The Marquess of Bute, William Burges and the Gothic Revival
Dreams, Divination and Devotion: Exploring the ancient Druids of Britain and Gaul
Belgian refugee musicians in mid-Wales during the First World War
When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, more than a million Belgians fled their homes and around 100,000 sought refuge in Britain. The Davies family of Llandinam assisted several families to come to Mid Wales and the artist members of this expatriate community were the subject of a major exhibition at National Museum Cardiff and Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2003.
Their musician colleagues were equally distinguished, yet their lives and careers are now almost entirely forgotten. Drawing on original sources in the UK and Belgium and offering powerful parallels with the migration crises of today, this lecture reconstructs a remarkable lost narrative and presents it in London for the first time.
Computational Aerodynamics at Swansea University and the Land Speed Record
STUDYING WALES TODAY: A MICROCOSMOPOLITAN APPROACH
Drawing on Michael Cronin’s model of ‘microcosmopolitanism’ and its appreciation of the complexity and diversity of small nations, in this lecture Professor Wynn Thomas champions the importance of ‘studying Wales today’, and suggests developments for securing a sustainable and dynamic future for the field.
The text of the lecture may be downloaded here.
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Studying Wales Today: A Microcosmopolitan Approach
Drawing on Michael Cronin’s model of ‘microcosmopolitanism’ and its appreciation of the complexity and diversity of small nations, in this lecture Professor Wynn Thomas champions the importance of ‘studying Wales today’, and suggests developments for securing a sustainable and dynamic future for the field.
William R Grove: The Fuel Cell and the Hydrogen Economy
William Robert Grove (1811-1896) was a physical scientist who is known as “the father of the fuel cell”. His pioneering research on fuel cell technology and on the conservation of energy was sufficiently groundbreaking and renowned for him to become a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1840. Born in Swansea, he was also a founder of what became the Royal Institution of South Wales in 1838. In terms that are intelligible to non-scientists and interested lay persons, Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas describes Grove’s work on the fuel cell and assesses the contemporary significance of his discovery and its potential for the development of the hydrogen economy – the use of hydrogen, in conjunction with a fuel cell, to provide a low-carbon source of energy.
The history and future of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography
In this lecture, Professor Dafydd Johnston, Director of the Universty of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, and a Co-Editor of the Dictionary, traces the history of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography from the foundation of the project by the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion during the 1930s to the present day. He describes some of the significant developments that the Centre and the National Library of Wales are currently taking forward. These include the improvement of the Dictionary’s gender balance through the addition of more articles about Welsh women, the digitisation of articles and the addtion of photographs and other illustrations. Professor Johnston goes on to outline the challenges facing the Centre and the Library as they seek to ensure the long-term future of this important national resource.
YR Arglwyddes Llanofer: y bersonoliaeth tu ôl I’R prosiect
A Welsh-language lecture given at the National Eisteddfod in Abergavenny on Monday, 1 August 2016 by Dr Celyn Gurden-Williams on the subject of Lady Llanover (1802 – 1896), one of the most important female contributors to the nineteenth century Welsh cultural revival and one of the period’s most fascinating characters.
Caerfyrddin 1966: etholiad i newid gwleidyddiaeth Prydain?
A Welsh-language lecture by the author and journalist, Rhys Evans, on the circumstances and significance of the election in the 1966 Carmarthen by-election of Gwynfor Evans, the first Plaid Cymru Member of Parliament. Darlith cyfrwng Cymraeg gan yr awdur a newyddiadurwr, Rhys Evans, ar amgylchiadau ac arwyddocâd ethol Gwynfor Evans, Aelod Seneddol cyntaf Plaid Cymru, yn isetholiad Caerfyrddin ym 1966.
The political configuration and party inclinations one year after the 2015 election
Haven from Hitler: Kate Bosse-Griffiths’s Escape from Nazi Germany to Wales
The Mills Family of Llanidloes: An extraordinary musical legacy
The Annual June Gruffydd Memorial Lecture, organised in association with the Montgomeryshire Society.
The lecture focuses on the three generations of the renowned Mills Family of Llanidloes, who spanned the nineteenth century, and their contribution to the musical and cultural life of Wales and beyond.
The Ancient Britons: Sociability, Pageantry and Patriotism in the First London Welsh Society
The Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Ancient Britons, founded in London in 1715, was a complex and multi-faceted patriotic phenomenon. It was simultaneously a mouthpiece for royalist propaganda and a haven for political radicals, a piously charitable foundation and an excuse for having a good time. In a period when distinctly Welsh institutions had largely ceased to exist, the Society’s annual celebration of St. David’s Day in the English capital offered a rare example of eighteenth-century Welsh people deliberately imagining into existence an identifiably Welsh nation, using ceremony, sociability, poetry, and politics to fill the institutional void. This lecture tells the story of this important precursor to the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, trying to get to the bottom of what it meant for these London Welshmen to proclaim themselves Ancient Britons during the formative years of the British nation-state.
Image courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University