Sherborne Historical Society

Upcoming events at Sherborne Historical Society

Sherborne Historical Society is in Cheriton, South. Near Here currently lists 12 upcoming events, including Land of Milk and Paper Money: Swiss Tourism and High Literature at the Turn of the Century, Sir Walter Ralegh at Sherborne by Anna Beer and Networking Nuns. Letters from a Late Medieval German Convent.

Likely freeCommunity

Land of Milk and Paper Money: Swiss Tourism and High Literature at the Turn of the Century

| Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (1924) marks the end of an era and the pinnacle of literature on alpine tourism. Since Thomas Cook’s first package holiday to Switzerland in the mid-nineteenth century especially, the European middle and upper classes were drawn to the Alps: in summer and in winter; for climbing and skiing, health cures and grand hotels, and a very sociable sort of rural retreat. Holiday reading accompanied passengers on the way there, and helped them to pass time spent on a veranda looking out at a rainy day. Books were often written by guests themselves (sometimes in exchange for free board). Publishers soon moved from travel guides to literary landscapes. A lending library at Davos became the lifestyle business of an entrepreneurial tuberculosis patient. Not so much word of mouth as the printed word was now the best marketing strategy – selling weeks of leisurely book-browsing abroad. In this talk, Seán Williams examines world-renowned Swiss hospitality around 1900: the cosmopolitan resort, the boutique hotel off the beaten track, and the commercialization of counter-culture at Monte Verità. He traces how the routes to and from these tourist topographies were built in the mind and on the page, literally changing the scenery and the literary canon forever. |

Thu 24 SeptSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Sir Walter Ralegh at Sherborne by Anna Beer

Anna Beer is a biographer and novelist, primarily driven by her fascination with the relationship between the arts and history. She has, over a twenty-year career, published literary biographies of major figures such as John Milton and William Shakespeare, and a survey of English Literature: Eve Bites Back: An alternative History of English Literature reveals and celebrates the remarkable lives and powerful work of eight women across five centuries. Her academic career, however, was founded on her research into Sir Walter Ralegh and his wife, Bess Throckmorton. Alongside her scholarly publications, she is the author of Bess: the life of Lady Ralegh, a wife to Sir Walter and Patriot or Traitor: the life and death of Sir Walter Ralegh. She has recently swerved genre into crime fiction, but not from her interest in history. Her latest book Death of an Englishman: an Oxford murder mystery (2025) |

Fri 25 SeptSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Don't miss the next one

What's on near Cheriton, South, in your inbox

One email a week with the local stuff worth knowing — before it's already happened.

Sign up for Cheriton, South

Free. Unsubscribe whenever you like.

Community

Networking Nuns. Letters from a Late Medieval German Convent

| How to conduct business, give spiritual advice, and send off a scheming duke while living in enclosure? The 1,800 letters by the Benedictine nuns of Kloster Lüne, written and copied between mid-15th and mid-16th century, give a vivid insight into all aspects of monastic life. The talk will be illustrated by images from the still active North German convents and their astonishing medieval art. More information on the research behind the talk is available via https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/blog/voices-from-the-past

Thu 8 OctSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Lady Anne Clifford: A Medieval Great Lady in the 17th Century

Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery was one of the great and famous figures of British 17th century history. She was the daughter of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland whose estates she eventually inherited on the death of his successor, Henry, the 5th and last Earl in 1643. Thereafter she spent her life like a medieval monarch, making progresses around her vast estates in the north of England and restoring and altering her castles there, and the local churches. In her youth and middle age she had been the chatelaine of Knole in Kent and Wilton House in Wiltshire. The experience she gained there and her court connections enabled her to develop as a significant patron of architecture, painting and sculpture. Highly intelligent, grasping and litigious, she was also kind and generous to those in her power. A vivid picture of her life is provided by her diaries and correspondence. These enable us to get a detailed view of her life and interests in an age when most women, even well-educated ones have faded from view for lack of evidence.

Fri 9 OctSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Mission Timbuktu

In 1826, an intriguing but doomed explorer, Alexander Gordon Laing, became the first Christian to report from Timbuktu, an international quest then. A former Guardian photographer (1992-2002), for whom she first went to the Sahara (in 2001), editor of The Tuareg or Kel Tamasheq and a History of the Sahara (2015), with an MA in […]

Thu 22 OctSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Ways to help this venue's events reach more people

Community Boost

Help a local event get seen

Anyone can give an event a brighter spot on Near Here, helping more people nearby discover what's happening in their community.

Learn about Community Boosts

For the venue website

Keep your what's-on page in the loop

Add a free snippet that points visitors to this automatically updated list of events. No second calendar to keep in sync.

Get the free snippet

Community

The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious Corporation

| The Teutonic Knights, or Teutonic Order, were the last of the great military orders established in the twelfth century. Evolving into a powerful religious institution, they left a profound and enduring legacy, becoming one of the most pivotal forces in European history. In this talk we will explore the Order’s journey from a field hospital outside the walls of Acre during the Third Crusade to its remarkable rise as a major territorial ruler and power in northeastern Europe. Here, the rule of this remarkable religious corporation spanned three centuries and saw the construction of the largest castle in Europe as its headquarters. The Order’s decline in the fifteenth century was punctuated by a lengthy conflict with Poland-Lithuania and the secularization of its Prussian and Livonian branches during the Reformation. The medieval Order was subsequently re-imagined as the representative of German colonial power in the East by nationalists, an image that has only begun to fade in recent years.

Fri 23 OctSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen

Dr Nicola Tallis is an independent author and historian, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has worked as a curator, researcher, and lecturer, and specialises in the use of jewels in late medieval and Tudor England. Nicola has made numerous television and radio appearances, including on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? , Channel 5’s The Vikings, The Gunpowder Plot , Rich Lives, Poor Lives , and Channel 4’s Frankie Boyle’s Farewell to the Monarchy . Nicola is the author of five books, and her latest, Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen. was Book of the Week in The Times.

Thu 5 NovSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

A Toxic Embrace: Russia’s Church and State through the Centuries

The title of my book, the Baton and the Cross, was inspired by a poster I saw by a St Petersburg artist plastered on a wall near a tram stop on Borovaya Street in 2017. It featured a large black cross made out of police batons and underneath one word: Покайся (Repent). The conflation of a symbol of piety with instruments of state violence epitomises the way Russia’s church has always ensured it is at the right hand of power. Blind obedience trumps moral rectitude. For a thousand years the Church has used all means at its disposal to ensure its survival, its influence and, in many cases, the enrichment of its senior clerics. It has done the bidding of Muscovy princes, imperial tsars, Politburo members and now Putin, who, apart from a brief stint as prime minister, has been in charge for nearly 25 years and may stay in power until he dies. Whether he sincerely believes in God, or his religiosity is purely performative, Putin’s actions are at odds with the Orthodox faith he claims to hold. The former spy who once sought global recognition has morphed into a vengeful warmonger determined to lead his isolated country into an era of unparalleled greatness. His invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore an angry yearning for a revival of Slav Christian supremacy. Other Eastern Orthodox churches have denounced his vision of Moscow as a Third Rome as a sacrilegious form of nationalism Lucy Ash is an acclaimed presenter of radio and TV documentaries on foreign affairs.

Fri 6 NovSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year

| In this talk we’ll take a journey through the cycle of the year as it was experienced in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs and traditions linked to the different seasons. Many of the festivals we celebrate in Britain today have their roots in the Anglo-Saxon period, but ideas about the shape of the year have also changed significantly over time. Drawing on a wide variety of early medieval sources, we’ll look at how Anglo-Saxon writers thought about the passing of the seasons, and consider the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature. |

Thu 19 NovSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Courts-martial in the British Expeditionary Force: justice and discipline on the Western Front

| The popular image of courts-martial during the First World War centers on such fictional works as Herbert’s The Secret Battle and, more recently, Blackadder Goes Fourth. Such depictions resulted in the ‘shot at dawn’ campaign to secure posthumous pardons and commemoration for the 346 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed during the war. The purpose of this lecture, based on a chapter in an edited collection of essays published to consider the British Army in 1918, is not to examine the validity, intellectual or legal, of that campaign’s claims, but to consider afresh wider experiences of courts-martial on the Western Front during the First World War. |

Fri 20 NovSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

A Lancaster Pilot’s War 1941-45

| At the time of his death in April 2020, at the age of 98, my father was one of the last surviving Lancaster pilots from WW2. The Times printed a full-page obituary of him in its 8 May issue commemorating the 75th anniversary of VE Day. This was followed by a book: Jonny Cracknell and Adrian Stevens, Tomorrow May Never Come: The Remarkable Life Story of ‘Stevie’ Stevens, Lancaster Pilot and Beloved School Teacher (Wing Leader Ltd, 2021, 256 pp. www. wingleader.co.uk). It tells my father’s story, as he had wished, in his own words. Just before he took his last flight, he recorded a video, spliced with archival footage, which will form the basis of my talk. |

Thu 3 DecSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Community

Sir Edwin Lutyens, Society and Politics: The making of a great British architect

Charles Hind is an architectural historian and since January Chief Curator Emeritus of the Royal Institute of British Architects, where for decades he managed the RIBA’s remarkable collections of architects’ archives, including drawings, models and photographs (and the personal and professional papers of Sir Edwin Lutyens). Charles is chairman of the Lutyens Trust and a trustee of Great Dixter and Hestercombe, both of which entirely coincidentally have Lutyens connections, as well as being a former trustee of the Georgian Group and the Walpole Society. He is currently contributing to a gazetteer of the works of Sir Edwin Lutyens

Fri 4 DecSherborne Historical Society

via Sherborne Historical SocietyLocal gem

Event details on Near Here are aggregated from third-party sources and may change. Always verify times, location, availability, and any price directly with the organiser before travelling. See Terms.