Gibson Library All events are held in Saffron Walden Library except where stated. There is no charge for admission and non-members are welcome. The Library has disabled access.
Wednesday 29 January in Saffron Walden Library at 8:00pm,
'Unruly Virtuoso: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) Defies His Editors', an illustrated talk by Professor Claire Preston.
Keeping up with Dr Thomas Browne of Norwich, one of the great polymaths of the seventeenth century, is an impossible task. His broad intellectual range, his vast reading, his inventive thinking, and his quirky, gorgeous prose have resisted the best efforts of scholars and editors to contain and explain him. This talk explores Browne himself - his life and influential works - and the Oxford edition currently in progress that tries to capture a mind at once characteristic of his hectic and fascinating times and unique among its greatest writers.
Claire Preston is Professor Emerita of Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London (2013-2020) following twenty-one years at Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College). She has published widely on various aspects of early-modern literary-scientific interaction. Her most recent book is The Poetics of Scientific Investigation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 2015); her current project looks at 'big science' from Henry Oldenburg to Robert Oppenheimer. She is General Editor of the Oxford Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne (8 vols, 2023-27) for which she is editing Urne-Buriall, The Garden of Cyrus, and A Letter to a Friend.
Wednesday, 19 February, 2025 at 8:00pm in Saffron Walden Library
Agent Zo, courageous Second World War resistance hero - An illustrated talk by Clare Mulley
AGENT ZO tells the remarkable story of courageous resistance fighter Elzbieta Zawacka, aka 'Zo', the only female member of the Polish elite special forces, the 'Silent Unseen', and the only woman to parachute from Britain to Nazi-German occupied Poland during the Second World War. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo, who arrested her entire family, she established an important intelligence network, couriered microfilm across wartime borders, and played a key role in the largest organised act of defiance against Nazi German occupation - the Warsaw Uprising.
Clare Mulley is an award-winning author focused on female experience during the Second World War. Her books include AGENT ZO, as well as THE WOMEN WHO FLEW FOR HITLER, THE SPY WHO LOVED and THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE CHILDREN.
Friday 14th March, at 7:30pm in Saffron Walden Library
POETRY 2
The Gibson Library Society is holding a second evening of poetry readings: "from Matthew Arnold to Benjamin Zephaniah", hosted by local poet Hannah Walker.
People are invited to bring their favourite poems to read, or poems they have written themselves, or just come and listen. Modern poetry or old favourites, high-brow or humorous - all are welcome at our poetry evening.
Details for further meetings in 2025 will be available shortly.
When meetings are announced as being "via Zoom", GLS Members will be sent a Zoom invitation via the GLS email gibsonlibrary1832@gmail.com ; Members can also contact Peter Walker via the Library if they do not have email.
Thursday 9 January at 7:30pm , in Saffron Walden Library, in person,
A Short History of Twelfth Night a talk by Perry Staker.
Mention Twelfth Night and most people will either think of Shakespeare's play or remind you that Christmas decorations must be taken down on or before that day or you're bound to have bad luck for the coming year. However, Twelfth Night was very much celebrated in the past and with special customs and special foods. It is also a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany which is also known as Three Kings' Day; a day celebrating how the Magi - also known as the Three kings or the Wise Men - came to visit the baby Jesus after he had been born. This talk will look at the customs, ceremonies and food eaten at this time as people celebrated Twelfth Night in the past.
Perry Staker Interested in history from an early age Perry developed an interest in seventeenth century food and recipes during the 33 years she has spent as a member of the English Civil War Society. In recent years she has widened her research to include the food and recipes of other periods of history as well as the social history of Britain. In 2018 she was invited to take on the role of the Victorian Cook in the BBC2 series 'The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts' shown in January 2019 triggering her developing interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Wednesday 20th November, in Saffron Walden Library, in person, at 8:00pm,
The British Country House Revival author Ben Cowell talked about his new book.
The book traces the history of the Historic Houses organisation from its foundation in 1973, and the significant revival in fortunes that historic house properties have experienced in the half-century since the V&A's landmark exhibition in 1974: "The Destruction of the Country House".
Ben, who lives in Newport, Essex, is Director General of Historic Houses, the association that represents independently owned historic houses, parks and gardens across the UK. In his career in heritage, Ben has also worked for the National Trust, English Heritage, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. He has published several other books including The Heritage Obsession (2008) and Uvedale Price (2012, co-authored with Charles Watkins).
Thursday 3rd October, 7.30-9pm. Venue: Saffron Walden Library, Ground Floor Fiction area.
An Evening of Poetry Readings: From Matthew Arnold to Benjamin Zephaniah,
A Gibson Library Society Event for National Poetry Day.
Join us for an informal evening of poetry readings to celebrate National Poetry Day! Hosted by local poet Hannah Walker.
What are your favourite poems? Come and read them aloud and talk about what they mean to you.
Do you write poetry? If so, come along to share and talk about them at our poetry evening.
Or do you just want to listen? Then please come along too.
Modern poetry or old favourites, high-brow or humorous - all are welcome at our poetry evening*.
An exciting opportunity to share and discuss a range of poetry from the Gibson Library alongside more recent poets, from Matthew Arnold to Benjamin Zephaniah!
*NB: poem length, no longer than three minutes. Long poems, extracts only.
Trip to The Cromwell Museum at Huntingdon, Thursday 19th September 2024
Details for the trip are on this form, which should printed off and returned to the Library.
Thursday 27 June 2024, in Saffron Walden Library, in person, at 8:00pm
Oliver Cromwell and the crisis of the English Revolution 1647-9, a talk by Professor John Morrill
For more than a month in 1647, the headquarters of the New Model Army was at Saffron Walden and this month was crucial to the radicalisation of the army. Debates amongst the officers and representatives of the rank and file, mainly held in St Mary's Church, set the Army on a course that was to lead six months later to the famous debates on manhood suffrage and the future of the monarchy in Putney Church, and eventually to the trial, conviction and execution of Charles. In his lecture, Professor John Morrill plotted the course of this extraordinary series of events.
John Morrill is Emeritus Professor of British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College. The most recent of his (thirty) books is a three-volume edition of all the recorded words of Oliver Cromwell (including his words at the Saffron Walden Debates) and a volume covering 1641-1746 in the Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism. He is also the author of a new biography of Oliver Cromwell to be published in January 2025.
Wednesday 15 May 2024, in Saffron Walden Library, in person, at 7:30pm
Gibson Library Society's AGM
The AGM had been originally planned for 7 May, but had to be deferred as the work on the Saffron Walden Library's RAAC was over-running.
Details of the AGM are held on the Society's 2024 AGM webpage.
The AGM was followed by a talk on the ghost stories of M R James.
All members attending were asked to join us in a drinks reception after the conclusion of the AGM business.
Wednesday 20 March 2024, in Saffron Walden Library, in person, at 8:00pm
The Point of the Needle: Why Sewing matters
a talk by Barbara Burman, based on her new book on sewing
Barbara Burman chronicles new voices of people who sew today, by hand or machine, to explore what they sew, what motivates them, what they value, and why they mend things, revealing insights into sewing's more intimate stories. In our age of superfast fashion with its environmental and social injustices, this eloquent book makes a passionate case for identity, diversity, resilience, and memory - what people create for themselves as they stitch and make. Barbara will also include local examples collected from a survey conducted following an earlier talk to the Gibson Library Society.
Barbara Burman is an independent scholar, formerly based at the University of the Arts, London, and Southampton University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on the social history of dress and textiles, including The Culture of Sewing: gender, consumption and home dressmakin'g (Berg, 1999), and was most recently the lead researcher on the national "Pockets of History" research project and co-author of The Pocket: a hidden history of women's lives, 1660-1900 (Yale University Press, 2019, paperback April 2020). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives near Clare.
Wednesday 21 February 2024, via Zoom at 8:00pm
In Search of Boudica: through Iron Age and Roman Artefacts
an illustrated talk by Natasha Harlow
What evidence do we have for the fabled Queen Boudica and the British "War of Independence"? This talk looked at the varied narratives concerning the Iceni and provincial resistance to Roman occupation, provided by the study of both classical history and archaeology. It also discussed the roles of female leadership and identity in the creation of modern mythologies about the past.
Natasha Harlow researches life and identity in Iron Age and Roman Britain, in particular through the small personal artefacts often found by metal-detectorists. She studied for her BA and MA at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and has worked in heritage, museums and education for many years. Her PhD on "Belonging and Belongings" was awarded by the University of Nottingham in 2018 and she published her first book, based on this project, in 2021. Natasha now lives in Shropshire, although her interest in community archaeology regularly brings her back to East Anglia. She has recently excavated with the Caistor Roman Project and the Later Prehistoric Norfolk Project and also runs educational workshops for the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.
