Presenting the best of British railway poster art celebrating the Golden Age of British Railways (1923 – 1947). Has there ever been a more romantic period of travel history? The Flying Scotsman, Golden Arrows, Belles and Pullmans. No wonder Betjeman still stands in awe at St Pancras.

Charles Harris

Charles returns to The Arts Society Hart after his excellent lectures on Poster Art in 2023 and 2025. He has had a life-long career in advertising around the world, most of it as a Creative Director in global agencies (J Walter Thompson, Bates, FCB, Publicis, Leo Burnett). Responsible for the quality of the creative ideas and finished production of advertising campaigns, his work for many of the world’s great brands including British Airways, Sony, Nestle, Kraft, BP, Gillette, and more earned him global awards in New York, Hollywood, Singapore and Sydney. His experience as a creative advertising man gives his poster presentations a unique behind-the-scenes insight as to what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Image: Charles Harris

‘The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret’ –Like the Renaissance artists he admired, Salvador Dalí did not restrict his creative output to painting but was also a writer, poet, engraver, sculptor, architect, photographer, theatre designer, and jewellery designer. As well as designing the latter, Dalí selected the materials to be used, focusing not just on the colours or the value of the material, but also on their symbolic meanings. Jewels such as ‘El cor reial’ (1953, The Royal Heart) have become iconic works and are considered to be as exceptional as his paintings.

Julia Musgrave

Julia Musgrave got her first degree in Chemical Engineering and went on to become a Chartered Information Systems Engineer and IT project manager. In 2008 she decided to become an art historian. She now has a Graduate Diploma in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MLitt in ‘Art, Style and Design: Renaissance to Modernism, c.1450 – c.1930’ from the University of Glasgow. She gained her PhD at the University of York for her research into the involvement of the Bloomsbury Group and the social networks of the British art world in the development of the Contemporary Art Society from 1910 to 1939. She teaches Art History at the City Literary Institute (City Lit) and the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution (HLSI) in London.propios

Image: The Persistence of Memory. Flickr/mundospropios

Norman Rockwell’s folksy images of middle America were dismissed for decades by art critics as over-sentimental and banal.  But his reputation has soared in recent years as a new generation comes to appreciate his humanity and inventiveness and he is revered by film directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for his brilliant storytelling. At their best, his paintings reconcile midwestern values with progressive ideals and artistic traditionalism with optimism about the modern world.  

Rupert Dickins

Rupert Dickens is an art historian based in south London with a special interest in Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painting. He works at the Wallace Collection as a guide conducting public and private tours and lecturing on aspects of the collection, and he has accompanied groups on art-themed tours to Europe. He studied art history at Birkbeck College before undertaking a Masters in Dutch Golden Age Studies at University College London. Before that Rupert had a 26-year career as a BBC journalist ending as an editor in radio news. We are pleased to welcome him back to The Arts Society Hart, after his excellent lecture on Album Covers 1950 to 2000 in November 2024.

Image: Freedom from Want. Picryl/Public domain

Completed in 1432, the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan and Hubert van Eyck is the first datable painting of the Northern Renaissance, and a milestone in the history of art. This lecture looks at the Van Eyck’s dazzlingly – and unprecedentedly – naturalistic depiction of people, plants and objects, enabled by their novel use of the oil medium, and unravels the meaning of the altarpiece’s complex imagery. We also explore its later history, including its finding by the Monuments Men in 1945, and will highlight some of the discoveries to have emerged during its current restoration.

Paula Nuttall

Is a Specialist in Renaissance art, both Italian and northern European, on which she has published widely, notably From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting 1400-1500 (Yale, 2004). She has collaborated on major exhibitions including Jan van Eyck: an Optical Revolution (Ghent, 2020).  Before retiring in 2023 Paula was Director of the V&A Medieval and Renaissance Year Course,and has taught at – among others – the Courtauld Institute and the British Institute of Florence.  She now focuses on the Arts Society, her own online courses, and research.

Image: The Adoration of the Lamb. Picryl/Public Domain

View London - a city that has dazzled, enchanted, unsettled, appalled. So how did it motivate the great artists who have lived and worked there? And how do their paintings enrich our understanding of the city? This lecture takes a long look. Picking five periods between1750 and 1920 and five pairs of artists it compares and construes their take on the city. Hogarth and Canaletto had studios a few minutes walk apart, but their Londons were unrecognizably different. While Constable looked down on a dim city under a louring sky from his Hampstead eyrie, Turner’s rare artistic incursions are ablaze with light.

Charlie Forman

As a London walking tour guide and lecturer, he highlights the social, architectural and artistic history of his home city. A member of the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association, his talks focus on the forces that have shaped and changed this multi-faceted metropolis and the artistic and cultural heritage that this has given us. After many hundreds of walks and a four-decade long career in housing and regeneration he has absorbed a deep understanding and appreciation of the capital.

Image: Canaletto: Westminster from River Thames. Picryl/Public Domain

This lecture explores gender in modern British sculpture through the lives and times of Barbara Hepworth and Elisabeth Frink. Hepworth produced some of the greatest sculptures in wood, stone and bronze of the 20th century. Yet, she is often overshadowed by Henry Moore and other male artists, which does her a great disservice. Over her career she progressed from Picasso-based sculptural figures to abstract sculptures full of expression and lyricism, where references to the Cornish coast and landscape can often be discerned. Born a generation later, Frink ranks alongside Hepworth as a great British sculptor of the 20th century. The subjects for her work were usually birds, horses and men and she was heavily influenced by wartime experiences and memories.

Raymond Warburton

has had a life-long love of art. However, in his twenties, Ray studied social sciences at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies. These studies led to a career in health and social care, with art being an evening and weekend passion. But all that changed in 2011, when Ray became a guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. From 2014 to 2017, he studied art history at the Open University, and then at the University of Buckingham, from where he gained an MA in the History of Art. Ray became an Arts Society lecturer in 2017.

Image: Hepworth ‘Pelagos’, 1946, Tate: Lecturer’s photo

The 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's death in March 1827 makes it a great time to reassess the legacy of this great composer. Born into a family of court musicians in Bonn, Beethoven became one of the greatest and most disruptive figures in the history of classical music; by the time he died in Vienna he had completely transformed music's cultural landscape. This lecture reflects on this brilliant, cantankerous, visionary and astonishingly original composer, and traces how he grew from Classical beginnings to become a true Romantic artist, or as he preferred to describe himself, a “poet in sound.”

Sandy Burnett

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, he spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. He has directed a complete performing cycle of Bach’s sacred cantatas and is a first-call double bass player on the London jazz scene. Since 2013 he has devised and led cultural holidays all over the world, taking music lovers to venues as diverse as the opulent Leipzig Opera House and the intimate jazz clubs of New Orleans. He runs an online classical music appreciation Listening Club, and is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music.

Image: Beethoven painted by Steiler: supplied by lecturer Public Domain

As the Tapestry is displayed for the first time in Britain, in the British Museum, in this lively introduction to the tapestry – so much more than the story of Hastings – Rupert unravels some of its mysteries, places it in the context of its age and firmly establishes it as a landmark in the history of Western art.

Rupert Willoughby

Rupert Willoughby is a writer, researcher, lecturer, Latin-whisperer and impresario of ancient Greeks, with a passion for castles, lakes and uncovering the layers of the past.  A graduate with First Class Honours in History from the University of London he is the author of Mountain Gunner: The Wartime Adventures of Tony Fowle, M.C., of the best-selling Life in Medieval England for Pitkin, and of a series of popular histories of places, including Chawton: Jane Austen’s Village, and the whimsical Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture. Rupert is also an itinerant Classics master.An experienced lecturer, accredited by The Arts Society since 2011, he is known for his light, humorous touch, his love of narrative and his vivid evocations of the past. This is a return visit for Rupert to the Arts Society Hart.

Image: Bayeux Tapestry - Scene 57: the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings:Wikimedia Commons.Public Domain

What was going on in the world of Scandinavian art during the heyday of the Parisian avant-garde? This lecture surveys developments in modernist art, music, literature, architecture and design in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland from the late 19th-century to the 1920s.  We will look at major figures such as Edvard Munch, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Georg Jensen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Eero Saarinen, but also at the careers of pioneering female Scandinavian artists, including Harriet Backer, Hilma af Klint, Marie Kroyer, Anna Ancher and Helene Schjerfbeck.

Rosamund Bartlett

Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, lecturer and translator.  Her work ranges across the arts, from painting to music, and across cultures, from Italy, France and Germany to the countries of Northern and Eastern Europe. She began her career as an academic in Slavic studies after completing her doctorate at Oxford, and has held fellowships both in the UK and at the European University Institute in Florence. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Modern Languages in Oxford, and in 2024 became a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brasenose College.

The author of several books, including biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and a study of Wagner's influence in Russia, she is also well known as a translator. Over the years she has written on music, literature and drama and art for institutions including the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Salzburg Festival, She has led art, architecture, design and music tours throughout Europe, and contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC.

Image: Hilma af Klint: Altarpiece no1, Group X 1907: Wikimedia commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

For over a century, postcards have pictured our shared history across the globe. They have documented the changing role of women, architecture, aviation, war, fashion and celebrity. Few peoples, places or things have not been pictured on a postcard. But the age of the postcard is over. With our mobile phones, we take and send images in an instant. This lecture celebrates the history and scope of picture postcards — bearers of news and repositories of memory.

Chloe Sayer

Chloë Sayer has lectured for galleries, museums and cultural institutions in Australia, Canada, Europe, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and Mexico. She has written several books on Mexican textiles and crafts of Mexico, as well as books on Mexican architecture and Mexican festivals. She is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute,and has made ethnographic collections and carried out fieldwork in Mexico and Belize for the British Museum. She has also worked on a number of television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. She has curated several exhibitions, and is a Research Associate with the Department for World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Image: Postcards of Suffragettes: Supplied by lecturer