Lincoln Book Festival

The Collection is hosting, for the second year running, The Lincoln Book Festival. 12 events across 6 nights.

Monday 29th September 2014 - 6.15pm
Tickets £10 for the both events

Lincolnshire Lads who Changed The World

Sarah Dry on the Legacy of Isaac Newton
When Newton died in 1727 without a will, he left a wealth of papers that gave his followers and his family a deep sense of unease. Some of what they contained was wildly heretical and alchemically obsessed; deemed 'unfit to be printed', they remained largely hidden for more than seven generations. Over time Newton has been made and re-made but in her book The Newton Papers Sarah helps uncover the truth about this extraordinary man.
 
Professor Desmond Machale on The Life and Work of George Boole
George Boole (1815-64) has been variously described as the founder of pure mathematics, father of computer science and discoverer of symbolic logic but he was much more than a mathematical genius. A child prodigy and 19th century polymath, he was a practical scientist and self-taught linguist, turbulent academic and devoted teacher, social reformer and poet, philosopher and family man.
 
 
 
Tuesday 30th September 2014 - 6.15pm
Tickets £10 for both events

The Power of Plants and Gardens - chaired by Susan Rhodes

Margaret Willes on The Cottage Garden - Fact and Fiction
Margaret unearths lush gardens outside workers' cottages and horticultural miracles in blackened yards, she reveals the ingenious, often devious, methods used by determined, obsessive and eccentric workers to make their drab surroundings bloom. From the fashionable rich stealing gardening ideas from the poor to the competitive alehouse syndicates, she discusses the ways in which the cultivation of plants plays an integral role in everyday British life.
 
Jennifer Potter on The Extraordinary Influence of Plants
Jennifer's latest book Seven Flowers reads like a detective story. As she tracks her septet across the globe, we discover where and when they originated, what power or influence they have exerted over the affairs of man and how they acquired it, revealing some astonishing truths! Here are the flowers of healing, delirium and death; of purity and passion; of greed, envy and virtue; of hope and consolation; of beauty that drives men wild...
 
 
 
Wednesday 1st October 2014 - 6.15pm
Tickets £10 for both events

The American Connection - Chaired by Claire Brainerd

Clive Aslet and The American Influence of English Country Life
Nothing seems more British than a house like Cliveden or Leeds Castle but what became known as the 'country house look' was in fact codified by an American; the greatest of early 20th century gardens, Hidcote, was created by an American; and it was an American romance that caused Edward VIII to abdicate. Clive Aslet discusses the varied destinies by which stupendously wealthy Americans ended up owning great houses and the transformations they brought upon them.
 
Daniel E Sutherland in Conversation with Claire Brainerd
James McNeill Whistler was one of the most influential artists of his generation but the popular perception of him is of a combative, eccentric and unrelenting publicity seeker, a man as renowned for his public feuds with Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin as for the iconic portait of his mother. Sutherland dispels this notion, uncovering an intense, introspective and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing.
 
 
 
 
Thursday 2nd October 2014 - 6.15pm
Tickets £10 for both events

King and Parliament

Chris Bryant MP in Conversation with Lord Radice
Told through the lives of the myriad MPs, lords and bishops who sat on its benches, Parliament is a vivid, colourful biography of a cast of characters whose passions and obsessions, strengths and weaknesses ladid the foundations of modern democracy. 'If you ever thought that modern MPs were more corrupt or worse behaved than their predecessors, then read on.' (Mary Beard)
 
Charles Spencer on The Regicide
Charles I was sentenced to death by a tribunal of 135 men, 59 of whom signed the death warrant. But what happened at the Restoration when retribution was brought against those who condemned their king? From those who returned to the monarchist cause and betrayed their fellow regicides to those who fled the country to escape punishment, this is the story of the men who dared kill a king.
 
 
 
Friday 3rd October - 6.15pm
Tickets £10

The 60s and All That

They say if you remember the sixties you can't have been there - so for those of you who were and can't remember and those of you who weren't but wish they had been, we have a trip down memory lane with books and music: in 1964 mods and rockers were fighting on Brighton beach - 50 years on in his book Mods: The New Religion Paul Anderson has their stories, their suits, their scooters and their music ... Jenny Boyd, ex-model, muse to Donovan and former wife of Mick Fleetwood, was in India with the Beatles and the Maharishi (her sister Pattie was married to George Harrison, then Eric Clapton) - in her book It's Not Only Rock 'N' Roll, 75 iconic musicians reveal their thoughts on creativity and much more...
 
 
 
Saturday 4th October 2014 - 2pm-5pm
Tickets are free

Local History Afternoon

A free event with short talks on local history, including Lincolnshire's WW1 Memorials (SLHA), Magna Carta: the Lincoln Story (Lincoln Cathedral Publications), The Correspondence of William Stukeley & Maurice Johnson (Lincoln Record Society), High Flight: The life and poetry of Pilot Office John Gillespie Magee (Roger Cole) and Dave Start (former Director of Hertitage Trust Lincolnshire) on how to get local history research written-up and published. Bookstalls and authors' signing - a feast of local history!
 
 
 
 
Saturday 4th October 2014 - 6.15pm
Tickets £10 for both events

Evening of Extravagance and Virtue with The Georgians & Victorians

Hannah Greig on The Beau Monde
Caricatured for extravagance, vanity, scandal and gossip, 18th century fashionable society had a reputation for frivolity. But to be 'fashionable' denoted membership of a new type of society: the beau monde, where status was no longer determined by coronets and countryseats alone. Conspicious consumption and display were crucial and by the end of the century being fashionable had become nother less than the key to power and exclusivity in a changed world.
 
Simon Heffer in Conversation with Roger Hudson
Britain in the 1840s was wracked by poverty, fear of riot and revolution and attempts to assassinate the Queen. By the 1880s it was a confident and prosperous nation, transformed by industrialisation and new attitudes to politics, education, women and the working class. Heffer tells the story of a group of dynamic and high-minded politicians and philanthropists, wrtiers and thinkers who remade the country, its institutions and its mindset.