Meetings are usually held on the second Tuesday of each month at Ealing Green Church, W5 5QT, with the exception of the November meeting which takes place on the first Tuesday at Twyford School at 6.30 pm.
Please note that any changes to the programme will be notified on our website: www.ealinghistory.org.uk, by email and on local Facebook sites
2026
8 September Ross King, author, ‘The Bookseller of Florence: Illuminating the Renaissance’
Ross King is the award-winning author of books on Italian and French art and history. Among his many books are Brunelleschi’s Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, and Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies. He has also published a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli and The Shortest History of Italy and The Shortest History of Ancient Rome.
The Florentine Renaissance conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings—the dazzling handiwork of the city’s artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of another kind: Florence’s manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers who, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
At the heart of this activity was a remarkable bookseller: Vespasiano da Bisticci, known as ‘the king of the world’s booksellers’. Besides repositories of wisdom by the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, his books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. His clients included popes, kings and princes from all across Europe who wished to burnish their reputations by founding magnificent libraries.
Vespasiano reached the summit of his powers as Europe’s most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention appeared—the printing press—that forever changed how books were produced and knowledge transmitted.
13 October Dr Priya Atwal, Community History Fellow, University of Oxford, ‘The power behind the throne: the women who built Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s kingdom’’
Dr Priya Atwal is the Community History Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she is building a new hub for ethical, innovative community-university partnership projects. Her academic research focuses on the history of empire, monarchy and cultural politics across nineteenth-century Britain and South Asia. Her first book, Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire was published in 2020. Priya works regularly as a historical consultant and actively endeavours to champion inclusive community engagement practice with her research. Her work has been featured in collaborative projects with Historic Royal Palaces, among others; and she makes frequent broadcast appearances, including presenting the BBC Radio 4 series, Lies My Teacher Told Me.
In late-eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power, changing the political map forever. Enter the legendary Maharajah Ranjit Singh, whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout northwestern India into Afghanistan and Tibet.
Dr Priya Atwal shines fresh light on this long-lost kingdom, looking beyond its founding father to restore the queens and princes to the story of this empire’s spectacular rise and fall. She brings to life a self-made ruling family, inventively fusing Sikh, Mughal and European ideas of power, but eventually succumbing to gendered family politics, as the Sikh Empire fell to its great rival in the new India: the British.
3 November Dr Lisa Pine (Institute of Historical Research, Nazi Germany- topic to be agreed, speaking to the sixth-form evening at Twyford CofE High school, W3 9PP, 6.30 pm.
Lisa Pine is Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her main research interests are the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. She was educated at the London School of Economics and was awarded her PhD from the University of London in 1996. She is the author of Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (1997), Hitler’s “National Community”: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany (2007, 2017), Education in Nazi Germany (2010), Debating Genocide (2018) and (with Kees Boterbloem) Soviet and Nazi Posters: Propaganda and Policies (2025). She is the editor of Life and Times in Nazi Germany (2016), The Family in Modern Germany (2020) and Dictatorship and Daily Life in Twentieth-Century Europe (2022). She has also published numerous journal articles and chapters in books on her areas of expertise. She is currently editing a new book Food and Food Policies in European Dictatorships for publication by Bloomsbury Academic. She is co-editor (with Peter C. Caldwell) of the book series German History in Focus (Bloomsbury Academic).
Once Hitler came to power in January 1933, the Nazi Party began a concerted effort to homogenise German society and to bring the population round to an acceptance of National Socialism. The Nazi regime aimed to break down traditional and sectional loyalties (for example, to class, region or confession) and to replace them with a new national consciousness. The most important aspect of Nazi social policy was the attempt to create the Volksgemeinschaft (‘national community’). This talk examines how the Nazi regime did this through propaganda, the creation of the leadership cult, policies aimed at specific groups, especially workers, youth and women. It then discusses excluded groups, especially Jews and ‘Gypsies’ and other sections of society the Nazis considered to be outside the ’national community’.
8 December AGM and Christmas Social
2027
12 January Philip Mansel, author, ‘Louis XIV, Britain and the Battle for Europe, from Ireland to the Ukraine’
Dr Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Middle East. His books include lives of Louis XVIII (1981) and the Prince de Ligne (2003); Dressed to Rule , a study of the politics of clothes (2005); a history of Paris as capital of nineteenth-century Europe, Paris between Empires (2001); and most recently King of the World: the life of Louis XIV (2019), translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch. . He has also written a history of Constantinople (1995); Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (2010); and Aleppo, the Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (2016). He writes for The Spectator, The Art Newspaper, Cornucopia and the Times Literary Supplement. His book Dynasties , a new history of Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser, is scheduled for publication in 2027. Philip Mansel is a founding committee member of the Society for Court Studies www.courtstudies.org and the Levantine Heritage Foundation www. levantineheritage.com.
Philip Mansel recounts Britain’s critical role in the battle to prevent Louis XIV from dominating Europe. William III and Marlborough, as brilliant diplomats as they were generals, maintained Britain’s vital alliances with the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. Both sides wooed Charles XII, King of Sweden, who was fighting Russia for control of Poland and the Ukraine, until his defeat in 1709 at Poltava, near Ukraine’s battlefields today. Court politics, and dynastic issues such as the Spanish and British successions, were crucial. After Marlborough’s dismissal as commander-in-chief in 1711, he planned to lead Dutch and Hanoverian troops to invade England, to secure the Protestant Succession for the future George I, when some of Queen Anne’s Tory ministers secretly supported Louis XIV’s ally the Old Pretender. In the 1713 peace at Utrecht, despite all Marlborough’s victories, Louis XIV kept Spain for the Bourbons: his descendant Philip VI reigns there today. The relations between Louis xiv, William III and Marlborough show Britain’s role at the heart of the diplomatic, dynastic and cultural systems then dominating Europe. The styles of Versailles conquered Britain as well as the rest of Europe. Europe is behind us as well as in front of us.
9 February Professor Emma Griffin, Queen Mary University of London, ‘The British Industrial Revolution and the Making of the Modern World’
Emma is a professor of Modern British History at Queen Mary, University of London, and former President of the Royal Historical Society. She is the author of five books, including Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (Yale University Press, 2013) and (most recently) Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale University Press, 2020). She is currently writing a global history of industrialisation for Penguin Press.
This paper will look at historians’ long fascination with the emergence of modernity. It will ask why the West, Britain in particular, underwent a transition to modern economic growth around the end of the eighteenth century. Using comparative evidence from Britain, France and the US, and with a particular focus on workers, this paper will shed new light on the role of culture in the rise of the modern industrialised world.
9 March Dr Fiona Haarer, King’s College London, ‘The Emperor Constantine’ (title to be confirmed)
13 April Alwyn Turner , Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Literary History-University of Chichester (to be confirmed) ‘The Lambeth Walk: Why Britain rejected extremism in the 1920s and 30s.’
Alwyn Turner is a cultural and political historian, who lectures at the University of Chichester. His books include Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era, A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars and the forthcoming Shakin; All Over: Britain After the War.
At a time when most of Europe was acquiring authoritarian governments, Britain did not. It didn’t even have a substantial party of the far left (as in France) or the far right (as in Belgium). There are multiple reasons for the unusual lack of extremism, many of them political, but this talk will focus on cultural factors, including the roles of the BBC, the British Legion and the British Board of Film Censors.
11 May Professor Lucy Noakes (University of Essex), ‘Mass Observation, memory and the ends of the Second World War in Britain’ (to be confirmed)
‘Lucy Noakes is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and President of the Royal Historical Society. Her research focuses on the experience and memory of the two world wars in Britain and books include Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Manchester University Press: 2020) and The People’s Victory: VE Day through the eyes of those who were there (Atlantic: 2025). She is a keen advocate for the value of history and the humanities to contemporary society.
The Second World War can sometimes feel omnipresent in 21st century Britain. Drawn on by leaders and politicians during the Covid-19 pandemic, and by campaigners to leave the EU, it is also present in films, television, novels, fridge magnets and tea towels. This talk explores the ways that the memory of the conflict have been used, and the reasons for its continuing resonance, before looking back to the words of Mass Observers at the war’s end, to see how it was being remembered in its immediate aftermath.
8 June Professor James Daybell (University of Plymouth) President of the HA, ‘Gender and the Glove in Early Modern England’
Professor James Daybell is the new President of the HA. He is Professor of Early Modern British History at Plymouth University, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has authored and acted as editor for a number of books including: The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635 (2012), Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (2006), and Early Modern Women’s Letter-Writing, 1450-1700 (2001). He is also co-presenter and writer of the Histories of the Unexpected Podcast (with Dr Sam Willis), which is hosted on Dan Snow’s History Hit Network. He has co-authored a number of Histories of the Unexpected books
This talk explores the remarkable power of a seemingly ordinary object in early modern England: the glove. Drawing on a wide range of historical, literary, and material sources, it shows how gloves shaped—and were shaped by—gendered relationships of power in everyday life, politics, and culture. Far from simple accessories, gloves were deeply meaningful objects whose materials, craftsmanship, use, exchange, and later preservation all reveal the complex ways gender and authority operated in the past.
Gloves were made from globally sourced materials, linking English wearers to labouring men and women across Europe and the Americas. Their manufacture involved highly gendered forms of work: men dominated glove?making guilds, while women contributed essential skills in preparing materials, embroidering designs, and creating perfumes. Wearing gloves also carried social significance. In an age when gestures mattered, gloves shaped how men and women interacted—whether through courtship, diplomacy, or displaying status at court. A dropped glove could hint at romance; a glove strike could provoke a duel.
Gloves were also powerful gifts. They circulated between family members, friends, diplomats, and monarchs, often marking loyalty, favour, or remembrance. Queens such as Elizabeth I received elaborately decorated gloves at New Year as signs of political allegiance, while at weddings and funerals gloves became symbols of community and continuity. Women, in particular, used the gifting and bequeathing of gloves to build networks of memory, identity, and care.
Finally, the talk shows how the meanings of gloves changed long after their original use. Once preserved in family collections or museums, they gained new power as historical relics, shaped by curatorial choices and cultural narratives that continue to reflect gendered assumptions. Overall, the glove offers a vivid lens through which to understand how objects can create, express, and preserve gendered power across centuries..
Members (£20 annual fee) and Visitors (£5 per talk) Students free.
Secretary: Philip Woods tel. 0208 579 2174 Email: philipgwoods@outlook.com
For up-to-date details: www.ealinghistory.org.uk