The development of the chair in terms of its construction and style from ancient times through to the 19th century and also its use as a symbol of power and authority in courtly ritual. 

Janusz Karczewski-Slowikowski

Janusz is a freelance lecturer and researcher in English furniture history and also an antique dealer.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

The Glasgow Girls, a group of women artists and designers studied and worked in Glasgow at the turn of the twentieth century. They contributed significantly to the development of the ‘Glasgow Style’, a distinctive branch of the Arts Nouveau movement of the same period. Several of the girls contributed work to Suffragette banners and jewellery.

Fra Newbery, Director of Glasgow School of Art during this period, created an environment in which women could study, teach and develop their talents in both design and painting. The work produced by the principal artists is examined in detail. Exquisite embroidery, jewellery, ceramics and book illustrations were crafted by Jessie Newbery, Frances MacDonald, Ann Macbeth and Jessie Marion King, whilst Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, who devised  beautiful gesso panels and lovely interior decor, is finally being given the recognition she deserves as she emerges from under the shadow of her famous husband, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Elaine Hansen

Elaine returns by popular demand. She has a Master’s degree in Education and taught for twenty-seven years. She now splits her year between Italy and Scotland. After taking early retirement she was free to pursue her passion, Art History, which she studied at the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde. She became a guide at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow in 2009 and gives lectures to her fellow guides.

In Italy Elaine researches her Italian lectures and in Glasgow attends seminars relating to her areas of expertise in Scottish Art.  

In 2018 she was made an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society and since then has been in demand for lectures delivered in the UK, in Europe and on cruises in both Italy and Scotland.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

Richard Rogers and Norman Foster are the most celebrated British architects of the last 100 years, building around the world in glass, steel and concrete. When Rogers was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture the citation observed that he was "the rightful heir to the traditions of Wren". And the same could certainly be said of Foster.

The allusion to Wren is startling, but this lecture demonstrates that Wren might very well have recognised Rogers and Foster as kindred spirits.  

Wren transformed the London skyline, he had a restless and brilliantly inquisitive mind, and believed that progressive design would enhance the function of his buildings. All of which (and much more) also applies to Foster and Rogers.

To remind ourselves - Rogers produced buildings such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyds building in London, Foster's portfolio includes the famous Gherkin, the Great Court at the British Museum and an amazing viaduct in southern France.

Brian Stater

Brian Stater lectured at University College London for 25 years, retiring in 2021 as a Senior Teaching Fellow. His principal academic interest lay in the appreciation of architecture and he has a lifelong enthusiasm for photography. He therefore offers lectures to The Arts Society on each of these subjects.

He has written on architecture for a wide range of publications and an exhibition of his own photographs was held at UCL. He is a member of the Association of Historical and Fine Art Photography and he works with a pre-War Leica camera, as used by his great hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many others.

Brian is an engaging and amusing speaker who seeks to entertain as well as inform his audience.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

William Moorcroft (1872 – 1945) was brought up in the back streets of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. He knew tragedy from an early age losing his sister when he was 8, his mother a year later and his father when he was just 12.

Perhaps it was this tragic upbringing that helped develop his strength of character and resilience that saw him establish himself as the most accomplished studio potter of recent times. 

James Smallwood

James has an established and successful lecturing career speaking to gardening and horticultural groups and at Royal Horticultural Society shows and events on a number of gardening topics. He has been a keen collector of Moorcroft pottery for over 30 years and has an extensive collection. These are primarily examples of William Moorcroft’s early work dating back to 1897 and he takes some of these pieces with him to illustrate his talks.

He has been a member of the Moorcroft Collectors’ Club for a number of years and is fortunate to have two former employees of the pottery amongst his friends. He has visited the pottery on a number of occasions and has an in depth knowledge of past and present processes of manufacture. He is in regular contact with Moorcroft and has generously been given access to their archive material. Wherever possible he takes a selection of Moorcroft pieces to display.

A recent lecture was attended by a former member of the board of directors who told James that even they had learned some new information about William Moorcroft. 

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

Born in Bonn in December 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven became one of the greatest and most disruptive figures in the history of classical music.

This talk presents an overview of this brilliant, cantankerous, visionary and astonishingly original composer, someone who tore up the rule book of classical music; visual illustrations include a selection of contemporary portraits, while musical examples are drawn from his genre-busting piano sonatas, quartets and symphonies, and from the revolutionary opera Fidelio. It reveals how Beethoven became a true Romantic artist, or as he preferred to describe himself, a “poet in sound.”

Sandy Burnett

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3.

Combining engaging scholarship with hands-on expertise, he devises and leads cultural holidays all over the world, is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music, is a highly sought after double bassist on the London jazz scene, and was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19 season.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

William McTaggart left his Gaelic homeland of Kintyre for life in Edinburgh but returned time and again to paint the majesty of the sea and the sky, and the lives of the people who remained after the devastation of the Clearances. 

This lecture will look at the rich and varied body of work he created throughout his long life and explore the reasons why he must be seen as one of the towering giants of Scottish art. 

Julia Marwood

Julia has loved looking at art since discovering the work of Gustav Klimt while teaching English in Austria as part of her German degree course at the University of Durham. She spent the first part of her career teaching German, then did a Master’s in Teaching English at the University of Manchester, and went on to teach international students in the city. She became a tour guide at Manchester Art Gallery and knew at once that this was what she really wanted to do, spending every spare moment learning about art history. She eventually left language teaching in 2018 and since then has loved spending all her time sharing her passion for art as a speaker to many different groups.

She became an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society in 2020, specialising in Scottish art from 1880 and the art of Manchester. She and her astronomer husband love to travel around Europe and take every opportunity to visit art galleries wherever they go, but Scotland has always been their favourite destination!

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

This lecture tells the story of the making of the Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs: both the artistry and creativity that they embody, and how their designs link to the history of the last two Romanov Tsars.

Between 1885 and 1916, Carl Fabergé made fifty jewelled eggs – Easter presents from Russia’s last two emperors to their wives. They have become the most famous surviving symbols of the Romanov Empire: both supreme examples of the jeweller’s art and the vulgar playthings of a decadent court. Given almost total artistic freedom, Fabergé and his designers had to conform to only three rules: that each year’s Easter present should be egg-shaped, that it should contain some surprise to amuse or delight its recipient, and that it should be different from any predecessor. The result was a series of creations demonstrating ingenuity and creativity for which there are few parallels in any other field. Their styles range from traditional Russian to Art Nouveau, and their materials from carved hardstone to exquisite enamelled gold. Their maker’s relentless search for novelty also means that they provide a fabulously quirky illustrated history of the decline of the Romanovs. 

Toby Faber wrote Fabergé’s Eggs: One Man’s Masterpieces and the End of an Empire, described by PD James as a ‘fascinating story which combines unique decorative art, contemporary culture, history and the murder of the Romanovs with the excitement of a crime novel’. The lecture is illustrated with pictures of the Romanovs and their palaces, and, of course, with photographs of the eggs themselves.   

Tony Faber

Returning by popular demand, Toby is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has been accredited by The Arts Society since 2012. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. He is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press.

Toby has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; and Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, as well as a novel, Close to the Edge. Of these, only the obvious one is published by the family firm.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

Few people nowadays give more than a second thought to their clocks: practical, sometimes beautiful, devices that form the background noise of our daily lives. But from their introduction in the thirteenth century onwards, clocks have held a variety of philosophical and social meanings. This talk explores the visual and literary uses of the clock, the varied meanings it could hold throughout the ages: as an ominous symbol of oncoming death, but also as a metaphor for the soul, for capitalism, and for the good use of time.

Christina Faraday

Dr Christina Faraday FSA FRHistS is a historian of art and ideas, specialising in Tudor and Stuart Britain and the wider 16th and 17th-century world. She is an Affiliated Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Cambridge, a Trustee of the Walpole Society for British art history, and a BBC New Generation Thinker, appearing regularly on BBC Radio 3 and in other popular media. She is the host of British Art Matters podcast, and from 2020-2025 she was a Research Fellow in History of Art at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. 

She is an experienced lecturer, teaching for the History of Art Department at the University of Cambridge, The Wallace Collection, the National Gallery, London, and for Professional and Continuing Education at Cambridge, where she is Co-Director of the MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture. Her first book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England, was published in 2023 by the Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press. Her latest book, The Story of Tudor Art, was published by Head of Zeus/Bloomsbury in September 2025 and was named a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. 

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive by 7pm to allow time to sign in. Our AGM begins at 7.15pm followed by the lecture at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

Ethiopia is a mysterious and beautiful country steeped in history and legend. Its wonderful people, indomitable of spirit despite their many hardships, live a life that is truly biblical and timeless. Around them are breathtaking landscapes – rugged mountain ranges, beautiful valleys and extraordinary deserts alive with active volcanoes – inhabited by demons and spirits of local legend. Their ancient history too is populated with evocative names – the Queen of Sheba once ruled over large stretches of the north of the country.

Louise Schofield

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. Her book, The Mycenaeans, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects - previously in south-eastern Turkey, Greece and Albania and currently in Ethiopia. And rather wonderfully she has just been appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.

Over the past three years Leslie has visited Venice every February to give a series of lectures on Venetian art, and in that time, he has been fascinated by the many images he has seen of black people in paintings, sculpture and decorative wood carvings and furniture dating from at least the late 15th century and into the 17th. So, now, after much research and on-going continuing visits it is time to share his findings with this lecture on Art, Slavery and Commerce in Venice. 

Leslie Primo

Leslie is an art historian, 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 was published by Thames & Hudson in 2025.

Venue: Trinity Church, High Street, Gosforth, Newcastle NE3 4AG

Time: Please arrive before 7.20pm to allow time to sign in. The lecture begins at 7.30pm. 

Visitors are welcome, for non-members we suggest a donation of £10 per lecture.