HISTORIANS AT THE CASTLE

Writers at the Castle 2010 (5–7 November)

Places are still available on the 2011 Writers at the Castle weekend, this year focusing on History. The speakers are six of the most distinguished and exciting historians in Britain today: Professor Mary Beard, Professor Tim Blanning, Professor Richard Holmes, Dr Tristram Hunt, Professor Helen King and Dr Ian Mortimer. See below for biographies.

Ensconced with the audience in the Castle Hotel in Taunton they talk both about their recent books and current research and also about the nature of the study of history and the challenges to the subject in modern education. Discussions and Q&A sessions form part of the programme. We have selected historians who are not only leaders in their fields but are stimulating and thought-provoking speakers. Between them they cover a very wide range of subjects, from the destruction of Pompeii to the fall of Basra, from Henry V to Friedrich Engels, from ancient Greek medicine to the Romantic revolution.

A distinctive feature of these weekends is that unlike conventional literary festivals the speakers’ presence is fairly continuous, for 24 or 48 hours, and extends to informal interaction during refreshment breaks and dinners.

The Castle is famous for its comfort, its excellent and caring service and superb, award-winning food. We have exclusive use of the hotel for the duration of the weekend. The number of residential participants is limited to 64. In addition, a number of tickets are sold to non-residents for individual sessions.
The residential package per person: £580 or £710 for a suite (deposit £100). This includes admission to all the talks and discussions, accommodation for two nights in The Castle Hotel, two breakfasts and two dinners (wine and coffee included), refreshments before and between the sessions, gratuities for hotel staff. There is no single-room supplement.

Talks and discussions only: £14 for the morning sessions, £16 for the evening sessions. Refreshments are not included but are available for purchase. Tickets without the residential package are available from The Castle on 01823 272 671.
Visit www.martinrandall.com/writersatthecastle for more details and a booking form or telephone Martin Randall Travel on 020 8742 3355.

The Speakers are:

Professor Mary Beard
The best-known classicist in Britain today, Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge where she has taught for the last 25 years. She has written numerous books on the Ancient World, including the 2008 Wolfson Prize-winner, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (Profile 2008), The Roman Triumph (Harvard 2007), Classical Art from Greece to Rome (Oxford University Press 2001) and books on the Parthenon and the Colosseum. Her interests range from the social and cultural life of Ancient Greece and Rome to the Victorian understanding of antiquity. Mary is Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines.

Professor Tim Blanning
Until his retirement in 2009, Tim Blanning was Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge where he gained a reputation for the vitality and incisiveness of his lectures. He remains a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and is a Fellow of the British Academy. Recent publications are the award-winning The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture 1660-1789 (Oxford University Press 2002), The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (Penguin 2006), The Triumph of Music (Penguin 2008) and The Romantic Revolution (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2010).

Professor Richard Holmes CBE TD
A celebrated military historian and TV presenter, Richard Holmes is famous for his BBC series, War Walks and Wellington. He taught military history at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst for many years and until 2009 was Professor (now Professor Emeritus) of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Defence Academy of the UK. He enlisted in the Territorial Army in 1964 and rose to the rank of brigadier. He has written twenty-five books, including a trilogy on the British soldier, Redcoat (2001), the best-seller Tommy (Harper 2005) and Sahib (Harper 2006) and has presented seven documentary series for BBC 2, including In the Footsteps of Churchill in 2005.

Dr Tristram Hunt
One of the most prominent and talented of younger historians, Tristram Hunt is Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London. An expert on Victorian civic pride and British urban history, Tristram is author of Building Jerusalem: the Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2004) and The Frock-Coated Communist: the Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (Penguin 2009). He is Trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and writes for The Guardian, The Times and The Observer and broadcasts regularly for BBC TV, radio and Channel 4.

Professor Helen King
Helen King is Professor of the History of Classical Medicine at the University of Reading, where she teaches Greek, Roman and Renaissance medicine. Among her publications are Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the female body in ancient Greece (Routledge 1998) and Greek and Roman Medicine (Duckworth 2001), and she edited the journal Social History of Medicine for five years. Helen is the leading authority on the practice and theory of ancient medicine as relating to women and how it continues to influence present day thought. She has held research fellowships in Cambridge, Newcastle and the Netherlands, has taught in Liverpool, and held visiting professorships in British Columbia, at the University of Texas, at Austin, and at the Peninsula Medical School (Exeter and Plymouth).

Dr Ian Mortimer
Ian Mortimer is one of today’s most original and innovative historical authors. He is the author of four works on English medieval history, The Greatest Traitor (Jonathan Cape 2003), The Perfect King (Jonathan Cape 2006), The Fears of Henry IV (Jonathan Cape 2007) and 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (Bodley Head 2009), and The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (Bodley Head 2008). Ian Mortimer is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Research Fellow at Exeter University.

THE PROGRAMME
Friday afternoon & evening
3.00pm Afternoon tea
4.15pm Talks and Q&A: Holmes, Blanning.
6.00pm Drinks
6.40pm Discussion: Blanning, Holmes, Hunt, King
7.45pm Dinner
Saturday morning
10.00am Talks and Q&A: Hunt and King.
11.30am Coffee
12.00pm Discussion: Blanning, Holmes, Hunt, King
Saturday afternoon & evening
3.30pm Afternoon tea
4.15pm Talks and Q&A: Beard, Hunt.
6.00pm Drinks
6.40pm Discussion: Beard, Blanning, Hunt, Mortimer
7.45pm Dinner
Sunday morning
10.00am Talks and Q&A: Mortimer, Blanning.
11.30am Coffee
12.00pm Discussion: Beard, Blanning, Hunt, Mortimer

For further information, please contact:
Guy Hinton
T: 020 8742 3355 E: guy@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com