Detail of the planned talks are below. All will be at St Mary’s Centre starting at 8pm.
This is another wonderfully varied programme, with plenty for us all to enjoy – and learn from!
11 September 2025, Colin Richards – Denham Film Studios
The rise and fall in the 1930s of Britain’s largest, most glamourous and modern film studios. Starring Alexander Korda as the MI6 Spy, Scruffy the Dog, a “Cast of Thousands”, Marlene Dietrich, as herself, and scripts by Winston Churchill. Plus, after filmmaking ceased in 1952, photocopiers, a plane crash, a sensational murder trial and the most technologically advanced recording studio in Europe. Finally, we’ll see what little remains today.
9 October 2025, Lewis Foreman – Rickmansworth and the three rivers reflecting a musical age
While the residence of conductor Sir Henry Wood at Chorleywood and music publisher Hubert Foss at Rickmansworth in the 1930s meant that many leading composers of the day visited them here, the emergence of Watford Town Hall as a pre-eminent orchestral recording acoustic put the district on the map for the wider public. Ease of transport into London on the Metropolitan and Chiltern lines has long meant that musicians associated with the Royal Academy of Music and London orchestras have favoured living in Rickmansworth and Chorleywood. Not the least of these was television composer Christopher Gunning of Croxley Green, who died on 25 March 2023, and whose Memorial Service at St Mary’s on 28 April 2023 attracted a remarkable assembly of leading names in television and film music.
13 November 2025, Timandra Slade – From a hard place to a rock
During a house clearance Timandra Slade discovered papers relating to her father’s army career, including a journal which recounted his remarkable escape from the Germans in June 1940 having been captured on a beach in northern France. After many weeks of travelling and crossing the Pyrenees into Spain her father was, by a remarkable coincidence, reunited with his cousin who had similarly escaped from his captors. Using her family’s first-hand accounts Timandra will tell us about life on the run in France during those early days of German occupation and the part played by local Hertfordshire resident, the architect Dennis Lennon.
11 December 2025, members, Bring and tell. This is now a real fixture in our season, and members, friends and others are encouraged to bring along something of significance to them and talk about it for about five minutes. Rumour has it that minced pies will also be available!
8 January 2026, Simon Morgan – 2000 years of traffic signs
Simon Morgan was commissioned by the Department for Transport to rewrite their official History of British Road Signs. Whilst this has not yet been published, Simon will draw upon his research and go back even further in time to the Roman period and the signage provided then. He will fast-forward in time to the stage coach era, turnpike roads, and the rise in popularity of first cycling and then motor vehicles, and their respective signing needs. He will cover how our present system was developed, following its incremental improvements throughout the 20th century.
12 February 2026, Richard Dennis – The Metropolitan Railway in the First World War When war broke out the Metropolitan Railway at first assumed it would have little impact at home, continuing to plan new extensions and launching its promotion of ‘Metroland’. Under government control, the company’s tracks through central London assumed strategic importance for troop movements and freight to the channel ports. Central government wanted railways to save fuel by reducing train services, but passenger numbers increased as families moved out of central London. The Metropolitan lost staff to military service, some to build railways in Flanders, and women replaced men in an increasing range of jobs on the railway.
12 March 2026, Ronald Koorm, Fake News or deceiving the enemy during WW2
The talk on Fake News covers a variety of examples of how the enemy in WW2 was deceived by the Allies using different methods, including graphics, camouflage, audio sound, codebreaking, and various trickery. D-Day is also part of the deception example. I complete the talk by giving an example of Cold War deception in the early 1950s and a true story linking me, (in a manner of speaking), to a famous foreign spy, when I was in my teens. (President Putin gave a moving eulogy praising the spy in some detail, on his death.)
9 April 2026, Trevor Spinage, London Oddities
London has a number of ‘oddities’, some of which we will explore in this talk. For example, why is there a lighthouse opposite a major London railway station? Where in London is it compulsory to drive on the right hand side of the road? And why does a statue of William Gladstone appear to have blood on its hands?
14 May 2026, John Taylor – Joseph Arden of Rickmansworth Park: collector, traveller and antiquary
Joseph Arden (1799-1879), a successful London barrister, developed Rickmansworth Park as his country estate in the 1830s-40s. A man of varied cultural pursuits, Arden acquired paintings from artists such as John Everett Millais, became a patron of Drury Lane theatre and campaigned for the purchase of Shakespeare’s birthplace for the nation. He also had a keen interest in the ancient world, which led to his becoming a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and travelling in Greece and Egypt. This talk will focus on Arden’s antiquarian tastes and will consider some of the souvenirs which he collected on his travels, including a unique Greek literary papyrus and two Egyptian mummies, which were unwrapped and examined before enthusiastic audiences in the 1840s.
11 June 2026, the AGM.
Then Brian Thomson: John Newton – Slave Trader and Priest – and 250 Years of Amazing Grace
Both William Cowper and the preacher John Newton lived in Olney, Bucks in the 1770s and both were remarkable in different ways. Newton went to sea at an early age and became the captain of slave ships taking captives from West Africa to the Caribbean slave plantations, but in the 1750s he became a strong evangelical Christian and eventually a Church of England priest. Cowper was a failed lawyer who suffered from serious mental ill-health. Poetry became his self-expression and he was a strong influence on contemporaries including William Blake, Jane Austen and William Wordsworth. Newton and Cowper became friends and collaborated in writing the Olney hymns published in 1779. They both played a role in supporting the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Newton testified to Parliament about the brutality of slavery and Cowper wrote anti-slavery poems that were widely circulated. ‘Amazing Grace’ was one of Newton’s Olney hymns.
Then we’ll take a break until September 2026!
Talks delivered in the current season will be listed as they happen!
Rickmansworth Historical Society 