Lecturer: Steven Desmond

Hestercombe House and Gardens, Somerset, designed by Edward Lutyens, created by Gertrude Jekyll

In the spring of 1889 the young Edwin Lutyens, later to become the most famous British architect of the 20th century, met the artist-gardener-craftswoman Gertrude Jekyll for the first time at an afternoon tea party in rural Surrey. She was a well-known eccentric, of whom her parents had despaired, and a generation older than the young man who communicated with the world through drawings and elaborate jokes.  Lutyens found in the daunting Miss Jekyll someone who empathised with his big ideas regarding design, detailing and distinctiveness.  She opened social doors to him, and he brought her experiments in garden making onto the national stage. 

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Lecturer: Fenella Bazin

Although the images of the Bayeux Tapestry are so familiar, the stories behind the work are much less known. The account of the Battle of Hastings is only a small part of this extraordinary work.

Lecturer: Peter Medhurst

Famously, every morning of his adult life, Beethoven measured out eactly 60 coffee beans for his breakfast.  A man who is capable of such discipline over a cup of tea can surely apply that exactnes

Lecturer: Dr Geri Parlby

Since the end of the 15th century, when Wynkyn de Worde set up England's first printing press and after 1702, when the first newspaper, the Daily Courant, moved in, the term "Fleet Street" has been

Lecturer: Colin Pink