Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Spring Programme of
Venue Based Courses
January 2022 ~ March 2022
Stories from Three Twenty-First Century Writers
3 Tuesday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
Tuesday 18th, 25th January & 1st February 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £15.00 Members, £20.00 Non-members
We shall look at three novels, written by women writers about remarkable women - or perhaps we should say, women in remarkable situations:-
Tuesday 18th January – The Long Song (2010) by Andrea Levi
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The first to be discussed is the late Andrea Levi’s final novel, ending her impressive but too short career as a novelist who brought alive the experience of women of colour.
Tuesday 25th January – We are Completely Beside Ourselves (2013) by Karen Joy Fowler
The second novel is about someone with two missing siblings, although this description does not convey the extraordinary nature of her loss.
Tuesday 1st February – Girl, Woman, Other (2019) by Bernadine Evaristo
The third and final choice is a bold exploration of gender in modern Britain, written with verve and daring.
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This course has been completed.
New Views on the Universe
3 Wednesday Morning Lectures
Tutor: Ian Morison
Wednesday 19th, 26th January & 2nd February 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
10.0am ~ 12.00 pm Fee: £15.00 Members £20.00 Non-members
A series of lectures covering some of the latest discoveries about our Universe including the imaging of a Black Hole, how we now think that cataclysmic explosions such as Neutron Stars merge to produce the gold, silver and other heavy elements that have helped form our planet and how we have learnt about our Milky Way Galaxy and its place in time and space.
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This course has been cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control. We hope to re-schedule later in the year.
Black hole devours a neutron star. Dana Berry/NASA
Disease & the Balance of Power in World Affairs
Wednesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Wednesday 9th, February 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, Non-members £7.00
The Plague in Athens (429BC); The Great Plague of the 160s AD; ‘The Plague of Justinian’ in the Byzantine empire (541-2AD); the Black Death (1347-51); the Cholera pandemics in the 19th century; ‘Spanish Flu’ (1918-19), all have had a major impact on the development of power politics and society in their turn. How does the COVID19 pandemic fit into this pattern and can anything be learnt from these previous pandemics? What are the consequences for the contemporary global balance of power?
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This course has been completed.
DNA and Human History
Tuesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Terry Brown
Tuesday 15th, February 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £7.00 Non-members
DNA preserved in bones and other types of human remains provides a record of our history. Using this ‘ancient’ DNA we can study the relationships between individuals and groups of people in the past, so far back that it is even possible to study extinct types of human such as Neanderthals. Human remains also contain a record of past diseases in the form of DNA from bacteria and viruses. We will look at how ancient DNA has been used in three areas of biological archaeology. First, in identifying family relationships in ancient Egypt, in particular between ‘ the mummy brothers’ of Manchester Museum. Second, how ancient DNA has revealed that humans interbred with Neanderthals, and how the Neanderthal DNA present in our chromosomes affects our biological characteristics. Finally we will look at how studies of DNA in old pathology samples and in permafrost bodies have revealed some of the reasons for the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was responsible for 50 times more deaths than Covid.
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This course has been completed.
DNA animation By Zephyris, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2118354
The Strange Case of British Art: Characters in Search of an Author - 1900-1951
Saturday Day School
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Saturday 12th February 2022
The Masonic Hall, 14 Henry Street,
Glossop. SK13 8BW
10.00 am ~ 4.00 pm
Fee: Members £25.00, Non-members £32.50
Roger Fry
Roland Vivian Pitchforth 1895-1982
Military training 1943
Part 1 - “A Crisis of Brilliance” – The Slade School & the Cutting Edge
Part 2 - “In Which We Serve” – the First & Second World
Wars
Part 3 - “Town & Country” – Interwar from Hampstead to Newlyn – ba ba Bauhaus
Part 4 - Post War Austerity Art – Figurative versus
Abstraction & a Festival of Britain
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The period from the turn of the century until the Festival of Britain represents a dramatic leap forward in developments in artistic movements in which various “groups” come together to experiment and push forward the boundaries of innovation.
There is tension between what can be described as essentially British Art and the invasion and impact of the European developments which were either influential or rejected as “not wanted on voyage” by critics and patrons alike. This was exemplified in 1910 by Roger Fry’s curated Post-Impressionist Exhibition. The reaction was both bitter and personal, “kind people called him mad, and reminded others that his wife was in an asylum.”
The period before the First World War saw new forms of painting which were fresh and exciting coming from the truly avant garde young painters of the Slade School existing alongside the "cul de sac" development of a British/international art revolution dubbed Vorticism which disappeared in the very vortex of the coming war.
The two world wars produced an unexpected development in the utilisation of art which went beyond propaganda to recording the grim realities of conflict and the social upheavals that affected the civilians on the home front.
It is impossible to avoid the impact that the wars had upon art in the interim period, art both as a reaction to the “war to end all wars” and as a shadow lengthening over the creative world as European artists were vilified and forced to leave their country of origin and flee to Britain and later America. Bauhaus came to Britain hosted by the Modernists of Hampstead, whilst experimentation flourished in other parts of London. The coming conflict induced an evacuation to Cornwall where the relocated art community honed a new form of British Art which would resonate well into the rest of the century.
In an age of austerity, Europe was devastated and Britain was trying to rebuild a new generation of young artists who were caught up in a pursuit for a new sense of direction in which the figurative paintings of predominantly British artists, contrasted and vied with the abstraction of European and American impulses.
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Note: If you booked for this course last term and did not claim a refund your
place is reserved (there is no need to book again).
This course has been completed.
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The New Strategic Triangle in World Affairs
Wednesday Evening Lecture
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Wednesday 16th, February 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £7.00 Non-members
China is on the rise as an economic and increasingly, military superpower. The West, especially the USA as the leading power in the West, has a pervasive sense of decline, a lack of confidence and drive. Russia, with an economy the size of Michigan, strives to act as a political superpower, seeking – successfully –to pursue its objective and wrong-step the West. But is the Russian-Chinese axis little more than the sinking of the former into a dependent relationship with the latter? The future shape of twenty-first century international politics will be shaped by this strategic triangle.
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This course has been completed.
© Mil.ru.
Glossop Guild in Conversation With ~ David Jones, former Editor of the Glossop Chronicle
Tuesday Evening Interview chaired by Mike Webb
Tuesday Evening 1st March 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
7.30 pm ~ 9.30 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £7.00 Non-members
David Jones left Glossop Grammar School at 16 looking for a career in journalism. But it took four years and jobs in a cannery and a print works laboratory before it started. At 20 David joined the Ashton Reporter Group at the Glossop Chronicle, moved to a newspaper in Hyde before returning to the Chronicle as Editor.
David states that he must have covered every possible story. Politics, crime, sport, human interest, the list is endless. In 2017 he received the 02 North West of England Stand Out media award.
To facilitate a varied and balanced conversation, questions should be submitted in advance. You can do so here:-
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or post your question to: The Guild Secretary, 4 Cross Cliffe, Glossop, SK13 8PZ.
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This course has been completed.
Dr John Dee - Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth 1 & Alchemist
Wednesday Afternoon Lecture
Tutor: Tim Cockitt
Dr John Dee was an extraordinary person and possibly the strangest man to ever live in Manchester. He was a very capable academic, and his book collection was considered to be the largest in Britain. His early contributions were in cartography and exploration. He became very famous for his later deep interests in the occult and communications with angels. He was probably involved in intelligence gathering and espionage for the monarch. However as with much of life, we will never know all of the details.
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This course has been completed.
Wednesday 2nd March 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £6.00 Members, £7.00 Non-members
Women & Men: Issues of Time, Identity & Power
3 Tuesday Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Valerie Bryson
Tuesday 8th, 15th and 22nd March 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
2.00 pm ~ 4.00 pm Fee: £15.00 Members, £20.00 Non-members
The course opens with an overview of the situation of women and men in the world today, identifying both progress and ongoing inequalities. Dr Bryson will then focus on the ways in which we use and value time as a way of exploring gender differences in employment, politics and personal and family life.
Tuesday 8th March
Tuesday 15th March
While some experiences are widely shared, neither ‘women’ nor ‘men’ are uniform groups. The second session explores a series of interconnected questions around differences amongst women and what is actually means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’.
It includes a discussion of disputes around the rights of trans women.
<a href='https://www.freepik.com/vectors/people'>People vector created by pikisuperstar - www.freepik.com</a>
Tuesday 22nd March
The final session focuses on what is often described as an ‘epidemic’ of male violence against women. It relates this to broader questions of male power and asks what can be done – by men as well as women – to oppose and end this violence.
This course has been completed.
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Film Day - Empire in the Sun
Saturday Day School
Tutors: Creina Mansfield & Alan Sennett
Saturday 12th March 2022
Partington Theatre, Henry Street, Glossop
10 a.m. ~ 4 p.m. Fee: Members £25, Non-members £32.50
Based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun tells the story of James Graham (Jim), whose privileged life is upturned by the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in December 1941. Separated from his parents, he is eventually captured and taken to Soo Chow confinement camp, next to a captured Chinese airfield. Amidst the sickness and food shortages in the camp, Jim attempts to reconstruct his former life, all the while bringing spirit and dignity to those around him. We will view the film in sections and discuss both the source novel and film, with both placed in the historical context of Shanghai of the 1930s and early 1940s.
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This course has been completed.
Compstall & Cooperation
Wednesday Morning Lecture
Tutor: Judith Wilshaw
Wednesday 23rd March 2022
Bradbury Community Centre, Market Street, Glossop, SK13 8AR
10.00 am ~ 12.00 pm Fees: £6.00 Members, £7.00 Non-member
Compstall lies on the banks of the River Etherow, several miles downstream from the Glossop area, just before its confluence with the River Goyt in Brabyns Park, Marple Bridge. The village didn’t exist until 1820 when the Andrew family built a cotton processing complex to exploit the power of the river. They added the village to provide housing and other necessities for the growing number of mill workers, and started the local Coop too. The mill buildings still stand, and the village is remarkably complete. The story of its development and the people who drove it forward is an engrossing tale, made more compelling because you can go to visit the area and see it for yourself.
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This course has been completed.
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