Wednesday 27 March at 10.30am

In Italy, the two decades that Benito Mussolini was in power are referred to as “il Ventennio Fascista”. In this tour, our ever popular Rome guide Stuart Harvey will examine the origins of fascism and how Mussolini was able to take such total control of the Italian state, focusing particularly on his use of propaganda and symbolism from Ancient Rome.

Then we will look at the physical architectural changes his regime brought to the city, examining the monumental building projects that came to define the “fascist style”, many of which are still prominent parts of the urban landscape of Rome today.

Finally we will track the fall of Mussolini and some of horrors of the Nazi occupation of Rome prior to the liberation of the city by Allied Forces in June 1944.

Please find the zoom link below

https://theartssociety-org.zoom.us/j/91445466844

Thursday 22nd February at 11am

Arts Society lecturer, writer and trainer, Elizabeth Gowing has for 15 years had a home in Pristina, where she co-founded an organisation to empower and support local people in need and promote a culture of volunteering and philanthropy.

In this visit she will share with us the things she loves about this little-known but fascinating city. We will learn about the youngest population in Europe in a majority Muslim city whose main boulevard commemorates Mother Teresa – as one of the country’s most famous daughters. She will show us the library which qualified for inclusion in a list of the world’s ugliest buildings, and provide impressions of travellers there in war and peacetime.  Finally, she will ask you to work out who is being commemorated in Medlin Olbrajt square – and why?

Pristina has a vibrant cafe culture, so join us with a cup of coffee beside you to enjoy this voyage of discovery in a city no more than three hours’ flying time from London.

Please find log-in link for Zoom below. Click this link to join the tour.

You should have access from 10.45am and the Virtual Tour will commence at 11.00am.
The tour will last approximately 90 minutes.

https://theartssociety-org.zoom.us/j/96760524744

Thursday 25th January at 11am

A UNESCO world heritage site, Berlin’s Museum Island is home to no less than five world famous museums, built originally between 1830 and 1930. Nick Jackson, local Berlin Guide, will tell us about the architecture of Museum Island as a symbol of power, the highlights of the collections and their use (a peculiarly Berlin angle) to underpin the final decades of the ‘old’ Berlin world before the deluge of WWI and its fall out. Nick’s tour will include video footage from inside the museums.

Tuesday 21st November at 11am

London Blue Badge Guide and Arts Society lecturer Simon Whitehouse will lead us on a virtual tour on Zoom to tell us about Oscar Wilde: writer, wit & the first modern celebrity.

Simon will chart Oscar’s extraordinary journey from his childhood in Ireland to his artistic circle in Chelsea and glittering West End first nights, to the criminal trial of the age, and discuss his enduring appeal and legacy.

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

Monday 6th March at 9.30am (Zoom access from 9.15am)

Clive de Bruyne will lead us on a live walk which lives up to its reputation as the most beautiful garden in Africa and one of the great botanical gardens of the world. The 36-hectare garden is part of a 528 hectare estate that contains protected mountainside suporting natural forest and fynbos along with a variety of animals and birds.  

Join Clive de Bruyne and an expert member of the Kirstenbosch staff as he walks through this botanical wonderland.

A Zoom Link will be sent to all members on Friday 3rd March

Virtual Tour – Treasures of the Borghese Gallery, Rome – Wednesday 8 February 2023 at 11.00 am

The Borghese Gallery houses what is arguably one of the greatest collections of art in the world. In the early 1600s Cardinal Scipio Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, amassed an incredible collection of ancient sculptures and renaissance art, including works by Titian, Botticelli and Raphael. Scipio added to this by commissioning statues from Bernini and buying up works by Caravaggio, Domenichino and other contemporary artists of the day.

The collection also houses later artworks acquired over the centuries by the Borghese family, all in a magnificent building designed for Cardinal Scipio especially to house his collection. The Borghese Gallery is set in the Villa Borghese gardens, until a century ago the private gardens of the Borghese family, and today one of the most beautiful public parks in Rome.

Our guide will be Stuart Harvey, a qualified Rome guide who has lived in the City for more than 20 years and is now also an accredited Arts Society lecturer. Stuart has already enthralled us with other tours in the Eternal City and returns by popular demand.

A Zoom link will be sent to all members on Friday 3rd February

Virtual Tour – A walk around Art Nouveau Vienna – Tuesday 17th January 2023 at 11am

Local guide Claudia Muchitsch will show us highlights of Vienna’s famous Art Nouveau architecture and decoration by Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner and others.

The Art Nouveau style emerged in Paris and across Europe from around 1890 to 1910. Inspired by natural forms and a sense of flowing movement, and using modern materials, Art Nouveau was a sharp break with the past. The style’s influence across Europe laid the foundation for modern art. In Vienna it appeared as the Secession in 1897 when a group of artists and designers led by Gustav Klimt rebelled against the highly conservative traditions of art in Austria. The Secession founded a magazine, Ver Sacrum, to promote their works and the architect Joseph Olbrich designed the domed Secession building in the new style. It became a showcase for the paintings of Gustav Klimt and other Secession artists.

Claudia has been leading tours in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria since 2007. She and her husband Martin now have their own company, Alpine Foxes, arranging bespoke tours for clients. When she is not leading tours or looking after their two sons, Claudia is also a guide at Vienna’s Sigmund Freud Museum, in the house where he lived for nearly 50 years.

On the morning of the 11th November 1920 the funeral of Britain’s Unknown Warrior took place at Westminster Abbey. This revealing and often heartstoppingly poignant virtual walk follows the route of The Unknown Warrior’s funeral procession through Westminster and tells his story.

Our guide, Ruth Polling, will explore the wider landscape of remembrance in Britain and show us how a nation reeling with collective and personal grief developed elements of remembrance still used today, including national and local war memorials, the silence and the poppy. A hundred years later we will discover how and why Britain still remembers.

Born and bred in London, Ruth Polling graduated in International History from the London School of Economics before working in London politics for eleven years, including work the House of Commons and the House of Lords. She then turned to guiding and graduated top of her year as the London Blue Badge Tour Guide of the Year 2014. In addition to tour guiding, Ruth lectures and runs training courses on London history and politics.

The zoom link will be sent via Mailchimp as soon as it is available.

MAY VISIT TO THE

WATTS GALLERY AND VILLAGE

NEAR GUILDFORD

Please arrive promplty for a 10.30 welome coffee/tea in the Old Kiln.(free parking available)

11.- 12.45 pm  GUIDED Artists Village Walking Tour

12.45 - 2pm Lunch in the Old Kiln (vegetarian quiche and salads)

2pm -4pm Free time to explore Watts Gallery, Watts Chapel, Limmerslease, the Contemporary Gallery and the renowned shop (10% discount available with ticket).

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORGANISE ANOTHER TOUR FOR THE AFTERNOON IF YOU WISH .

www.wattsgallery.org.uk

if you are able to offer a lift to any other members - all the better.

please confirm your attendance by emailing lucyajames@icloud.com 

i have arranged a discounted ticket:

Price per person £31 to include entry ticket, coffe/tea, one guided tour as above, lunch.

Art Pass holders £26.25 to include the above.

Tour of Kyoto with James Farmer.

Further details to follow

joining instructions will be sent nearer the date

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TOUR WILL START AT 9.30 AM

zoom link will be sent out after the lecture on Tuesday 22nd March 

LONDON; THE HISTORY OF DOCKLANDS FROM BOATS TO BANKING

by Pepe Martinez

Wednesday 16th February at 11 am.

Pepe was born and bred in London and has lived here all his life apart from a year travelling the world in his 20's.

His professional life began working as a stage manager, followed by 15 years as a tour manager leading tours of the UK, Ireland and Europe, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and the Middle and Far East.

He qualified as a London Blue Badge Guide in 2011 and was honoured to receive the award for Best Overall Practical Exam Guide.

He loves the theatre and tries to attend as often as possible and is usually ahead of the the game when it comes to recommendations.

He is a keen cyclist and loves the outdoors and walking and he believes the best way to see a city is on foot.

Pepe can offer walks on a wide range of themes including Royal London and a visit to Westminster Abbey, the graffiti and street art of Spitalfields and Shoreditch, The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (he was one of the 70,000 volunteers at the 2012 Olympic Games), Sexy Soho or even the London of Jack the Ripper.

He is also able to offer cycling tours of the city and can offer visits to a wide range of sites including the Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral, the British Museum and Tate Modern.

KHIVA IN UZBEKISTAN: A walk around the City with Chris Aslan 

26th January 2022 at 11am

Chris was born in Ankara, Turkey hence the name Aslan. Later the family moved to Beirut in Lebanon, living through the civil war (which is where Chris gets his underdeveloped sense of danger) before the family were evacuated.

Chris spent his teenage years in the UK followed by two years at sea.  Making the most of long student summers, Chris travelled along the ancient Silk Road, starting in Turkey and working his way overland through the Caucasus, Georgia, the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and China, writing articles for some of the NGOs who hosted him en route: one of them, Operation Mercy asked him to come back to Khiva, Uzbekistan and write a guidebook to boost tourism.

Chris ended up spendng seven years in Khiva, running a silk carpet workshop in conjunction with UNESCO, weaving to life 15th century carpet designs, natural dye techniques and creatng income for over eighty people, most of them women.  To find out more about his exploits , read: 'A Carpet Ride to Khiva - Seven Years on the Silk Road'.

Expelled during an anti-NGO purge, Chris went on to live in the remote mountains of Badakshan on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.  Here he worked on a text book for learning the local oral language - shugni - spoken in just three vallleys, and also started a project training yak herders in the High Pamirs to collect down from their yak, a luxury fibre similar to cashmere that was being thrown away.

Living in Badakshan, Chris was gored by a yak, swam to Afghanistan and back, was interrogated and accused of espionage for Sweden, asked to smuggle gems, and managed to avoid avalanches, rock slides and scorpion stings.

Chris then moved to Kyrgyzstan, leading a rapid response team of Uzbek speakers to provide trauma counselling in the aftermath of an inter-racial pogrom that left thousands without homes and hundreds dead.  He lived in a remote village nestled in the mountains and forests of Southern Kyrgyzstan, trying to start a school for wood carving, before returning to the UK.

Chris is now based in Cambridge where he splits his time between writing, lecturing for the Arts Society and leading tours back to Central Asia.

ROME, SQUARES AND FOUNTAINS with Stuart Harvey on Thursday, 25th November at 11 am

An Englishman in Rome, Stuart has been enjoying life in the Eternal City since 2001, when he left his native London. Having already qualifed as a licensed "Blue Badge" tourist guide in London in 1998, Stuart is proud to have also passed the Provincia di Roma exams to become a licensed Tour Gude of Rome, becoming one of very few people to hold both qualifications.  While at University Stuart broadened his horizons wth work exchange programs in Canada and the USA.  Hehas also lived and worked in Australia, France, Austria ... and now Italy.

Stuart's love of history and language brought him into the travel industry in 1992, leading American Educational tour groups all over Europe.  This instilled in him the idea that a tour guide should be both informative and fun - not a dusty, dry professor, but a friend who can share the local traditions and amusing anecdotes as well as the history, art and architecture of the city and its monuments.

A leisurely virtual walking tour around the historic heart of Rome.

We will show you the highlights - the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona - but also much more.

Along the way we will meet one of the "Talking Statues" of Rome; learn why Emperor Hadrian built a temple to his mother-in-law; and even find an unusual statue of an elephant.

Booking opens 25 September 2018 for the five day extended visit to Italy in 2019. Please see Louise Dilloway either  at the lecture  or contact her later for details of the itinerary and a booking form.

We spent a most enjoyable four days in East Anglia in May this year. On our way up to  Norwich, where we were based, we toured Gainsborough's House in Sudbury. In Norwich we visited the Cathedral with some time also available to explore the city.The next day we revelled in the glories of Sandringham House and Houghton Hall with its wonderful William Kent architecture and decoration. The Sainsbury Arts centre at UEA was the focus of the morning of the third day with Aldeburgh and a visit to Benjamin Britten and Peter Peers Red House in the afternoon.There was  also time to visit the church and see John Piper's stained glass window and to walk up the beach to see Maggie Hambling's magnificent  Shell sculpture. On the way home home we stopped off at Flatford Mill, John Constable's historic site. This was certaily an action packed few days, but with delights for all tastes and interests. 

An exclusive guided tour of Dorney Court and an afternoon visit to Savill Gardens

Lecture at the Tate Modern, coffee and lunch. A "once in a lifetime" exhibition.

Wolferton House- coffee and biscuits on arrival and a guided tour by the owner Captain Thimbleby. Drive to Mapperton Gardens for lunch at the Sawmill Cafe followed by a visit to the Gardens.

Strawberry Hill: a guided tour of the house and lunch in the restaurant "The Committee of Taste" Afternoon visit to the De Morgan Gallery, Wandsworth for a guide tour.