SPARTA History Society Presents.....
- SPARTA
- May 12
- 9 min read
The SPARTA History Society has some incredible talks upcoming. Their talks are online from Great Minster House (GMH) and Leeds if you are able to attend in person then please do as our speakers like an audience.
Thursday 30th April - Lost Victorian Interiors - Steven Brindle
Online Talk from GMH 5.7
Microsoft Teams meeting:
Victorian London was the richest city in the world, the centre of British society and of a global empire. The houses of the upper and middle classes reflected the complexity of contemporary society and culture, in their interior design.
Almost all of them have gone, but happily, many of these interiors were photographed by Bedford Lemere & Company. Steven Brindle takes us through a selection of these interiors, which range from lavish Plutocrats’ mansions, to crowded middle-class homes, sophisticated Aesthetic interiors, grand Georgian residences, Oriental rooms of various kinds, and interiors conceived as works of art, and as settings for collections.
Dr Steven Brindle Brindle is a well-known historian and writer, who worked for English Heritage for many years. He specialises in the history of architecture and engineering, with notable publications including Brunel, the Man who Built the World (2005), Windsor Castle, a Thousand Years of a Royal Palace (2018), Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530-1830 (2023), and London – Lost Interiors (2024).
Wednesday 6th May - How the car remade Liverpool's built environment - Sam Wetherall
Online Talk from BAC Leeds Office 1pm
Microsoft Teams meeting: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/39595865579495?p=umiB84kNJ4ceE1xYJr
Britain's Detroit
In the 1960s, Liverpool's economy, its built environment and its relationship with the wider world was profoundly reshaped by the automobile. The city's overhead railway, its tram system and many of its bus and rail services were torn down, cancelled or heavily reduced while a new grid of roads and tunnels were built to accommodate the city's rising car-ownership. Three new car plants were constructed to offset the city's massive unemployment crisis.
As the Liverpool's maritime economy declined, oil became the major import into the docks, processed in a new complex of terminals up in the Wirral. During these years the city's Lord Mayor referred to Liverpool as Britain's Detroit. At the same time new activist movements came to resist these changes, from mothers barricading their streets to seal them off from traffic to Welsh militant terrorist blowing up parts of a dam which was built secure water for the city's car factories.
Talk given by Sam Wetherell senior Lecturer in the History of Britain and the World at the University of York. This is based on his new book Liverpool: A Story of Britain.
Tuesday 12th May - Consumer Society in eighteenth-century India - Dr Jagjeet Lally
Online Talk from GMH 5.7 1pm
Microsoft Teams meeting
Talk based on the book Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar: Commerce and Everyday Life in the Mughal World by Dr Jagjeet Lally.
The impact of Mughal rule on India remains a hotly contested topic of debate. Some see the regime as a benign entity, others as one harmful to India’s long-term development. But by fixating on the king’s actions rather than those of his subjects, have we been looking at the issue the wrong way round?
Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar turns conventional wisdom on its head to examine what has long been taken for granted. Through the eyes of numerous real-life characters, it demonstrates the power of bankers, moneylenders, merchants, middlemen, artisans and all manner of ordinary folk in making – and eventually breaking – the might of the Mughal Empire.
Jagjeet Lally is Associate Professor of the History of Early Modern and Colonial India at University College London, where he is also Director of the UCL Centre for Transnational and Global History and Co-Director of the UCL Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World. A historian of South Asian economic and material life, and the author of two other books, among them the prize-winning India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World(2021).
Recent work with the media includes being a guest on Greg Jenner’s ‘You’re Dead to Me’ podcast (BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds), where he talked about eighteenth-century India, and being the historical consultant on a two-part documentary on India for Channel 4.
Tuesday 2nd June - Queer Georgians - Dr Anthony Delaney
Online Talk 12.30
Microsoft Teams meeting
A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers
Mother Clap’s Holborn coffee house is open to all comers, a place of companionship and community, until a tip-off leads to a midnight raid.
Two women, exiled from their families, set up a utopian homestead in a remote Welsh cottage, inspiring a generation of Romantic poets. The celebrated Chevalier d’Eon, soldier, diplomat and spy, challenges a rival to a fencing match. The sweepstake is not over who will win, but whether the Chevalier is a man or a woman.
In this dazzling work of restorative history, Dr Anthony Delaney has traced the stories of people daring to challenge society’s expectations, unearthing archives and court records to reveal the tragedies and the joys of queer life three centuries ago. Breathing new life into the forgotten and offering radical new interpretations of celebrated figures such as Anne Lister, Queer Georgians is an invitation to view our shared history in a whole new light.
Dr Anthony Delaney actor and historian has a PhD in history from the University of Exeter, where he is an Honorary Fellow, and presents the History Hit podcast After Dark.
Friday 5th June - Thomas Jefferson and ending of Slavery - Professor Nicholas Guyatt
Online Talk 12.45pm
Microsoft Teams meeting Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/343832092646695?p=HrVciuMz3e0l1LFhUC
Jefferson's Wolf: A Founding Father's Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery
4th July 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and of the ringing claim that “all men are created equal.” The author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, owned more than a hundred human beings when he wrote those words and many hundreds more before his death, exactly fifty years later, on 4th July 1826. He freed just a handful of enslaved people across his long life, and a handful more in his will. How do we account for the fact that America’s founding proponent of equality was so thoroughly implicated in slavery?
Most historians have presented this as a ‘paradox’ – but in his new book Jefferson's Wolf (co-authored with Christa Dierksheide), the key to understanding Jefferson’s thinking about slavery is to appreciate his unshakeable commitment to Black exclusion.
Jefferson became convinced that an independent American nation had to be a white nation; while he argued privately (and, occasionally, publicly) that slavery should be abolished, he insisted that those freed from slavery should be removed from the new nation. When this proved wildly impractical and when African Americans themselves refused to leave Jefferson’s antislavery impulses were easily subdued.
In this talk he will explain how he developed his ideas about race and slavery, how he maintained them even when he was challenged by his contemporaries, and the impact of his inaction on the slavery question for the future of the United States.
Nicholas Guyatt is Professor of North American History at the University of Cambridge. His books include Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation (Basic Books, 2016), The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain’s Most Terrifying Prison (Basic, 2022) and, with Christa Dierksheide, Jefferson’s Wolf: The Struggle to End Slavery in the Founding Era (Harvard University Press, 2026). He has written about American history and politics for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Guardian, among other publications.
Tuesday 23rd June - “I’m Out! Escape to The Frontier" British POWs in WW1 – Peter Hart
Online Talk from GMH 5.7 1pm
This talk is based on Peter's book, written with Gary Bain, 'Beggar Me! I'm a Prisoner! British POWS in Germany, 1914-1918' and focusses on the attempts to escape from camps deep within Germany and the many trials and pitfalls they faced in trying to get out of Germany.
Some escaped, far more were recaptured. Its a thrilling tale of daring do!
Thursday 2nd July - The Wars of the Roses seen from Today - Professor John Watts
Note In-person event only
GMH LG15 1pm
Professor John Watts is a renowned historian specializing in the politics and political culture of later medieval England and Europe. His book, The Wars of the Roses: A Medieval Civil War, offers a comprehensive analysis of the Wars of the Roses, exploring the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. His book emphasizes the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars, once authority broke down, anything could happen.
The talk will be raising money for the Woodland Trust
Thursday 9th July - The JFK assassination, The Umbrella Man and Other Stories What We Talk About When We Talk About the JFK Assassination - Martin Fitzgerald
Online Talk from GMH LG9 1pm
This talk is prior to Edinburgh Fringe Fest Yes Really!
Dallas, 22 November 1963. The main event is supposed to be on Main Street – crowds fifty deep, a blizzard of ticker tape. A few blocks away in Dealey Plaza, the scene is quieter: a handful of people, clear skies. A man with an umbrella. A woman with a polaroid. A dressmaker with vertigo. These are the strange, true stories of the ordinary people who opted out of the main event, only to spend the rest of their lives unable to leave it.
This is a book about memory, about how we construct our shared history, and about what happens when your life is defined by a single, fleeting moment. It's about a group of real people who opted out of the main event before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, only to find themselves accidental witnesses to the most scrutinised six seconds of the twentieth century.
Martin Fitzgerald is an author and screenwriter from London. His first book, Ruth and Martin’s Album Club (2017), was a collection of reviews of classic albums written by celebrities upon hearing them for the first time. It featured contributions from Richard Osman, Ian Rankin, Bonnie Greer and many more. Martin’s particular interest is taking well-worn stories, approaching them from a new angle and finding the comedy and absurdity within them.
Thursday 30th July Belgravia Walk - Belgravia The Myth that made millions or a tale of Two Cities
5.30pm cost £10 Meet in Victoria Station outside WH Smith
If you are interested in attending any of these History Society events then please do get in contact with Robert Baker robert.baker@dft.gov.uk for more details
History Society YouTube recordings
Professor Marion Gibson ‘The Secret Lives of Witches | |
Virtual Walk down Marsham Street | |
John Buckley The Normandy Campaign 1944 | |
Dr Michael Jones Richard III - hero or villain? | |
Lee Jackson talk on Dickensland | |
John Dickie - The Strange Death of Cosa Nostra | |
Nick Jesson - The history of the Inca Empire | |
Nick Lloyd The Eastern Front in the First World War | |
Gareth Russell - The Palace Hampton Court | |
Brian Spurrell - Erith & Belvedere football club | |
A History of Women in the Civil Service, Victoria Iglikowski-Broad | |
The Mercenary River A history of London’s Water, Nick Higham | |
Medieval Ghosts – Eleanor Janega | |
Young Elizabeth: Princess: Prisoner. Queen, Nicola Tallis | |
Robespierre and the French Revolutionary Terror | |
The Rise and Fall of the British Welfare State From Poverty in 1900 to Poverty in 2023 | |
RNLI Talk (note first 16 minutes audio) | |
Motherland 500,000 years of African History – Luke Pepera | |
Railway 200 Talk - Road to the Stockton & Darlington Railway | |
A History of Homelessness | |
The Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor – Nathen Amin | |
'Who planned the Victorian railways - and did they get it right? - Coln Divall | |
Crusader Criminals - Steve Tibble | |
Railway 200 Talk - Female Railway Workers in World War II | |
The Social History of London Houses | |
Railway 200: Pendolino to Preservation | |
Late Medieval Scottish Dress | |
Railway Power and Politics in Britain | Talk not recorded |
Railway 200: The Coming of the Railway | |
The Waiting Game | |
Defeating the V2 Ballistic Missile | |
Railway 200: British railway talk 1890-1914 | |
Africa in the Roman Empire | |
Enslavement, Environmental Change, and the Making of the Global Firearm Frontier, 1650-1850 | |
Railway 200: Fire and Steam: How the railways transformed Britain | |
Railway 200 - Railway Posters | |
Railway 200 National Archives Railways Talk | |
An Accidental History of Tudor England | |
Roads to Rome | |
Railway 200 Taking the Train | |
Railway 200 British Rail 200 Years design Online Talk | |
Railway 200 The Railway Clearing House, Roy Edwards
| |
Why was Britain first? Rethinking the history of the industrial revolution’ | |
Railway 200 The risks of the job – staff safety on Britain’s railways in the past | |
Why the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta is 2025, not 2015 Professor David Carpenter | |
How to survive a Mongol invasion? Nicholas Morton | |
The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642 - Jonathan Healey | |
The Global Middle Ages | |
Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture | |
The 1946 WW2 Victory Parade | |
Economica Talk Victoria Bateman | |
The hidden history of women's football in England | |
African Emperor - Septimius Severus | |
Crispina Peres | |
Culture Wars in Republican Rome | |
How the Second World War is remembered | Please let me know if you would like a link to the recording |
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