Past Events
Oct 2023 to Jun 2024
20 Jun 2024 by Jennie Ensor
National Crime Reading Month: How Lockdown inspired The Bad Neighbour
Author Jennie Ensor in conversation with actress Diana Berriman
As awful and unsettling as it was, my experience of living through the Covid-induced lockdowns had at least one positive outcome, as far as I’m concerned: it inspired my fifth book. Set in an English village in 2020 from the start of the first lockdown in England, The Bad Neighbour is centred on the relationships between three women who are neighbours. Along with the role of female friendship in overcoming adversity, I was interested in exploring the impact of the pandemic and the powerful forces for both good and bad that it seemed to unleash from within our psyches.
Please also visit The National Crime Reading month site which has additional details about other events going on over the month.
BAD NEIGHBOUR BLURB
In March 2020, the Covid pandemic hits the sleepy English village of Brampton. At the start of lockdown, local busybody Tara Sanderson sets up a community group to help vulnerable residents through the crisis. Elderly Elspeth Chambers, her longstanding neighbour and friend, accepts Tara’s offer to buy food and collect medicine for her.
But it isn’t long before neighbourliness and community spirit turn sour. Tensions arise when Tara becomes jealous of Elspeth’s emerging friendship with Ashley Kahn, a recent arrival in Wilton Close. Suspecting there is more to Tara’s hostility toward them than meets the eye, Ashley and Elspeth start to uncover their neighbour’s long-buried secrets...
16 May 2024 by Dr Bea Lewkowicz
The 85th Anniversary of the Kindertransport: Commemoration and Memory
An illustrated talk by Dr Bea Lewkowicz
In this talk Dr Bea Lewkowicz will reflect on the history and representation of the Kindertransport and present the voices of the Kindertransport Refugees, some of whom settled in Belsize Park, from the AJR Refugees Voices Archive, which has captured more than 80 Kinder interviews in the last 20 years. This presentation will explore the experiences of the women and men who came to Britain in 1938/1939 as unaccompanied children and will focus on some of the struggles they faced.
Dr Bea Lewkowicz is the director and co-founder of the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive which she created for the Association of Jewish Refugees. She is also the co-founder and director of Sephardi Voices UK, an oral history archive which focused on the stories of Jews from the Middle east, North Africa, and Iran. From the beginning of her career she focused on capturing the stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees trying to ensure that these stories will be saved for future generations and disseminated to broader audiences. She has conducted more than 200 interviews with British Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazism and passionately believes in the power of testimonies. Bea has curated several exhibitions, such as ‘Continental Britons’, ‘Double Exposure’, ‘Sephardi Voices’, ‘Still in Our Hands: Kinder Life Portraits’. She was the academic advisor for the exhibition ‘I said Auf Wiedersehen’, displayed at the German Bundestag in January and February 2024. Among her publications are ‘The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, and Identity (2006), ‘This is the Story of my Life’: An Interview with Julius Carlebach’ (2020), and Émigré Voices: Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria (2022).
For more information, please visit: bealewkowiczarchive.com.
18 April 2024 by Averil Nottage
From Elysian Fields to Trains and Villlas
An illustrated talk by Local Historian Averil Nottage about the development of the Chalcots/Eton College Estae in the first half of 19thC
Until the 1830’s the Eton College estate was covered with hay meadows that fed London's horses. Londoners were attracted to these isolated fields to fight duels, protest and enjoy country walks. Then the railway arrived, cutting through the meadows and soon roads and villas followed as well as dairies, market gardens and exotic poultry. Find out about all of this, and much more, in our talk.
There is a John Constable painting called View of the City of London from Sir Richard Steele’s Cottage painted in 1832. It looks at the view south from Haverstock Hill and focuses on the few local buildings with the City of London in the distance, rather than the surrounding fields.
21 March 2024 by Rosmond Kinsey Milner
Angelica Kauffman (1741 – 1807): artist, entrepreneur and progressive
An illustrated presentation by Rosmond Kinsey Milner,
to coincide with a major retrospective of her work at the
Royal Academy 1 March - 30 June 2024
“The whole World is angelicamad ”, was how one commentator described Angelica Kauffman’s effect on society. From child genius to founding member of the Royal Academy, from renowned history painter and portraitist to celebrity designer, Miss Angel, as she was affectionately called by her mentor Sir Joshua Reynolds, was one of the eighteenth century’s most internationally acclaimed artists. Her alter ego was Miss Kauffman, successful business woman with a knack for self-promotion and a distinct brand of merchandise, who, unusually, kept her maiden name throughout her life and who insisted on Hollywood style ‘pre-nup’ agreements for both her marriages. After two centuries of neglect her art is finally being re-evaluated with a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in Spring. Kenwood House is lending two paintings from their significant collection of five of her paintings and two of her prints in the Iveagh Bequest.
21 February 2024 by Tudor Allen
Treasures of the Archives from the Collection of Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre
Tudor Allen, Archivist at Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, presents some of the highlights from the Centre’s collections including photographs, art works, rare books, archives and ephemera. Among the items examined will be a 16th century deed, a King James the First letters patent, 18th century workhouse accounts, Hampstead Militia muskets, Second World War civil defence records, and letters of Millicent Fawcett, Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw.
18 January 2024 by Martin Sheppard
Belsize Park, England’s Lane and Primrose Hill in the Second World War
When and where did the bombs, and the V1s and V2s, fall in Belsize Park, England’s Lane and Primrose Hill during the Second World War? Who was killed and what was destroyed or damaged? Where were the bomb shelters and what happened to local men, women and children? What guns were on Primrose Hill? What happened to the Zoo? Martin Sheppard, a leading historian of the area, will describe the experience of living in the area between 1939 and 1945.
His talk will be topped and tailed by two music hall songs about Primrose Hill sung by local singer Martin Nelson.
14 December 2023 by Karin Fernald
The Blue Hour: Painting the North Romantic Nationalism in Nordic artists c l880 - 1900
Hans Christian Andersen was a vivid travel writer, exciting others to follow him – even to the stormy tip of Jutland, where the North Sea meets the Baltic. They include artists keen to paint that remote, wild landscape. “Why must we seek inspiration in Italy?” asks one Swede. “Does not our nature reflect eternity? Does not our gaze embrace the sky – and what a sky!” In Sweden, symbolist artist Prince Eugen, youngest son of the king, depicts the skies, forests and folk arts of Dalarna, central Sweden. He and others feature The Blue Hour, de blo timmarna - that half hour after sunset suffused with blue light, a light which becomes iconic of the North
16 November 2023 by Lester Hillman
Lester Hillman on All Things Camden
William Camden gave his name to today's London Borough and a host of streets, places and institutions. Dickens played with the name and there are Camdens hidden in Jules Verne's writings. In the week of Camden's passing, on Lord Mayor's Show Day 1623, 400 years ago, Belsize Library explores these links and more. There were global dramas and other individuals feature on the way to today's London A to Z listings and the many Camdens around the world. Did William Camden ever set foot in 'Camden'? Would we call our local authority Camden if we were naming it today? These and other questions will be explored in an unique presentation led by Lester Hillman who has written and supported events on the subject and is a previous speaker
19 October 2023 by Carol Isaacs
Carol Isaacs: The Wolf of Baghdad
Carol Isaacs’s graphic memoir The Wolf of Baghdad (one of the Guardian’s top graphic novels) is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited. It is illuminated by the words and portraits of her Iraqi-Jewish family.
In the 1940’s, a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all of Iraq’s 150,000 Jews had fled. Of those remaining, most escaped in the 1970’s or were killed. Today only 4 remain.
A short video preview of The Wolf of Baghdad book with a soundtrack of Iraqi and Judeo-Arabic music will be shown by its creator, musician Carol Isaacs. Also known as cartoonist The Surreal McCoy, her work has been published in the New Yorker and Private Eye. Carol will also present a slideshow to provide historical context and a background about the making of the project, discussing themes of identity and belonging and the little-known story of Iraqi Jews.