Ealing Historical Association

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 handiwork of the city’s artists and architects. But equally important were 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 Vespasiano da Bisticci, known as ‘the king of the world’s booksellers’. His books were copied by talented scribes, illuminated by miniaturists and prized by popes, kings and princes across Europe. The lecture also considers the arrival of the printing press and the transformation of knowledge that followed.

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 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. She also works as a historical consultant and has collaborated with Historic Royal Palaces, among others.

In late eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power. Enter Maharajah Ranjit Singh, whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout north-western India into Afghanistan and Tibet.

Dr Atwal shines fresh light on this long-lost kingdom, looking beyond its founding father to restore the queens and princes to the story of the empire’s rise and fall. She traces a self-made ruling family shaped by Sikh, Mughal and European ideas of power, before the empire succumbed to gendered family politics and British expansion.

Lisa Pine is a Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her main research interests are the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

She is the author of several books on Nazi Germany, including Nazi Family Policy, 1933–1945, Hitler’s “National Community”: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany, and Education in Nazi Germany.

Once Hitler came to power in January 1933, the Nazi Party began a concerted effort to homogenise German society and bring the population round to an acceptance of National Socialism. The regime aimed to break down traditional and sectional loyalties and replace them with a new national consciousness.

This lecture examines the Nazi concept of the Volksgemeinschaft and explores how the regime sought to achieve it through propaganda, the leadership cult and policies directed at workers, young people and women. It also considers those excluded from the ‘national community’, including Jews, Roma and Sinti, and other persecuted groups.

Dr Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Middle East. His books include biographies of Louis XVIII and the Prince de Ligne, as well as King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV.

He has also written Constantinople, Levant, and Aleppo, and writes for The Spectator, The Art Newspaper, Cornucopia and the Times Literary Supplement.

Philip Mansel recounts Britain’s critical role in the struggle to prevent Louis XIV from dominating Europe. William III and the Duke of Marlborough maintained Britain’s alliances with the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire.

The lecture also follows court politics, dynastic questions and the wider European balance of power, showing how Louis XIV, William III and Marlborough reveal Britain’s central place within the diplomatic and cultural systems that shaped Europe.

Emma Griffin is Professor of Modern British History at Queen Mary University of London and former President of the Royal Historical Society. She is the author of several books, including Liberty’s Dawn and Bread Winner.

She is currently writing a global history of industrialisation for Penguin Press.

This lecture explores historians’ fascination with the emergence of modernity, asking why the West—and Britain in particular—underwent a transition to sustained economic growth towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Drawing on comparative evidence from Britain, France and the United States, and focusing particularly on the experiences of working people, Professor Griffin offers fresh insights into the cultural forces that helped shape the rise of the modern industrialised world.

Dr Fiona Haarer is a Lecturer at King’s College London. She studied Classics at the University of Oxford before completing an MPhil and DPhil in Byzantine Studies.

She is the author of Anastasius I: Politics and Empire in the Late Roman World and Justinian: Empire and Society in the Sixth Century, as well as numerous articles on the fifth and sixth centuries.

This lecture traces the extraordinary life of Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian. Her early life in the theatre was described in sensational terms by Procopius in his Secret History.

As empress, she exercised considerable influence over Justinian, played an important role in shaping Church policy and social reform, and was commemorated throughout the Byzantine world.

Alwyn Turner is a cultural and political historian who lectures at the University of Chichester. His books include Little Englanders, A Shell-Shocked Nation, and the forthcoming Shakin’ All Over.

At a time when much of Europe embraced authoritarian governments, Britain followed a different path. It developed neither a substantial far-left movement comparable to France nor a significant far-right movement like those elsewhere on the continent.

This lecture explores the cultural factors behind Britain’s rejection of political extremism during the 1920s and 1930s, including the influence of the BBC, the British Legion and the British Board of Film Censors.

Professor 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.

Her books include Dying for the Nation and The People’s Victory: VE Day Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There.

The Second World War can sometimes feel omnipresent in twenty-first-century Britain. Drawn upon by political leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic and by campaigners during the Brexit debate, it continues to shape films, television, novels and popular culture.

This lecture explores how the memory of the conflict has been used, why it continues to resonate so strongly, and how it was remembered in its immediate aftermath through the words of the Mass Observation writers at the end of the war.

Professor James Daybell is Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Plymouth, President of the Historical Association, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

He has authored and edited numerous books, and is also the co-presenter and writer of the Histories of the Unexpected podcast with Dr Sam Willis.

This lecture 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.

Gloves were gifts, symbols of loyalty and remembrance, and objects that later acquired new meanings in family collections and museums. The glove provides a vivid lens through which to understand how objects can create, express and preserve gendered power across centuries.