Paul Atterbury is a writer, lecturer, curator, historian and broadcaster with an eclectic and wide ranging interest in the art, architecture, design and history of the 19th and 20th centuries.Best known for his thirty years of appearances on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, Paul gives lectures and talks, and has helped to set up and run the Dorchester Literary Festival .By training, a graphic designer and art historian, he also sells paintings . Paul Atterbury is a patron of The Arts Society Sherborne

An independent researcher and historian specialising in Japanese History, Art & Culture, and founded Japan Interlink in 1995 to promote the understanding of Japan in the UK. Suzanne has lectured to a wide range of institutions including universities, museums and adult education groups in the UK and overseas. She taught Japanese History & Culture at Richmond American International University in London for over ten years, lectures for the Arts of Asia course at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, for the British Museum and London Institute Universities, the University of Cape Town, and University of Brighton Art & Design School; has given lecture tours for DARTS in South Africa, ADFAS in Australia and for The Arts Societies in Europe (Spain, Germany, Malta, Belgium). Suzanne has organised exhibitions of Japanese arts and crafts including Kimono exhibitions for demonstration and display. Suzanne has published articles on Japanese culture and contemporary living for various magazines, and published her first book in 2016 titled: Bridges: Anglo-Japanese Cultural Pioneers 1945-2015.

She is working on her second book on Japanese crafts people in Kyoto, and visits Japan regularly to continue her research. She is now based in Sherborne, Dorset and is a member of the TASS committee.

Carole is an experienced guide and lecturer on combined history and art tours in France with 20 years experience. Having lived and worked on a number of river vessels and converted barges there she has used them as a platform from which to research her lectures. She uses art in all it`s guises to explore the characters who shaped France and likes to delve behind the scenes to discover hidden truths. She also acts as a guide for privately owned ancestral homes in her native Chilterns.

Egyptologist who has worked in museums and on excavations in Egypt, but these days mostly lectures. Former Honorary Research Associate at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, and Lecturer in Egyptology at several UK universities. Works at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London. Leads tours to Egypt. Former Director of Bloomsbury Summer School at UCL, Chair of the Friends of the Petrie Museum, and Trustee of the Egypt Exploration Society. Publications include Egypt: gods, myths, religion .

Lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, for the Art Fund, the National Trust, U3A and other organisations, including on Zoom. Lectured for Dulwich Picture Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester and on cruises on behalf of Tate. Previously script-writer for The Living Paintings Trust (Art for the visually-impaired).

Colin Shindler has been lecturing on American and British social and cultural history for over 30 years. He was awarded his PhD at Cambridge University and subsequently lectured on film for their History Faculty between 1998 and 2019 exploring its relationship to modern British and American social and cultural history. He also teaches a variety of adult education courses at Madingley and Higham Hall in Cumbria and has lectured on cruises. Between 1975 and 1999 he pursued a wide – ranging career as a writer and producer in television, radio and film. He won a BAFTA award for his production of A Little Princess. His production of Young Charlie Chaplin was nominated for a US Prime Time Emmy. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Buster and was the producer of various television dramas such as Lovejoy and Wish Me Luck . He has written three novels as well as numerous television scripts and radio plays but regards his greatest cultural contribution as choosing the title music for the police series Juliet Bravo. His most recent radio play to be broadcast on Radio 4 was Leni Goes to Hollywood, about the German film director Leni Riefenstahl. Other radio plays for R4 included How To Be An Internee (about P.G. Wodehouse) and one on Private Eye & The Profumo Affair (Rumours). He is the author of Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches: The Controversial South Africa Cricket Tour of 1970 which was short listed for the MCC/Wisden Cricket Book of the Year in 2021. He is best known for his childhood memoir Manchester United Ruined My Life which was short listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. His other publications include Hollywood Goes To War: Films & American Society 1939 – 1952 and Hollywood in Crisis: Films & American Society1929- 1939. His next book is called Boom!: The Story of a Generation.

A Hons Art History, St Andrew’s University. Over thirty years of lecturing experience to undergraduates, adult groups, and to friends and Patrons of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the RA’s Adult Education Department. Also conducted numerous guided tours, residential trips and focused gallery talks on individual works of art. Specialises in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art – with a particular love of the 1920’s and 1930’s. A permanent career at the Royal academy of Arts for 12 years. Work experience also undertaken at Bonhams, Art Loss Register and National Trust. Now a freelance art consultant and lecturer. Recently curated for the Lansdowne Club.

Peter Ross has a BA in the History of Art, an MA in London History, and a PhD in the cultural history of the early eighteenth century criminal, Jack Sheppard. Until 2023, he was the Principal Librarian at the City of London’s Guildhall Library. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Peter has appeared on television and radio as a consultant on crime in eighteenth century London, the history of English food, and Shakespeare’s First Folio.

Peter’s The Curious Cookbook, Viper Soup, Badger Ham, Stewed Sparrows, and a Hundred more Historic Recipes was published in 2012 by the British Library and subsequently published in the US, China and Taiwan. Peter is currently engaged in writing a book – Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London to  be published by Bodleian Library in May 2026.

Stella Grace Lyons is a freelance Art History lecturer, speaker and writer accredited with The Arts Society. She has lectured across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Malaysia. Stella gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol and her MA in History of Art from the University of Warwick. She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence and three months studying Veneti an art in Venice. In addition, she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H. Cecil studios in Florence, a private atelier that follows a curriculum based on the leading ateliers of nineteenth- century Paris.
Stella runs her own online lectures, Stella Talks, which frequently attract listeners from across five continents, from California to Singapore. Stella is a sought -after lecturer for art societies, travel companies, private members’ clubs in London —such as the RAC, The Hurlingham Club and The Travellers Club —as well as boutique cruise lines. Stella has also lectured for the University of South Wales. She has written about art for several publications, including The Arts Society Magazine, where her feature on Norwegian art was chosen for the cover. Her recent article for the publication explores the work of Swedish painter Anna Boberg. In 2024, she wrote the Introduction for David Griffiths: Portraits, a book about the renowned Welsh portrait painter and chaired an event about Welsh Art for the Penarth Literary Festival 2024. Additionally, she spent many years modelling for the acclaimed Wales -based artist, Harry Holland .

Art historian, Leslie Primo is an author and broadcaster, graduating from Birkbeck, University College, London with an MA in Renaissance studies. He specialises in early Medieval Art and Architecture, Italian Renaissance art, German art in the age of  Reformation, Medici & Patronage, and mythology in the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Leslie lectured at the National Gallery, London for 18 years, and has appeared on the BBC speaking in Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty, and on the Life of Michelangelo, and also presented Turner: Light and Landscape. He was a contributor to the Oxford Companion Guide to Black British History, an art history consultant for the Getty publication, Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art and was published by the Royal Academy Magazine for the Entangled Pasts exhibition, 2023-2024. Leslie’s book, ‘The Foreign Invention of British Art’ is published by Thames & Hudson in 2025 .