Past Events

Professor Chris Lintott

Our Accidental Universe

BBC presenter of 'Sky at Night', and Gresham Professor of Astronomy, Professor Chris Lintott gave an illuminating talk on his latest book, ‘Our Accidental Universe’.

Described as "a riveting real-life Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, Chris took us on an astonishing tour of bizarre accidents, big characters, and human error to tell the story of some of the most important astronomical events of the past hundred years.

Clare Mulley

Agent Zo

This is the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo, told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the 'Silent Unseen'. She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then the only female member of these SOE affiliated forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland.

Through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten heroine back to life, and also transforms how we see the history of women's agency in the Second World War.

Chloë Ashby

Second Self

When Cathy and Noah first got together neither saw children in their future. Eight years later, they’re happily married – and Cathy isn’t so sure.

With Noah’s patience for his wife’s ambivalence waning, her widowed mother in a world of her own, and her best friend yearning for a second baby, Cathy feels increasingly adrift. Escaping into her work in the conservation studios of the National Gallery, she chips away at the layers of overpaint on a canvas from the collection. Will the discovery of an unexpected truth help her find the clarity she craves?
 

Second Self is a novel about confronting expectations, and learning to cope with the nagging, complex questions that shape a life. It’s about minds and bodies at the mercy of natural forces and social pressure. Above all, it’s an ode to big decisions, small, tender moments, and how we choose to be.

Professor Alice Roberts

Crypt

After a sell-out run in Spring ’22, Professor Alice Roberts is returning in Spring ’24 to tour Crypt. Based on the final instalment of her highly acclaimed book trilogy, this edition (published March 2024), is a spellbinding exploration into the secrets of history, that brings us face to face with people who lived between the 11th and 16th centuries.

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The ‘Crypt’ tour is a one-of-a-kind experience that combines theatrical storytelling, enthralling visuals, and immersive experiences to transport you to the heart of historical civilizations. An inspiring and highly educational show that uses ground-breaking archaeological finds and cutting-edge scientific research to share fascinating stories.

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Andrew Gant

Deck The Hall

A wonderful, festive treat which offers new insights into our Yuletide musical traditions – with a few surprises along the way! In this engaging book, Andrew Gant draws on his extensive professional knowledge as a conductor, composer and singer to reveal the fascinating and often surprising musical stories and social histories behind 27 Christmas carols.

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Many of our best-loved carols are here, including the haunting ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ – regularly voted Britain’s favourite carol – alongside other fascinating but less familiar corners of our rich heritage of folksong.

Jenny Boyd

Jennifer Juniper: a journey beyond the muse

Jenny Boyd’s extraordinary life is the stuff of movies and novels, a story of incredible people and places at a pivotal time in the 20th century.

As an up-and-coming young model, Jenny found herself at the heart of Carnaby Street in London, immersed in the fashion and pop culture of the Swinging 60s. With boyfriend Mick Fleetwood, sister Pattie Boyd, George Harrison and the rest of the Beatles, she lived the London scene.

Jenny became the inspiration for Donovan’s famous song, “Jennifer Juniper”. Her two marriages to Mick Fleetwood, founder member of Fleetwood Mac, brought her to the forefront of the rock and roll world – constant touring coupled with fame, money, drugs and heartbreak.

Alex Grant
Sex, Spies and Scandal

Sex, Spies and Scandal is the story of John Vassall, a civil servant who was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1962. Having been photographed in compromising positions while working at the British embassy in Moscow in 1954, Vassall was blackmailed into handing over secrets from the Admiralty to his Soviet handlers, both in Moscow and in London, for more than seven years.

With access to newly released MI5 files and interviews with people who knew Vassall from the 1950s until his death in 1996, this book sheds new light on the neglected spy scandal of the early 1960s. Despite having been drugged and then raped by the KGB in Moscow, as a gay man John Vassall was shown no mercy by the British press, or the courts. Sentenced to eighteen years in jail, he served ten years despite telling MI5 everything about his spying. Outside, he found that many of his old friends and lovers had been persecuted or dismissed from the civil service in Britain, the US and Australia. Unlike the Cambridge Five, who courted attention, on leaving prison Vassall had to change his name to avoid the press and lived quietly in London.

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This is an explosive tale of violence, betrayal, cover-up, homophobia and hypocrisy that blows open some of the British establishment’s darkest secrets. There is also an intriguing connection between John Vassall and Oundle.

Nick Penny

Call of the Kingfisher

Call of the Kingfisher is the enchanting nature-writing debut from composer and wildlife recordist Nick Penny. This love letter to a short stretch of Northamptonshire’s River Nene celebrates all the wild things that live there, especially the kingfishers.

Nick Penny has walked the footpath by the River Nene near his home at Oundle in Northamptonshire for four decades. But a chance encounter with a kingfisher on New Year’s Day inspired him to observe the waterway and woods nearby more closely. For a whole year he gave the waterway all the time it asked for. Other strands are woven around the elusive feathered protagonist: explorations of local history and landscape, from Roman and Bronze Age sites to watermills and centuries-old stone churches; homages to naturalists from Gilbert White and John Clare to Dame Miriam Rothschild and Sir Peter Scott, who developed his love for nature while at Oundle School.

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This is a book about the things that can be seen and heard when we approach nature with patience and curiosity. It celebrates people who have used that focus to help preserve wildlife and pass on their knowledge to future generations. Above all, Call of the Kingfisher, serves as a call to appreciate what we’ve got, wherever we are, and to use our ears as much as our eyes when we experience the natural world.

Otto English

Otto English dives into the hidden lives of some of history’s biggest names. Separating the myth-builders from the fraudsters and celebrating some of the genuine unsung heroes from our history, Fake Heroes exposes the truth of the past and helps us understand why that matters today.

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Whether it’s virtuous leaders in just wars, martyrs sacrificing all for a cause, or innovators changing the world for the better, down the centuries supposedly great men and women have risen to become household names, saints and heroes. But just how deserving are they of their reputations?

Exploring everything from Captain Scott’s reckless hunt for glory and Andy Warhol’s flagrant thievery to Coco Chanel’s murky Nazi past, Otto English dives into the hidden lives of some of history’s most recognisable names. Scrutinising figures from the worlds of art, politics, business, religion and royalty, he brings to light the murkier truths they would rather have kept buried away, at the same time as celebrating the unsung heroes lost to time.

Angela Harding

Wild Light

Angela Harding studied Fine Art at Leicester 1979 – 1982 and later obtained an MA in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University. After leaving college she continued to develop her personal work as well as working in the arts. Angela works as a professional artist solely from her rural studio in Rutland. She uses a variety of media, including dry point, linocut, woodcut, etching and mono printing.

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The acclaimed printmaker and author gathers together a selection of over 70 original illustrations influenced by the properties of light on landscape and creatures.

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“I, like many other people, find great inspiration in the way mornings, evenings or bright midday light changes the way we see the things around us. The bouncing light of a cloud-filled storm sky can change a seascape through a palette of blues, greys, and turquoises. The cool summer moonlight that crosses my back garden sends long shadows that change the mood of the garden from homely to unfamiliar. And whether it’s the low light of an English February afternoon or the sharp, bright mid-morning light of the Cornish seaside, the light and dark we experience affects our moods."

Chris Moore
Peter Scott and the Birth of Modern Conservation

Published in partnership with the WWT, this book charts the remarkable life of one of Britain’s greatest conservationists.

Peter Scott was a remarkable man who led an extraordinary life. Writer, artist, broadcaster, conservationist, sportsman; in any one of his chosen fields he would have been remembered as someone who made a difference. That he excelled in all of these is perhaps the main reason why his life remains an inspiration to others more than thirty years after his death. To his chosen fields, Peter brought a restless energy, boundless enthusiasm, integrity and determination to succeed.

This new biography charts his life, from the young boy who grew up in the shadow of the tragic death of his famous father to the co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund and a major international figure in wildlife conservation. He attended Oundle School and therefore has a local connection. Along the way he became a passionate wildfowler, an internationally renowned artist, Olympic medal winner, wartime hero, British national glider champion and popular broadcaster who was heavily involved in the development of natural history programmes at the BBC.
 

The book draws in part upon previously unpublished letters and papers discovered in his home during preparations to open it to the public, and casts a new light on some of the events that helped change a passionate hunter of wild geese into the most fervent champion for their survival.

With the current crisis of global warming and the threat of mass extinction of wildlife across the globe, Peter’s story is a vivid reminder of the challenges we face and of what we stand to lose.