Meetings take place at the Uppingham Town Cricket Club, Castle Hill, Leicester Road Uppingham, LE15 9SP at 11am please be seated before then. Coffee will be available from 10.15 with Hugh the Membership Secretary ready at the desk to welcome you as you come in and register New membership year 2026 January 15th 2026 Jacky Klein A Picture a Day': Peggy Guggenheim and the Birth of Mid-Century Modernism This is the story of how the socialite and muse Peggy Guggenheim became one of the greatest collectors in the history of modern art. Friends with the leading cultural figures of her day – including Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Barbara Hepworth, Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Djuna Barnes and Igor Stravinsky – she was photographed by Man Ray and André Kertesz, took advice from Marcel Duchamp and married – among others – the artist Max Ernst. She moved with ease between the social elites of New York and the bohemia of Paris. This talk asks why it was that – seemingly out of the blue – Guggenheim started collecting contemporary art in the 1930s? Peggy Guggenheim Home on the Grand Canal Venice. IslandsEnd. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 February 19th 2026 Emma Johnson Comedy Classical In this hour long talk we look at snippets of the classical cannon from Mozart's A Musical Joke and Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, to Malcolm Arnold's Grand Overture for Three Vacuum Cleaners, a Floor Polisher and Four Rifles, taking in along the way footage of Charlie Chaplin, Dudley Moore and Victor Borge, to uncover the techniques composers use to make us chortle. Emma Johnson is a clarinettist and was a young musician of the year. She joined the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of 15. In 1984, she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year title, performing Crusell's Second Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Bryden Thomson. March 19th 2026 Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff The Art of Laughter Seldom did one country produce so many comical paintings as the Netherlands did during the Dutch Golden Age. People and animals misbehaving, being silly, naughty and laughing out loud can be seen in unprecedented numbers on Dutch Baroque genre paintings. Some of these paintings were visual representations of common sayings or depictions of stock characters in contemporary plays, while others were created as moral lessons. However, the fashion for these type of paintings also coincided with a belief by contemporary doctors that laughing was good for your health, and a boom in the publications of books with jokes and funny poems. Adriaen van de Venne 1604 - 1662 - How Well We Go Together Jane023 Public domain April 16th 2026 Benedict Morrison Caught in the Mousetrap- the theatrical World of Agatha Christie Despite being the longest running play in the history of theatre, The Mousetrap is often treated with critical contempt. It is seen as a tourist attraction rather than serious theatre. This talk challenges this assumption and explores Christie as a theatrical experimenter, an innovator who played as many tricks with theatre audiences as she did with the readers of her novels. It also explores how significant theatrical metaphors recur throughout her fiction. Murder is rarely grizzly, often unrealistic, and always a performance. May 21st 2026 Lydia Bauman Painting the Modern Garden - from Monet to Matisse Monet, perhaps the most important painter of gardens in the history of art, once said that he owed his painting "to flowers". But there were so many other artists who not only created their own gardens, but made them into the subject of their work - among them, Pissarro, Liebermann, Sargent, Sorolla, Tissot, Kandinsky, Klee, Van Gogh, Klimt and Matisse. The modern garden, changed by 19th century innovations such as hybridisation, the use of glasshouses and foreign exploration, was part and parcel of a period of great social change and the changing face of modern cities to which artists responded from the 1860s onwards. June 18th 2026 Christopher Garibaldi Time for Tea - A History of British Teapots and Tea This lecture serves as an introduction to the teapot collection at Norwich Castle Museum which has the largest specialist collection of British ceramic teapots in the world, housed in the Twining Teapot Gallery. It looks at the changing role of tea from its introduction in the 17th century as a fashionable and expensive drink of great exoticism associated with courtly and aristocratic circles through to its eventual position at the centre of the British psyche as the ‘national drink’. This lecture also examines the development of the teapot as it reflects the technological advances and developments of general British ceramic history. 1830s neo-rococo teapot and tea cup ImageChristopher Garibaldi September 17th 2026 Lucrezia Walker Andy Warhol Pioneer of Pop Art, his New York studio, The Factory, was the place to be in the 1960s and ‘70s. Illustrator, printer, filmmaker, manager of rock band The Velvet Underground, founder of Interview magazine, author of numerous books, creator of iconic pop images of Marilyn, Jackie and Elvis, soup can and coke bottle, and coiner of the expression ‘15 minutes of fame’ Warhol’s own fame continues long after his death, as Prince of Pop Art. Andy Warhol with Archie, his pet Dachshund. Jack Mitchell Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 October 15th 2026 Deborah Jenner Monet's French Impressionism: What He Sees is What We Get Monet left behind academic rules and preconceived ideas about art to capture his actual visual experience. He wouldn’t deviate from what he really saw. Indeed the sun’s angle, local weather and tides recorded in his Impression Sunrise provide proof for recent studies to pinpoint the date, time and place it was painted. He wanted the viewers to share what he was seeing and feeling. He limited information to blotches of pure colour - keeping tonalities to a minimum and avoiding all outlines - so that the brain interprets his canvases in a purely emotional way. We distinguish forms and shadows amongst his mosaic of hues thanks to the complementary colours. 100th anniversary of death 5 December 1926. Meadow at Giverny Morning Effect, Claude Monet Public domain November 19th 2026 Will Gilding Pricing Provenance What turns a humble typewriter into an international must have? A scrap of a police charge sheet into something collectors go potty for? Or even a pair of old stockings from a £1 charity shop find to £1,100 at auction? The answer is it comes down to provenance. This lecture will look at the almost incalculable factor of past ownership, and the effects on auction value. Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo "Diego Rivera's SIGNED MoMA Exhibition Shipping/Inventory Contract", 1931, Museum Modern Art NY New Membership year January 21st 2027 Simon Whitehouse Columns, Cabbages and Kings. A Short History of Covent Garden In this lecture, we chart the highs (and lows) of one of London’s most vibrant and fascinating neighbourhoods. We begin with the area’s surprising Saxon origins to its takeover by the monks at Westminster Abbey. Following the Reformation, the area changed hands again and in the early Stuart era the first planned square was developed by the Earls of Bedford and architect Inigo Jones. By 1670, the area was inextricably linked to the theatre and a daily market was established which thrived until 1974. The Royal Opera House, Bow Street frontage, with the statue of Royal Ballerina Katie Pianoff in the foreground, Russ London Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 18 February 2027 Russell Nash The Men Who Made Menswear This lecture tells the story of men's tailoring over the past 200 years, told through the lives of the men who commissioned and created and wore it. Tailors, shirt- makers, hatters and other craftspeople in London’s west end, especially around Savile Row & Jermyn Street have shaped the way men dress since the Regency. How did men such as Beau Brummell, The Duke of Windsor, Tommy Nutter, Montague Burton, Alexander McQueen and John Stephen create their signature looks which influenced the mens fashion? This lecture also looks at the wider cultural shifts since the early 19th century to the present day and how they affected the way that men present themselves. Savile Row- Tailoring at Henry Poole and Co., London, 1944 Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Public domain 18 March 2027 Hilary Williams The Wallace and Frick Collections and their connection with Knole Details later