10th December 2026
Dr Geri Parlby
Why do we bring a tree into our homes at Christmas? How did Santa become the patron saint of pawnbrokers and what has a snake got to do with it all? The truth about some of our Christmas traditions may surprise you.
Geri's first career was as a journalist working on a variety of Fleet Street newspapers before moving into entertainment PR. In the 1980s she was head of Press for United International Pictures the distribution arm of Paramount, Universal, MGM & UA studios. She then ran her own PR agency specially in film and video PR until retiring in the early 1990s to start a family.Having grown tired of too many verses of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ she decided to go back to school. She then went on to gain a first-class honours degree in History and Theology from Surrey University, a Masters in History of Art with distinction from the Courtauld Institute and a Theology PhD from the University of Roehampton. The subject of her PhD thesis was the early iconography of the Virgin Mary.
She has taught at the Universities of Exeter, Plymouth and Roehampton where she is an honorary research fellow. She also runs regular courses for the Arts Society South West Area and the Devon Archaeological Society, as well as travelling all over the UK and internationally as an accredited Arts Society Lecturer.
She would describe herself as a rather idiosyncratic art historian who studies history through art rather than the history of art and her lecture topics reflect the diversity of her interests. She gives talks on everything from prehistoric art through to the history of medicine in art, the story of the birth of Fleet Street, the art of propaganda and fake news and the early days of the film industry, with a bevy of other topics in between.
