Afternoon lectures start at 14:30 and evening lectures at 19:00
Tuesday 10 February 2026
Anne Sebba: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz:
A story of Music and Survival
Moving and powerful, this lecture tries to understand how music, the most sublime of all the arts, could possibly play a role in a death camp. It is also a vivid portrait of the women and girls from eleven nations who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz. How could a motley band of young girls overcome differences and little musical knowledge to please the often sadistic Nazi overseers? Where did their instruments come from and how could they play in the cold, constantly hungry with hardly any music at their disposal. That they did demonstrates the triumph of the human spirit to survive.
10 March 2026
Caroline Shenton: National Treasures: Saving London’s Museums and Galleries in the Second World War
This is the gripping and sometimes hilarious story of how a band of heroic curators and eccentric custodians saved our national heritage during our Darkest Hour. As Hitler’s forces gathered on the other side of the Channel to threaten the UK, men and women from London’s national museums, galleries and archives forged extraordinary plans to evacuate their collections to safety. Utilising country houses from Buckinghamshire to Cumbria, tube tunnels, Welsh mines and Wiltshire quarries, a dedicated team of unlikely heroes packed up their greatest treasures in a race against time during the sweltering summer of 1939, dispatching them throughout the country on a series of secret wartime adventures, retold in this talk.
14 April 2026
Roger Askew: “A Boy from Lowestoft”
– The Life and Works of Benjamin Britten
2026 will mark the 50th Anniversary of the death of one of this country’s most original and versatile composers, Benjamin Britten.
This lecture “A Boy From Lowestoft – the Life and Works of Benjamin Britten”, illustrated with musical examples and video, will explore the marvellous work of this multifaceted composer. Works like A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, his opera Peter Grimes and the towering War Requiem have had a profound effect on the cultural life of this country.
12 May 2026
Andrew Prince: The Taste of Splendour: How dining changed the world.
Throughout all of history, eating together has evolved in form, function and purpose. Elaborate rituals were developed, particularly in ancient Persia and Rome, finally culminating in the glittering opulent State Banquets at the courts of Versailles and Imperial St Petersburg. In this talk, Andrew illustrates how these powerful occasions were intended to display the taste, wealth, influence and political power of the host, together with the creation of some of the most beautiful objects ever designed.
9 June 2026
Lucrezia Walker: Piero della Francesca
“The greatest picture in the world” was Aldous Huxley’s description of Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection. It was the memory of this description which in WW2 caused Tony Clark to disobey orders to bomb Piero’s native city of San Sepolcro. David Hockney, who frequently references Piero’s work, admired Mr Clark’s decision. Mathematician, geometrician, painter, Piero was one of the greatest artists of the 15th-century. His work is both serene and mysterious, and his fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross in Arezzo is one of the most famous of early Renaissance works. Join us to look at his life and work across the city states of quattrocento Italy.
Piero della Francesca’s Dream of Constantine
Edinburgh Decorative & Fine Arts Society 