‘The Years in Question’
8 Centenaries
1226 ->1926
online
Eight Tuesdays
5pM
15th December to 2nd February
Some years ago, Louise and I inaugurated an Inscape programme that we called ‘The Year in Question’ series; one that examined the Arts as part of inter-woven cross-disciplinary relationships in a particular year. We placed the Arts within a given context consisting of politics and economics, literature and religion, science and society, even geography and geology. For this latest Zoom course, we realised that there could be something quite extraordinary about an exercise that would look back several centuries one centenary at a time to locate clues to our present state in 2026.
We will question the key developments and events of today, be they wars, invasions, the upheaval in social norms, the forcible removal of rival rulers, technological achievements, fundamentalist creeds, tyrannies in unexpected countries, and the backlash against them. We ask, for example, what the invasive instincts of Genghis Khan in 1226, the building of sublime cathedrals in 1326, the Hundred Years’ War in 1426, Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament in 1526, the dissolution of Parliament in 1626, the absurdities satirised in Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ of 1726, the effects of Telford’s magnificent suspension bridges of 1826, or the General Strike of 1926, have to do with where we find ourselves today?
In each of those centenary years, not only did events take place which are fascinating in themselves, but we gain a clearer view of the antecedents to our current concerns, even explanations for current turbulent affairs. En route, we will be telling an illustrated story, however selective, of some of the most significant political, historical, cultural and artistic events of the past 800 years. Do join us on this journey through time!
1226
Genghis Khan’s conquests; Death of Francis of Assisi; Louis VIII’s Albigensian crusade; Amiens, Bourges and Salisbury Cathedrals
Tuesday 15 December
1326
Invasion of England by Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer; imprisonment of Edward II; Simone Martini painting in Assisi; beginnings of Ottoman architecture; building of Ely Cathedral Octagon
Tuesday 22 December
1426
The Battle of Avranches; the Parliament of Bats; the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries; the revolutionary art of Masaccio and Donatello
Tuesday 29 December
1526
Establishment of the Mughal Empire in India; the battle of Mohács in Hungary; Pizzarro in South America; Tyndale’s New Testament in England; Holbein’s painting of Thomas More and his family
Tuesday 5 January
1626
The establishment of New Amsterdam (later New York); art and politics in the reign of Charles I; artistic clashes between Rubens in Flanders and Frans Hals in Holland
Tuesday 12 January
1726
Bach’s Cantatas; Voltaire’s ‘Letters Concerning the English Nation’; Defoe’s ‘Political History of the Devil’; Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels; the ‘fêtes galantes’ of Nicolas Lancret
Tuesday 19 January
1826
Telford’s suspension bridges; power-loom riots, Constable’s idylls; ‘The Last of the Mohicans’; rivalries between Turner and Constable; Delacroix’ ‘Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi’
Tuesday 26 January
1926
Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal; the General Strike; Sean O’Casey’s ‘The Plough and the Stars’; Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin; the Bauhaus; Matisse odalisques and Miro’s ‘Dog Barking at the Moon.’
Tuesday 2 February
‘Centenaries’ is a Zoom course (for which we offer support to access) which has been developed, designed and edited by Louise Friend and will be presented by Nicholas Friend.It is held on Tuesdays, beginning on Tuesday 15 December until Tuesday 2 February 2027 at 5pm.
If you book for the course but cannot manage a particular date, then be assured we will be sending recordings of sessions to all registered participants. Each session meets from 15 minutes before the advertised time of the lecture, and each lasts roughly one hour with 15 minutes discussion.
COST:
£400 for members, £500 non-members for eight sessions. Single sessions, £55 for members, £65 non- members. All sessions are limited to 21 participants to permit a vibrant after-lecture discussion session.
Please make your payment to Friend&Friend Ltd by bank transfer to our account with Metrobank, bank sort code 23-05-80, account number 13291721 or via PayPal to nicholas@inscapetours.co.uk, or credit/debit card by phone to Henrietta on 07940 719 397 who is available on Tuesdays or Thursdays between 2-5 pm.
Please make your payment to Friend&Friend Ltd by bank transfer to our account with Metrobank, bank sort code 23-05-80, account number 13291721 or via PayPal to nicholas@inscapetours.co.uk, or credit/debit card by phone to Henrietta on 07940 719 397 who is available on Tuesdays or Thursdays between 2-5 pm.
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