Monday 13th September 2010:

A.G.M.; followed by Mr Stephen Etheridge: ‘Where the Brass Band is Beloved’: the Pennine Brass Band and the Working Class, a Study of Cultural and Regional Association c1840-1910
In 2003, the comedian, Dave Spikey, performed at the Leeds City Varieties Theatre. He asked the audience, ‘are you all from Yorkshire?’ They enthusiastically answered, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, I’d better split you up, or you will form a brass band.’ The laughter that followed articulated a collective memory of brass bands. It illustrated how deeply this collective memory was set in the minds of northern people. The memory was that the cultures and traditions of brass band music are northern and working class.
Mythologies and stereotypes became an agency that constructed a collective memory of place. Working people owned a selection of identities, not necessarily of class, but of neighbourhood, workplace, town, region, religion and nation. This involved shared perspectives with people from other social groups. This paper will explore how closely the brass band was involved in all aspects of working-class culture. It will examine the historical origins of why, in the popular imagination, the brass band is considered working class and northern.
Stephen Etheridge is a PhD researcher at Huddersfield University.

Monday 4th October 2010:

Dr Stella Fletcher: Wolsey on Stage and Screen
Using material from the final chapter of her recent biography of Cardinal Wolsey: A Life in Renaissance Europe (Hambledon Continuum, 2009), Dr Fletcher will examine his posthumous reputation as depicted in plays and films. The paper will also examine Wolsey’s relatively few, but interesting, links with the north west.
Dr Stella Fletcher is an expert on Renaissance history and was editor of the Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies. Her other publications include The Longman Companion to Renaissance Europe, 1390-1530 (Longman, 1999), The World of Savonarola: Italian elites and perceptions of crisis (edited with Christine Shaw, Ashgate, 2000), Princes of the Church: a history of the English cardinals (with Dominic Aidan Bellenger, Sutton Publishing, 2001), The Mitre and the Crown: a history of the archbishops of Canterbury (with Dominic Aidan Bellenger, Sutton Publishing, 2005).

Monday 1st November 2010

H.A. President’s Lecture: Prof. Anne Curry: Soldiers, Poets and Peasants in the Late 14th Century
Anne Curry is Professor of Medieval History and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton. She is also the current president of the Historical Association, so we are very pleased to be able to welcome her to the branch. Her paper will look at the Peasants’ Revolt, Chaucer and the Hundred Years War.

Monday 29th November 2010

Prof. Steve Rigby: Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?
This paper will examine the orthodox view that a hierarchy can be applied to the various causes of any event (as E. H. Carr argued in What is History?) and discuss the problems which beset this approach, showing that philosophical issues lie at the heart of many seemingly empirical historical debates.
Steve Rigby is Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester. He teaches late medieval English literature in its historical context, medieval English social and economic history, and the philosophy of history and the relationship between history and social theory.

Monday 10th January 2011

Dr Trevor James: From Hyde Park to the East End of London: the History of the Olympic Games
Dr James is the editor of the members’ journal of the Historical Association, The Historian, and is a noted expert on the history of sport.

Monday 7th February 2011

Mr Nick Tyldesley: George Fox Versus James Nayler: The Battle for the Soul of 17th Century Quakerism
Quakers were first seen as dangerous radicals whose belief in the Second Coming would destabilise the state. James Nayler, adored by his female followers, was the more inclined to take this millenarian view. His rival, George Fox was the more astute political compromiser, inclined to look at organisational matters. This lecture will tell the adventurous story of James Nayler and his fate in the pillory and try to connect modern Quakerism with this historical background. Was the mid 17th century a world turned upside down?
Branch member Mr Nick Tyldesley is a consultant for teaching and learning working for Bolton LA in the Educational Improvement section. He has written more than 60 articles in educational publications on curriculum management & development, history pedagogy and film studies, and has been involved in various Bolton LA publications including Zeppelins over Bolton and Days of Trouble- the Bolton Massacre.
This meeting will be followed by our annual ‘Bring and Buy’ History Book Sale.

Monday 7th March 2011

Dr Sasha Handley: Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane: An Eighteenth-Century Ghost Story
This lecture will centre on the story of ‘Scratching Fanny’, a ghost that caused a sensation in the city of London in 1762. Fanny Lynes, the fiancée of a wealthy stockbroker, died in mysterious circumstances in that year. Unable to find peace after her death, her ghost reportedly returned to haunt a house in Cock Lane in which she formerly lived and from which she accused her former lover of murder. This talk will piece together the interpersonal, social and religious tensions surrounding this case, whilst also casting light upon the broader significance of ghost stories in eighteenth-century culture.
After completing her PhD at the University of Warwick in 2005, Sasha went to the University of Manchester in 2006 as a Teaching Fellow in early modern history. In 2007 she was awarded a 3-year Simon Fellowship at Manchester before being appointed as Lecturer in History at Northumbria in 2009. Sasha's research focuses on the social and cultural history of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain. Her first monograph Visions of an Unseen World (Pickering & Chatto, 2007) traced the circulation and significance of ghost beliefs and ghost stories in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English culture.

Monday 4th April 2011

Mr Mark Hone: The Battle of Maiwand 1880: The Strange Story of the Bury Grammar School Captain, the Real Doctor Watson and Bobbie the Dog
This talk commemorates the 100th anniversary of the unveiling of the memorial to Lieutenant Walter Olivey, hero of the Battle of Maiwand, in the Roger Kay Hall at Bury Grammar School. It will tell of an earlier British intervention in the turbulent politics of Afghanistan, Victorian ideas of heroism and duty and the fascinating links between the Maiwand campaign and the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.'

Mark Hone is the Head of History and Politics at Bury Grammar School Boys. He was Exhibitioner in History at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. His interest in Military History comes from the stories told to him as a child about his father's and other relatives' service in the two world wars. He has given talks on a variety of topics, including the First World War and unusual aspects of the Military Heritage of the Northwest, to many different groups over the years (including the Bolton Branch of the Historical Association). He has guided and led 18 Bury Grammar school tours to the battlefields of the two world wars and other conflicts, each with a unique itinerary. The trips are voluntary, undertaken in the school holidays. Many boys opt to come on more than one during their time at school; the current record is seven.

Monday 9th May 2011

Celebrating Local History - an event to celebrate the Historical Association’s Local History Month.