Programme
Meetings are normally held at the Battle Memorial Hall, generally on the third Thursday of each month at 7.30 pm, but please check the programme as occasionally the venue and day may change.

Painting of a BDHS lecture in progress in the Wynne Room by Chris O’Brian © BDHS
2022-23 Season
To be a soldier: General Murray of Beauport Park
Date: 15 Sept 2022
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
General Murray built Beauport Park between 1763 and 1766, eventually acquiring an estate of 5,000 acres. He was an army officer who had a lengthy career as a colonial administrator and governor of the Province of Quebec and later as Governor of Majorca.
A Lecture by
Brigadier Hugh Willing
Appeasement – was Chamberlain right?
Date: 20 Oct 2022
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
As much a hot topic in the politics of today as in the 1930s. Churchill won the argument and the war – but was Chamberlain right?
Commemoration Lecture dedicated to the memory of Richard Moore to be given by
Prof. Sir Richard Evans
Buckingham Palace
Date: 17 Nov 2022
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
Find out more about the Queen’s residence, which started life as Buckingham House and eventually became the monarch’s London home on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.
A Lecture by
Oliver Everett
Oman & The Frankincense Trade – The Scent of History
Date: 15 Dec 2022
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
Frankincense, the quintessential aroma of Arabia, has long been considered the very essence of luxury and one of the greatest treasures of the ancient world. Indeed, the scent of frankincense still permeates everyday Omani life. I will tell you about its history and why it was once so valuable, more even than gold.
A Lecture by
Brigadier Hugh Willing
Thomas Becket
Date: 19 Jan 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
The son of a small landowner or petty knight, who became a close friend and supporter of King Henry II, and then Archbishop of Canterbury. A spectacular falling out led to his murder and canonisation.
A Lecture by
Imogen Corrigan
The History of the Kent and East Sussex Railway: Then and Now
Date: 16 Feb 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
The first light railway to be constructed, originally from Headcorn to Robertsbridge, with passenger trains running from 1900 to 1954. A short stretch of line opened up again in 1974 and today welcomes around 90,000 passengers each year.
A Lecture by
David Nibloe
The Piltdown Man Hoax
Date: 16 Mar 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
A fraud in which bone fragments were presented as fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts from the beginning, find out about how it was disproved and who was responsible!
A Lecture by
Dr Miles Russell
The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England
Date: 20 Apr 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
A fresh take on the Norman Conquest exploring the lives of the children of the leading Anglo-Saxon families, including the children of Harold Godwinson and his brothers, and the last remaining heirs of the Anglo-Saxon royal line.
A Lecture by
Dr Eleanor Parker
The Resurrection of Tutankhamun
Date: 18 May 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
The discovery of his tomb received worldwide press coverage, and with its 5000 artefacts sparked renewed interest in ancient Egypt. The deaths of a few involved in the discovery also increased interest, having been popularly attributed to the curse of the Pharaohs.
The Springford Memorial Lecture to be given by
Prof. Aidan Dodson
The House of Dudley
Date: 15 Jun 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
Considered by some to be ‘the Borgias of the Tudor Age’, the family included a tax collector of Henry VII, a duke who tried to put his daughter-in-law on the throne and an earl who was the love of Elizabeth I.
A Lecture by
Dr Joanne Paul
Harold, William and the English People
Date: 20 Jul 2023
Start time: 7:30 PM
End time: 9:30 PM
Come and hear the latest from leading historian Professor David Bates!
The Robertson Memorial Lecture to be given by
Prof. David Bates
2022-23 Lecturers
Oliver Everett :
Oliver previously visited the Society about 8 years ago, when he spoke about Windsor Castle. He lectures widely in Britain and abroad including at the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, as well as to Arts Societies in France, Germany, Spain and New Zealand. He is a Librarian Emeritus of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle and wrote the official guidebook to Windsor Castle.
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Professor Sir Richard Evans :
Professor Evans is a British historian of 19th and 20th century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ‘The Third Reich Trilogy’. He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014; was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge until his retirement in 2014; and President of Cambridge’s Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. He was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the 2012 Birthday honours.
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Brigadier Hugh Willing :
Hugh lectures on British Military and Colonial History. He has travelled widely Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Arabia and the Far East both in a military and private capacity. He was a professional soldier for 36 years before retiring in 2007 and served in the Royal Green Jackets and the 2nd KEO Gurkha Rifles in many parts of the world. His final posting was in Oman as the Defence Attache at the British Embassy for 4 years.
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Kevin Newman :
Kevin is an author, tour guide and history events co-ordinator, who is owner of the History Consultancy, All-Inclusive History. The consultancy produces a range of written and online resources for education and history publishers, history-focussed novels for children and adults and presents a wide range of talks, tours and events. He is currently historian-in-residence for the Metropole Hotel in Brighton.
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Imogen Corrigan :
Imogen is an expert in medieval history. Following an army career of nearly twenty years, she graduated from Kent University in 2004 and since then has run a number of lecture/study tours in the UK and Europe, covering 1000 years of history and a geographical area from North Cape to Marrakesh and from Ireland across to Constantinople
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David Nibloe :
David is a Director of The Kent and East Sussex Railway Company Ltd which aims to preserve, restore and operate the whole or parts of the railway from Tenterden in Kent to Robertsbridge in Sussex as a permanent public exhibition and museum, which includes the preservation, display and operation of steam and other locomotives. He spent most of his career at HSBC, his last appointment being as Group Head of Transformation, leading teams across the world delivering HSBC’s highest priority programmes.
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Dr Miles Russell :
Dr Russell is a senior lecturer in pre-historic and Roman Archaeology at Bournemouth University. He has conducted fieldwork across the UK, as well as in Germany, Sicily and Russia. He is currently Director of Fieldwork in the Department, director of Regnum and co-director of the Durotriges Project (both investigating the transition from the Iron Age to Roman period across SE and SW Britain), co-director of Bournemouth University’s archaeological field school, Council for British Archaeology Representative for Dorset and President of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006. His many publications include a book on the Piltdown Man Hoax.
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Dr Eleanor Parker :
Dr Parker is a Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2013 and then held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, researching interpretations of the Danish Conquest in medieval historical writing and teaching at Worcester College. She is especially interested in narratives about the Danes in England, representations of the pre-Conquest past and the intersections between historical writing, fiction and romance. Her recent book ‘The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England’ as selected by The Times as one of the best books of 2022.
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Professor Aidan Dodson :
Professor Dodson is an English Egyptologist and historian who has been Honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol since 2018. He began teaching at the University of Bristol in 1996, also holding the post of Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo in 2013. His primary research interests concern Ancient Egypt, with a particular focus on dynastic history and chronology, tomb architecture, sarcophagus and coffin design, canopic equipment, and the history of Egyptology; he is also an historian of late 19th and early 20th centure navies and has written on the royal tombs of Great Britain. He is author of over 20 books and 300 articles and reviews. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003.
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Dr Joanne Paul :
Dr Paul is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Sussex, which she joined in 2016; a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She was also a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker for 2017 and in 2013 she was awarded the Sir John Neale Prize in Tudor History. Her research treats Early Modern cultural and intellectual history especially themes of rhetoric, counsel and temporality. She has worked on figures including Thomas More, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Hobbes. She has shared her work widely, including with academic and trade presses, popular magazines, blogs and on TV and radio.
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Professor David Bates :
David Bates, President of the Society, is a renowned historian of Britain and France from the 10th to the 13th century. He has written many books, the most recent being a radical revision of William the Conqueror and is currently working on further innovative approaches to the history of northern Europe. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research.
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