7th, 14th, & 21st. 2018
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop,
SK13 8AR
7.30pm ~ 9.30pm Fee £65 (Members £55)
Alexander von Humboldt (1769~1859) was a tireless explorer, observer and recorder. Admired by Johann von Goethe, Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, his legacy is preserved in the names of places, organisms and global phenomena. He was a pioneer of climatology, geomagnetism, oceanography, plant geography and seismology. Humboldt was a prolific writer who has left us vivid descriptions of his discoveries, travels and insight. These allow us to follow him throughout his long and eventful life and to evaluate his legacy.
Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos
Literary Spy Craft ~ 5 Afternoons Course
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
Monday 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th March & 9th April 2018
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00pm ~ 4.00pm Fee £32.50 (Members £27.50)
A remarkable number of writers have been spies, and the spy novel has developed into a genre of its own; spying seems to hold a particular fascination for writers & readers alike. Over a hundred years after Conrad published The Secret Agent, its themes of anarchism, espionage & terrorism seem as relevant as ever.
We shall study: Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling &
The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad
Genghis Khan and Prester John : Brothers in Faith? ~ 3 Mornings Course
Tutor: Mike Cavanagh
Tuesday 30th, January & 6th & 13th February 2017
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
10.00 am ~ 12.00 noon Fee £20.00 (Members £17.00)
The (Nestorian) Church of the East, based in Mesopotamia, was at the beginning of the 9th century the most widely spread Church on earth, with about 8,000,000 adherents in the Middle East, India, Arabia, Central Asia and China. It was considered heretical by other Christian churches but received support from the Mongols, a number of whom were Christian and were the source of the myth of Prester John. But it was persecuted successively by Zoroastrian Persians, Arabs and by the Ottoman Turks, in the latter case suffering the same fate as the Armenians.
The course will largely confine itself to historical matters, with the very minimum of theology necessary to understand the reasons for its isolation.
Nestorian priests in a procession on Palm Sunday, in a T'ang dynasty wall-painting from a Nestorian church in Khocho, China
The Music of Irving Berlin ~ 2 Evenings Course
Tutor: Claire Sweeney
Irving Berlin
Thursday 22nd February & 1st March 2017
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30pm ~ 9.30pm Fee £16 (Members £14)
The sessions will look at the rags-to-riches life story of Irving Berlin, the man and the music. It will introduce some of his songs and shows, including ballads, comedy songs and musical theatre favourites. There will be opportunities to join in singing (not compulsory) and to discover how a man who could only play the piano in one key and never learned to read music became the personification of American musical theatre.
Forgive Us Our Trespassers ~ Evening Course
Tutor: Roly Smith
Kinder Trespass Walkers 24th April 1932
Thursday 15th, March 2017
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30pm ~ 9.30pm Fee £7 (£9 on the door)
The mass trespass of Kinder Scout was a notable act of wilful trespass by ramblers on 24 April 1932, to highlight the fact that walkers in England and Wales were denied access to areas of open country.
Political and conservation activist Benny Rothman of the Young Communist League of Manchester was one of the leaders of the mass trespass. The mass trespass marked the beginning of a media campaign by The Ramblers' Association, culminating in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which legislates rights to walk on mapped access land. The introduction of this Act was a key promise in the manifesto which brought New Labour to power in 1997.
​
Canned Sunshine - Energy in the Earth ~ 2 Evenings Course
Tutor: Pete Webb
Thursday 25th January 2018 & 1st February 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm Fee £16 (Members £14)
Oil, gas and coal are all derived from plants, where carbon dioxide and water are transformed by the energy of sunlight into hydrocarbon compounds. These two talks look at how oil, gas and coal deposits are formed, and how we locate and exploit them, in effect, how we find and open that “canned sunshine”.
Chevron's oil field in Kern County California
A Very English Art ~ Evening Course
Tutor: Paul Bush
Thursday 18th January 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm Fee £7 (or £9 on the door)
Did you ever wonder exactly what is Grandsire Triples and how it differs from Cambridge Surprise Major?
Seventeenth century England saw the development of a unique art form. We investigate how and why the esoteric art of English bell-ringing began and is still fascinating its many practitioners. Yet after four centuries it has never spread beyond the English speaking world and is very different from bell-ringing in France, Italy and Russia.
The Bell's First Note by JLG Ferris
In his lifetime Charles II was a popular monarch, but he is probably best remembered for his many mistresses and numerous natural children, as well for his love of dogs and horse-racing. He was also, when he put his mind to it, an exceptionally skillful politician, as his defeat of the attempt to exclude his brother James, Duke of York, from the succession to the throne, demonstrates. Charles was much more than a pleasure seeker: he was interested in science, drama, music and sailing. Witty, kind and urbane, he would have favoured a measure of religious toleration, had this proved politically expedient. On his deathbed he endured the ministrations of his doctors with courage, and was finally received into the Catholic Church. He bequeathed a potentially strong monarchy to James II, who proceeded to throw away his inheritance by political ineptitude and misjudgment; which throws Charles II's achievements into greater prominence.
Thursday 8th February 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm Fee £7 (or £9 on the door)
The Merry Monarch Charles II ~ Evening Course
Tutor: John W. Derry
King Charles II
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ~ Film Day School
Tutors: Alan Sennett & Creina Mansfield
Saturday 10th March 2018
Partington Theatre, Henry Street, Glossop
10am ~ 4pm. Fee: £32.50 (Members £25)
A year after he was forced into retirement, ex-spy George Smiley is called back by a Cabinet office official when information comes to him that there may be a Soviet spy, a mole, at the very top of the British secret service. Smiley had been forced out along with Control, the head of spy agency, after a disastrous mission in Hungary where a colleague, Jim Prideaux, was shot. It was also an unhealthy time in the secret service, known affectionately by its members as the Circus, with several senior officers having developed a new source of information in the USSR but refusing to share that person's identity. Smiley agrees to return and in the course of his examination learns that the secret Soviet source has become the mainstay of the service, one that they soon plan to use to get at US intelligence information. Smiley soon realizes that the Soviets have turned the service inside out.
Minoan Civilisation on Crete 3000-1400 BC ~ Evening Course
Tutor: Laura Houseman
Tuesday 20th February 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm. Fee £7 or (£9 on the door)
​
The Minoan civilisation that existed on Bronze Age Crete (ca. 3000-1400 BC), a rich and fascinating culture, has been extensively studied since Knossos was first discovered more than a century ago. This taster session will look to explore key highlights of this captivating culture, including its unique architecture, its stunning wall-paintings, and its socio-religious practices, through to the Theran volcanic eruption and the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.
Minoan Civilization, the palace of Knossos
DNA and Human History ~ Evening Course
Tutor: Terry Brown
A girl goes nose-to-nose with a Neanderthal statue at a museum in Germany.
Thursday 8th March 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street,
Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm. Fee £7 or (£9 On the door)
​
The discovery in 1989 that small amounts of ‘ancient’ DNA are sometimes preserved in skeletons has led to many new insights into human history. These include the ability to identify family relationships between groups of skeletons, as well as new ways of investigating diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy. Ancient DNA has also enabled the genomes of Neanderthals to be studied, showing that there was interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans, which has resulted in us inheriting some Neanderthal genes, with good and bad impacts on our physiology and health.
The Life and Loves of Horatio Nelson ~ Evening Course
Tutor: Ivan Andrew
Thursday 22nd March 2018
​Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7:30pm ~ 9:30pm. Fee £7 or (£9 on the door)
​
Horatio Nelson is well known as the Admiral who defeated the French, and lost his life, at the Battle of Trafalgar. He was not as successful with his love life. The talk will show the 'warts and all' view of Nelson indicating his superb leadership skills as a Naval Commander and his various amusing, and sometimes complicated, love affairs, especially with Lady Hamilton.
Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), before the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
If you prefer to book by post you can download a booking form by clicking the button here.
Would you like to lecture at Glossop Guild?
We are always looking for new stimulating subjects for our courses. If you have experience as a lecturer or are an expert in a specialist subject and think you could help the Guild, please get in touch with us using the contact page.