Details of illustrated talks

Click on the title of a talk below to find out who gives it, how much they charge and their contact details. Please note that inclusion in this list does not signify OLHA’s recommendation.

100 Radley objects

1066: Oxfordshire’s part in the Norman Conquest – a light-hearted romp

1909 strike at Ruskin College: the Plebs League, the Great Unrest and Independent Working-Class Education

1940s boy scouts: how they were recruited into Churchill’s secret army

1940s girl guides: a forgotten army of 750,000

350 years of glasshouses at the Oxford Botanic Garden

A 17th-century Christmas

A guides’ guide: working in historic houses in the 21st century

A Passion for Fashion – 300 Years of Style at Blenheim Palace

A Walk Through History – The Gardens at Blenheim Palace

Abingdon Abbey’s deer park and Radley Large Wood

Aftermath: the peace 1919 – 1939

Air Transport Auxiliary: unsung heroes of World War II

Aircraft production at South Marston

Alice’s adventures in Oxford: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames

Alice and the Dodo in Oxford

All that glitters: Woodstock’s cut steel industry

Always Ready, Always Willing: the story of fires and firefighting in the city of Oxford from 879 to 1974

Ancient English Morris Dance

Apples! The myth and mystery of England’s favourite fruit

Archaeology of Stowe Landscape Garden

Architecture of Oxford University

Armistice 1918 and after: some local perspectives

Artists in Wonderland: the Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford

Australian Flying Corps in the Cotswolds in World War I

Astrop Spa – the history of

Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House, two of Warwickshire’s finest properties: recent archaeological discoveries

Battle of Cropredy Bridge and the Oxfordshire Campaign

Beating the ancient bounds of Oxford city: memorable moments from the last 500 years

Beer, sausages and marmalade: Oxford food and drink in the 19th century

Blenheim Palace – Christmas Past and Present

Bodleian Library, Oxford University: a tour

Brewing in Oxford

British suffrage movement: the gender agenda

Brome and Whorwood families of Holton Park: recusants and royalists

Can onions cure earache? Medical advice from the 1700s

Canal history: the world to Wiltshire, from 520BC to the present day

Canal people: the very many people who can be described as such

Canal restoration: benefits to wildlife and the environment

Capability Brown at Radley: rediscovering a lost landscape

Cemeteries of Oxford – more than a century of history

Child labour in 19th-century Oxfordshire

Children and war: children’s experiences of the Second World War in Oxfordshire

Cholsey miscellany

Christmas in the Cotswolds

City of Oxford during the Civil War, 1642-46

Coleshill – Nerve Centre of British Resistance

Common lodging-houses in Victorian England

Common right – private property: how enclosure shaped the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire landscape

Conscientious objection, religion and the public in Oxford in 1916: the Church in revolt?

Conscientious objectors and the First World War military service tribunals of Oxfordshire

Conscientious objectors in First World War Oxfordshire

Corruption of Parliament? MPs, money and public service in modern Britain

Cotswolds cornucopia: a whirlwind tour taking in sites and stories, landmarks and surprises

Cotswolds Navy: what’s in a name?

Cowley Road, in the context of the social history of East Oxford (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)

Creative women – the history of women involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement in Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds (including Jane and May Morris)

Crime and punishment in Victorian Britain

Cropredy: developing the archaeology of a village

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein

Dad’s underground army: the Auxiliary Units of the British Resistance Organisation

Daniel ‘Damnable’ Harris: Oxford Castle gaoler extraordinaire

Defences of Southern England and the South Midlands in World War II

Deserted settlements of Radley

Disaster waiting: the Severn Bridge Disaster

Drovers’ roads in Oxfordshire and beyond

Early women professional gardeners, including the founders of Waterperry

Edwardians on the Move

Einstein and the refugee scholars in Oxford

Elizabeth Wisdom(e): the Chipping Norton murderess?

English prophets: Mother Shipton, Joanna Southcott and John Wroe, a curious history

Fair Mile Hospital: a quick overview

Famous local folk: the people behind the blue plaques of South Oxfordshire

Farnborough Hall and the development of a Georgian estate

Fight against fascism in Oxford

First World War – the first two years

First World War – from the Somme to the Armistice

Fishponds and fishing in Oxfordshire and around: an archaeological perspective

Five generations at Fair Mile Hospital

Flower Pots: A Torquay Pottery Flora

Food of the Gods: adventures in chocolate

Fore and aft: the Purton Ship Graveyard

Friends’ [Quakers’] Ambulance Unit: its humanitarian relief work across Europe in the First and Second World Wars

From assembly rooms to public toilets: the uses and abuses of spa architecture

From Axtell to Zacharias: the men who built Oxford

Further tales from the Historic Environment Image Resource (HEIR) Project

Garden archaeology: “not that kind of digging”, an overview of recent discoveries in historic gardens

Get your kicks on … the A40: a ride across England, through Oxfordshire, to Wales, and how the A40 links Egypt, France, and Spain

Getting Around in the 1960s

Glenn Miller: the magic and the mystery

Glimpses of the other Oxford through the eyes of a Victorian mission

Glove-making in Oxfordshire

Goring’s Wonderful Railway

Great Exhibition of 1851: a crystal vision of Victorian Britain

Green Man trail in Oxfordshire

GWR Abingdon Branch: a short history

Harcourt Arboretum: the first 50 years

Hardit Singh Malik: the Flying Sikh

Harvest rituals

History of Oxford University

Holton Park: an estate and family through the lens of the 1890s

Holton Park: from medieval manor to secondary academy – 1,000 years of change and continuity

Home Front in World War II

How many architects named Gilbert Scott do you know?

How the brownies helped win World War II, including their secret work for MI9

How the English fell in love coffee

How the English fell in love with tea

How to publish your local history (with Oxfordshire case studies)

Impact of the First World War on Oxford’s women’s lives

In defence of the drift: a Gloster boy abroad

Indian Army during the First World War: an Oxf and Bucks Light Infantry perspective

Industrial archaeology in your garage, shed and attic

Influential 20th-century women gardeners and designers in Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds (including Norah Lindsey and Rosemary Verey)

Isn’t it cold in the winter? Life on a Dutch barge

It’s a Girl’s Life in the Army

James Ryman, art dealer and picture frame maker: “The Richest Man in Oxford”

James Sadler and me: how the first Englishman to fly enabled me to overcome lifelong height anxiety

James Sadler, Oxford pastry cook and the first English aeronaut

Jericho: Oxford’s first industrial suburb, from cholera epidemics to gentrification (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)

John Taylor the Waterpoet: mad, sad, glad and bad Civil War Oxford

Jutland to junkyard: scuttling the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow

Keble College, Oxford, and The Light of the World by William Holman-Hunt

Kidlington in the Great War: The lost soldiers’ stories and remembrance in an Oxfordshire village

Kingerlee: the family and the building firm

Ladies of Blenheim Palace – Lust and Laudanum

Leisure and entertainment in Victorian and Edwardian Oxford

Licensed to vote: the impact of the 1918 Representation of the People Act on Oxford/Oxfordshire women (including the suffragists and suffragettes)

Light in the darkest hour: Dunkirk’s Little Ships

Lights, Camera, Action; Blenheim Palace, the star of film & TV!

Literary Oxford

Lives of local Medieval saints

Living the Lexicon: James Murray and the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary

Local history: how to do it!

Lord Nuffield’s great generosity to the Oxford colleges

Lord’s – the home of cricket

Lost villages of Oxfordshire (or Northamptonshire / Warwickshire / Buckinghamshire)

Lydney’s lost fleet: the Lydney Ship Graveyard

Meet at dawn, unarmed: the Christmas Truce of 1914

Memories of the Vale: a lost way of life before the railways came to the countryside

Miracle of Bletchley Park

Mitford Sisters

More than three men in a boat: the rise and fall of pleasure boating on the Thames

Morris dancing [tailored to area where appropriate]

Morris’s motopolis: the motor works and the transformation of Oxford

My Gulf War (Operation Granby): a look at life in HQ British Forces Middle East 1990/91

Nineteenth-century women travellers and explorers

No corsets! The aesthetic and rational dress movements come to Oxford

Northamptonshire and its hearth taxes

Not just Napoleon and Jane Austen: lesser known weird and wonderful memories from 1815

Nuffield College’s “Island Site” in west Oxford

Odd Men and Necessary Women – Servants of a Great Palace

Old Time Christmas

Olive Gibbs, local politician and peace campaigner

On Easter at Christmas: exploring the myth of Easter Island

On this day in Oxfordshire: a true, historical story for every day of the year

On two wheels: the fascinating story of the bicycle

Otmoor Riots in a wider context

Our boys 1914-1918: who were the fallen of one Oxfordshire valley?

Over the hills to glory: the story of the Ascott Martyrs

Oxf and Bucks on the Somme, 1916

Oxford: 800 years of social struggle and radical scholarship (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)

Oxford Castle: 17th- and 18th-century crimes, escapes, and punishments

Oxford, city of writers and wordplay: puns, printing and personas

Oxford in the Civil War (a)

Oxford in the Civil War (b)

Oxford in the history of medicine

Oxford of Inspector Morse

Oxford past and present: images from the Historic Environment Image Resource (HEIR) Project

Oxford’s 400-year-old Botanic Garden: notable keepers, visitors and events

Oxford’s architecture

Oxford’s historic waterways: the Oxford Canal, the Thames and the Cherwell

Oxford’s Jewish heritage

Oxford’s penicillin: the forgotten WW2 story of the development of penicillin by scientists in Oxford

Oxford Preservation Trust – opening doors all year round

Oxford town and gown: a literary and historical overview

Oxford University: a history

Oxfordshire at the Great Exhibition

Oxfordshire in the British Civil Wars 1642-51

Oxfordshire in the Second World War

Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39

Oxfordshire country houses

Oxfordshire Home Front, 1914-18

Oxfordshire Morris dancing: a history, with live music, dance and the option for audience participation

Oxfordshire on canvas: how artists have captured the local area and been influenced by it

Oxford(shire) waterways: a literary tour

Oxfordshire’s military heritage: 43AD to the present day

Pagans and puritans: the story of May Morning in Oxford

Paradise lost and restored: 400 years of garden design in Oxfordshire

Percy Manning, the man who collected Oxfordshire

Peripatetic poor in the eighteenth century

Place-names, landscape and settlement in the Banbury region

Poor Law in the eighteenth century: the crisis in the parishes

Poppy: symbol of remembrance

Port to port: a historical journey, the length and breadth of the Sharpness to Gloucester Canal

Portraits of two 18th-century gentlemen

Poverty, pestilence and public health in Victorian Britain

Power and personalities: politics in Victorian and Edwardian Oxford

Printed maps of Oxfordshire and of the adjoining counties: their history and development

‘Professors of Rowing’: the first Oxford-Cambridge boat races

Publicans and builders: the Capels of Cumnor and Boars Hill

Published sources for family and local history

Radley gentry, yeomen and land

Radley Church and the Civil War

Radley College: the history of the school, grounds and buildings

Radley: the thousand-year evolution of a manor

Radley timber framed buildings

RAF at 100

RAF Brize Norton: over 80 years of flying operations

Richard (Beau) Nash and the making of Bath Spa

Ridge and furrow – what’s it all about?

River at war: why the Thames was such an important strategic feature in World War II

Remembrance after the Great War

Research at home using Oxfordshire libraries’ on-line resources

Restoration and Conservation – The Ongoing Battle for Blenheim

Roman invasions, occupation and colonisation of Britain

Romans of Oxfordshire

Rose Hill, Oxford: an area of surprising contrasts and great historical interest

Rout on the Riviera – Exercise Tiger – The Slapton Sands Disaster

Ruskin College: the ‘ups and downs’, a history of the college

Ruthless land speculators in early nineteenth-century Oxford: Crews Dudley and George Kimber

Saints and sinners: Victorian and Edwardian religion in Oxfordshire

Saints, Sinners & Scoundrels! Colourful Characters from Blenheim Palace’s Past

Salt in prehistoric Britain

Sarah the Indomitable Duchess – a Lesson in Love…and Hate

Saunders of the River – Sam E Saunders, boat builder of Goring, Streatley and founder of the Aviation Company Saunders Roe

Scandal in High Society Oxfordshire: selected tales of toffs in trouble

Sculls, skiffs and steamers: the history of Salter’s Steamers

Seventeenth century village – who was in charge?

Sex, drink and death in the 17th century

Sharpness scuppered ships: the Sharpness Ship Graveyard

Shaw House: Berkshire’s hidden gem

Soldiers, saints and sinners: Oxfordshire characters from the British Civil War, 1642-46

Solomon’s Might: the Loss of Penlee Lifeboat

Spa towns: individual talks on Buxton, Bath, Bristol Hotwells, Harrogate, Cheltenham, Tunbridge Wells, and Leamington Spa

St Peter’s College, Oxford, and the Duncan Grant Collection

St Thomas the Martyr, a West Oxford parish

Stolen lives: individual tragedies of the Great War

‘Taking the waters’: the waxing and waning of the English spa

Thames Path from the source near Cirencester towards Oxford

Thames Path from Oxford to Pangbourne

Thames Path from Pangbourne to Marlow

Thames Path from Marlow to Runnymede

Thames Path from Runnymede to Teddington

The coming of the railway to Oxford

The elusive Lewis Carroll

The Great Stink! Engineers, sewerage systems and the Victorian battle against dirt

The invisible brick: revealed in language and literature, film and fiction, music and murder, in the local area and much more

‘The Joneses of Jesus’ and Oxford’s other Welsh connections

‘Those goody-goody fellows’: the Quaker India Conciliation Group and Indian independence in the 1930s

Thousands of miles in the Rob Roy canoe: the life and times of John MacGregor

‘Three weeks in wet sheets’: hydrotherapy in 19th-century England

Three women’s contributions to the revival of growing and using herbs in the 20th century, working in Oxford, the Chilterns and the Cotswolds

Titanic Effort! – RMS Carpathia’s dash to save a stricken liner

Titanic: marvels, myths and the midlands – the world’s most famous ship and its surprising connections to the middle of England

Toasters and egg cups

Tom Carter of Marsh Baldon: the invisible collector

Town Lands: the story of Henley Workhouse

Tracks to the Trenches

Transport in the Goring Gap: an Illustrated History

Travels with Auntie: my life at the BBC World Service

Unknown Churchill – Winston Spencer Churchill and Blenheim Palace

Unknown Warrior

University of Oxford Botanic Garden: the first 100 years

University of Oxford Botanic Garden: the first 393 years

Unravelling the mysterious making of the Stonesfield Embroidery

Upper Thames Patrol

Upper Thames Patrol: the waterborne Home Guard of the River Thames

US Ninth Air Force in the UK in World War II

Victorian and Edwardian development of East Oxford

Victorian and Edwardian industrial buildings of Oxford

Victorian and Edwardian leisure: the pursuit of pleasure

Victorian Christmas

Victorian workhouse

Votes for women in Oxford (and/or Oxfordshire)

Voyages to the House of Diversion: Hanwell Castle and its Jacobean park

Wartime children

Water gypsy: how a Thames fishergirl became a viscountess

West Country defences in World War II

Wharfs, wheelhouses and watermen: the history of Hobbs of Henley

Where are the boys? The first fateful day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916

William Castle: a notable Banbury eccentric and Morris Fool

Wilts & Berks Canal: past, present and future

Women of World War II

Women in Air Force Blue

Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) in World War II: the largest female voluntary organisation ever

Woodstock: the glove-making mecca, with stories of club-wielding savages, creepy ghosts and a one-legged criminal

World War I memorials: public schools in the Great War

World War II rationing and cooking for victory: a fair share for all (with demonstrations and tasting samples)

Wreckers’ tales: ship breakers of the Severn

Wrecks to relics: Purton’s Mulberry Blueprint

WWII at Blenheim Palace – Evacuees and Espionage

X marks the spot: ballot papers in Britain, France and the US, c. 1750-1950

Yesterday’s childhood

Yesterday’s runways: airfields of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds

Yesterday’s runways: from World War II into the 21st century

Z-A of Oxford: 1000 years of history in 26 letters – an entertaining talk about the city’s eccentric past