Category: Art & History

Travel back in time to the years of the Second World War – as you’ve almost certainly never known them before. Author David Ebsworth tells the “stranger than fiction” stories behind his 2021 novel, A Betrayal of Heroes. Tales of Casablanca and Brazzaville, of the Spaniards who fought for Free France, of the 1940s celebrities and…

La Marquise 1884. The oldest car in the world which is still running. Most historians agree that Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot of France was the constructor of the first true automobile. Cugnot’s vehicle was a huge, heavy, steam-powered tricycle, and his model of 1769 was said to have run for 20 minutes at 2.25 miles (3.6 km) per hour while…

In the late 15 th Century, the Spanish Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Ferdinand, used their children to create a complex web of alliances mainly to curtail the power of France.Two of their daughters, Catalina and Juana, became Queens, but neither got to rule for long as they weredeceived by the powerful male members of their…

No Talk today. la Senieta is closed for Fiestas.

Serendipity is a remarkable phenomenon which happens when we come across a fortunate event purely based on chance. In this talk we will look at ten different Eureka moments in history

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun exerted her considerable charm to become the friend, and then official portraitist, of Marie Antoinette.

Pauline Gower was the leader of the Spitfire women, a group of courageous pioneers who took exceptional risks to fly Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancasters to the frontlines of World War II.

We shall take a tour of the Comunidad Valenciana, one of the 17 Autonomous Communities into which Spain is divided; it is made up of three provinces: Valencia, Alicante and Castellón. We’ll visit the three principal cities (the provincial capitals) and we’ll explore a range of other towns and villages across the region, from Orihuela…

Glass is a naturally formed material due to volcanic activity, lightning strikes and meteorite impacts and has been used by man to make tools, jewellery and weapons for many thousands of years. Since it was discovered how to manufacture glass it was first used as a simple decorative material, then to produce elegant containers and…

In this talk, we will look at portraitist John Singer Sargent’s oil paintings, his technique, how he differed from the Impressionists, & how he painted his subjects’ personalities into his pictures. In doing so, we will also look at the scandals that surrounded two of his portraits when they were painted, plus another that only…

Speaker: Ally O’Brien Ally will talk about the history of the Arabian Gulf.  First settlements and why they were there, the ancient city of Dilmun, the Garden of Eden, burial mounds, pearls, oil, Sinbad the Sailor, slavery, spices, Zanzibar, the Portsmouth connection and the shortest war in history.

Sadly, we have far fewer members willing to prepare and offer talks to our members than was the case eight or nine years ago so I thought it excusable to repeat one or two! I first gave this talk approximately six years ago and it was the subject of so many comments that I felt…