Dr Caroline Shenton To Give Next Arts Society Chiswick Lecture

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Will talk about the Victorian rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament

The latest lecture from the Arts Society Chiswick has been delayed slight as it is again sponsoring theopening event of the Chiswick Book Festival:  21st Century Influencers – Hogarth, Soane and A Rake’s Progress. You can view that discussion below.

This means that the society’s next lecture will be Mr Barry’s War: rebuilding the Houses of Parliament by Dr Caroline Shenton which it will stream live on Zoom at 6.30pm on Thursday 17 September.

Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives and a senior archivist at the National Archives, and a fellow of a number of learned societies. Her book  The Day Parliament Burned Down  won top prize at the inaugural Political Book Awards in 2013, and its sequel  Mr Barry’s War, about the rebuilding of Parliament, was a book of the year for the Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine in 2016. She was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in 2017, and is currently working on her third book.

Mr Barry’s War: rebuilding the Houses of Parliament is a highly topical lecture, given the current arguments about the multi-billion pound restoration planned for Westminster. The Houses of Parliament is one of the most famous and staggering buildings in the world. It rises serenely from the Thames at Westminster, on a site which has been the centre of power and government in England from the earliest times. It is a masterpiece of Victorian architecture and a spectacular feat of civil engineering: but from the beginning, its design and construction were a battleground for its architect, Charles Barry. The practical challenges, even by the standards of Victorian invention, were immense. Battling the interference of MPs and royalty, coaxing and soothing the genius of his partner Pugin, fending off the mad schemes of a host of crackpot inventors and busybodies, and coming in three times over budget and twenty-four years behind schedule, this lecture will tell the story of how Charles Barry created the most famous building in Britain.

 

The society’s Zoom events are for members only but it is not too late to join The Arts Society Chiswick.   Its reduced membership fee for those wishing to become a member towards the end of the year is now available. Full details can be found on the Joining Us page of its website . For £15 members will have access to three more lectures this year.

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September 11, 2020