Crowds and Clouds of Angels
The Golden Age of the Transatlantic Liner
Digby Hall, Sherborne
Wednesday 4 November 2026
3 pm and 7 pm
At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the domination of shipping routes to and from America that was the golden prize. Here is the fascinating story of how each company positioned itself in the size of liners, the luxurious environments with posters, art, ephemera and the offerings across the Atlantic Ocean either side of the Great War. We look at the breathtaking interiors as portrayed in the Shipbuilder special supplements of the day and the Sales Brochures. What were the reasons for the tragedy of both the Lusitania and Titanic? What art was lost on Titanic? Was it just plain sailing on the Atlantic? Howard Smith’s lectures have a reputation for stunning graphics – this lecture is no exception and also has vintage film of RMS Olympic with the building and launch as well as a glimpse of the First Class dining experience – up to 1933 these were floating luxury hotels for the seriously rich and below decks a cramped one-way ticket for the 12 million immigrants to the States. …the big ship sails on the ally-ally-oh… It then all changed to cruising.
Lecturer: Howard Smith
Born during the Second World War, Howard was educated in Scotland and gained an MA from Trinity College, Dublin. In the 1960s he worked for UK and International advertising agencies before starting his own marketing and print company in Canterbury.. Each lecture lasts an hour and is an in-depth fully researched exploration of extraordinary creativity sometimes in unbelievable circumstances. Because subjects are recent there is a wealth of actual information to support the stories, which are both nostalgic and entertaining. All lectures have trademark stunning illustrations and many contain vintage film clips.
Wednesday 2 September 2026
Wednesday 1 July 2026
In the 1880s, the fishing village of Newlyn in the far West of Cornwall became a mecca for rural realist painters, who documented the lives of the local community in their beautiful and moving paintings. This talk will outline the key characteristics of this famous art movement, introducing the ‘father of the Newlyn School’ Stanhope Forbes and his talented wife Elizabeth (nee Armstrong), along with a host of their fellow artists, including Frank Bramley, Walter Langley, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Henry Scott Tuke tales, as well as some of the real-life characters they depicted.
Wednesday 6 May 2026
David Winpenny
Going with the Flow
the Flow’ looks at all things watery, from ancient oases to Egyptian and Roman gardens, pools in Persian Paradises, cascades in Italian jardini and their progeny in later centuries, fountains from simple spurt to fantastic frolic, formal and informal lakes and ornamental canals, from Dutch influence to modern usage.
The world’s longest cascade is near Naples, while the most lavish is at Peterhof near St Petersburg. the world’s tallest gravity-fed fountain is in a Cotswold garden) while artificial waterfalls also have their place as gardens became more natural in the 18th century.
The formality of canals, influenced both by Louis XIV’s Versailles and by the Dutch, gives way to the irregular shapes of lakes, while in the 21st century we see a return to greater formality, especially in the use of water to offset iconic buildings.
And the talk will have a few surprises. How do crayfish figure in the story of water in gardens? Did suddenly surprising your guests by squirting water at them really make them laugh? Why did Louis XIV need fourteen 38-foot water wheels and 60 staff at Versailles? How does Catherine the Great’s dinner service feature here? And, what do we know about Prior Wilbert’s Waterworks?
Wednesday 1 April 2026
Caroline Petipher
Whenever a major museum is robbed of its treasures, the BBC website reports the event under the heading ‘Entertainment’. The implications of this are more interesting than they at first seem. Art thefts have been a constant presence in the news media since the early decades of the twentieth century and Hollywood and international cinema were not slow to catch on to the general public’s fascination with these dark developments. This talk seeks to draw connections between three strands — the rise of the international art market from 1900, the theft of major works of art from museums and private houses in the twentieth century, and the emergence of cinema as an art form in the early twentieth century. All three can be seen to feed off one another. Criminals noticed the extraordinary prices being paid for masterpieces and responded accordingly, while cinema latched on to these real-life thriller crime narratives, turning art thieves into glamorous anti-heroes such as Thomas Crown. More recently, art collectors have sought ever more secure locations in which to store their art, with freeport warehouses now holding billions of dollars of the world’s masterpieces. This talk traces the connections between some of the most popular art heist movies and the reality of the art market and reveals one or two little-known examples of early ‘art crime cinema.’