East Sussex Branch Programme 2024-5

All meetings will be held from 7-9 pm in the large upstairs room at Bibendum, 1 Grange Road, Eastbourne BN21 4EU, a short walk from the railway station.

Entry is free to members, and visitor fees are £2 per lecture.

Annual local membership is available at the door for £10

For all branch enquiries please contact Dr John Oliphant at john@johnoliphant.net or telephone 07910 672 131

Thursday 6 February 2025

Richard I : A Very Curious King of England

Professor John Gillingham, Emeritus Profess of History, LSE

John originally agreed to talk about 1066, but inspired by our September talk on Cromwell has volunteered to weigh up the reputation of the Lionheart

Thursday 6 March

Resorting to the Coast: the development of seaside leisure

Dr. Geoffrey Mead, formerly of the University of Sussex

Thursday 1 May

Victors' Justice: The Nuremberg Trial and its Lasting Legacies 

Professor Michael Biddiss, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Reading, and a former President of the Historical Association

In this lecture Professor Biddiss will consider the dilemmas faced by the victors at the end of the Second World as they sought to reach inter-Allied consensus about prosecution and punishment of the defeated Nazi leadership. He will then discuss the proceedings eventually conducted at Nuremberg in 1945-6, described by one of the British judges as ‘the greatest trial in history’. After reviewing the positive achievements of the International Military Tribunal in condemning the Nazi regime he will highlight those weaknesses of planning and implementation that contributed to limiting the effectiveness of the longer-term aims which Nuremberg was also intended to fulfil.
The second half of the talk will then review the ways in which the Trial’s legacy has remained most relevant to global concerns over war crimes and ‘crimes against humanity’ during the decades since 1945, leading to the formation of a permanent International Criminal Court (operative since 2002) and to the even more recent debates over Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as well as the legal status of Israel’s response to Hamas terrorism and other Palestinian issues.

Thursday 5 June

Who was William Fowler? Sir John Hawkins, Spain, and the Atlantic Slave Trade in the Sixteenth Century'.

Prof Craig Lambert, Professor of Maritime History, Southampton University

Thursday 4 September

Robespierre and the Terror in the French Revolution

Professor Marisa Linton, University of Kingston