George Cruikshank is now best known for his brilliant drawings for Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. But this is to do his prodigious skills and work output a disservice. Cruikshank moved effortlessly from biting satirical prints in the Georgian era through to producing engravings for numerous books and journals in Victorian times. Adapting his talents both to new printing technology and the new demands of the reading public, he is considered by many to be the greatest illustrator of the 19th century. His personal reputation hasn't survived quite so well, partly through his obsession with temperance in later life and the fact that when he died, aged 85, it was discovered he had fathered eleven illegitimate children with his mistress.

Please note that this lecture takes place on Thursday 8 October.

Dig into the graveyards of 19th century London. As London’s population doubled in its early decades, so did the numbers dying. Where to bury them? The deep attachment to burial in parish churchyards waned as layers of coffins raised ground levels high above the street while backlogs of the unburied became a rat’s delight. Churches acquired extra land. The lecture covers recent excavations which reveal how this plan did not relieve the pressure for long, with families designing tombs to thwart the bodysnatching ‘Resurrection Men’. Scandal broke over a chapel with thousands of rotting bodies discovered in its crypt, just as the Magnificent Seven garden cemeteries were beginning to flower outside the city limits. They were – and still are - places of landscaped beauty, of tranquil reflection for the living as well as gardens holding spectacular monuments to the dead. The lecture ends with the legacy - the railway stations taking corteges to funerals in rural settings, an underappreciated Jewish burial ground, the municipal cemeteries and pocket parks of today.

Bridget Riley is a well-known name in British art, famous for her black and white paintings that play upon the eye and are associated with Op Art.  However, where does her work fit within the context of the development of abstract art more generally? In this talk, I look at the paths abstract painting took during this decade and how her work relates to international directions, as well as to London in the swinging '60s.  Looking at her career overall, I also discuss how Riley’s colour paintings relate to nature and to a tradition of art found on the walls of the National Gallery.      

 Our very short AGM will take place before the lecture.

The City of Bath, the 18th century Georgian city with a Roman heart. We will discover what makes this UNESCO world heritage city special. Learn more about the famed roman remains within the Roman Baths Museum including the latest archaeological excavations under the city streets and discover the source of the water from deep underground to where it is heated to 46 degrees before ascending to the surface under the medieval Baths. We will follow the development of the 18th century city, how Bath became the 2nd social city to London.