Current programme of talks and visits

Sean Moran  Is a banker by trade with a passion for architecture and history especially when it is connected to Monarchy.

The tale of what are known as the dollar princesses from what is known as the American gilded age in the late 19th Century and the impact some of these extraordinary women had on the family home of the Dukes of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace.

Alan Crooks is a former research life scientist and a retired lecturer and teacher of Chemistry and Biology. Since retiring in 2016 he has been following up a long-standing interest in local history and is thus an Engagement Volunteer at Salisbury Museum, frequently writing for the Museum’s ‘Volunteer Blog’. He is also an active member of Fisherton History Society (Salisbury) and often provides articles for the The Fisherton Informer magazine.

Until very recently (2019) a plaque near the north door of St Thomas’ Church proclaimed that an alchemist once lived in a room above the north porch, “from which he dashed to escape the noxious fumes of his experiments”. Alan has been seeking answers to the questions, who was this alchemist, and when did he live? Did he actually exist?

Desmond Shawe-Taylor was Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures from 2005 until his retirement in 2021; before this he was Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery. As well as publishing extensively, he has been responsible for many exhibitions, in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and elsewhere. In 2018 he co-curated the award-winning exhibition, Charles I; King and Collector, at the Royal Academy.

This lecture will tell the story of the gradual improvement in the art display there over the last four centuries. A venerable old pile was transformed by antiquarianism and Victorian plumbing into a comfortable and Romantic palace, with a distinctive selection of the greatest Old Masters in the Royal Collection.

 John Radcliffe a former BBC producer, maker of historical documentaries and now online Editor for the Kipling Society

An account of Kipling’s many sided works through his many sided life mainly through examples of his poetry and stories.

David Richards is a retired dentist who took an Open University history degree whilst he was still running his practice. He then trained as a West Country tourist guide and now in retirement  offer local  guided tours and talks

The talk examines the 250 years that the friars played a significant part in the daily life of Salisbury before Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries and the total destruction of the friary. To tell their story and their lost friary we look at their European origins and their spread to England

David Childs is the author of several books about the Tudors and Stuarts including ‘Invading America’, the story of the Early British settlements in the New World

The wars between the Indians and the settlers from Chilmark in Virginia and New England in the seventeenth century.

In his new book, New World, Old Wars, David Childs tells the story of the bitter struggle for control over Virginia and New England waged between the settlers and the indigenous people.  The book is a sequel to his Invading America which tells the story of the English arrival in the North America.