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16 July 2026The Cullinan Diamond
18 June 2026CHANGE OF LECTURE How Symphonies were born in a London pub
21 May 2026Dame Laura Knight DBE
16 April 2026The Woman Who Told Us Where to Go!
19 March 2026Charles Rennie Macintosh
19 February 2026The History of American Art in 25 Iconic Works
15 January 2026Never Mind Quantitative Easing, Show us the Bling
04 December 2025Pantomime: When the Fairy’s over 50
20 November 2025Turner and Constable: Romantic RIvals
16 October 2025Sixty Years On: Life in Britain as seen in 1960’s films
18 September 2025Banksy - Fraud or Genius
17 July 2025Troy: The City in Art and Myth
19 June 2025Gilbert & Sullivan: Their Topsy Turvy World
15 May 2025Cartoons & Contraptions: The Wonderful World of W. Heath Robinson
24 April 2025Travels with my Trowel
20 March 2025John Singer Sargent and Fashion
20 February 2025The Road to Santiago de Compostela: Pilgrimage & Spectacle
16 January 2025Atkinson Grimshaw – Master of Moonlight
05 December 2024Monopoly
21 November 2024Packing Up the Nation Saving London's Museums and Galleries in WWII
17 October 2024The Architecture of Mughal India Palaces, Mosques, Gardens and Mausoleums
19 September 2024Atkinson Grimshaw Master of Moonlight
18 July 2024Vivaldi in Venice
20 June 2024Women Artists in Britain An Exhibition at Tate Britain, 2024
16 May 2024James Tissot The Art, Life and Love of a Victorian Painter
18 April 2024Celebrating the Centenary of Winnie-the-Pooh
21 March 2024The Dinosaur Sculptures of Crystal Palace
15 February 2024Modernist Design The Bauhaus and Beyond
18 January 2024Discovering MacDonald Gill Architect, Artist and Mapmaker
07 December 2023From Tchaikovsky to Tin Pan Alley - Uplifting Music for Christmas
16 November 2023Punch, Pineapples and Pygmalion: A Short History of Covent Garden
19 October 2023The Dark Side of the Boom: The Mass Faking of the Soviet Avant Garde
21 September 2023Antony Gormley: A Body of Work
20 July 2023Cinema from the Rubble: The Post-War Politics of Ealing Studios
15 June 2023Five Men Behaving Badly A Really Grand Tour of Kent
18 May 2023The History of the City of London as told through its Stained Glass
13 April 2023The Power of Photography
16 March 2023William Hodges
16 February 2023Les Parisiennes: How Women Lived, Loved and Died in Paris from 1939-1949
19 January 2023"Lest we Forget" The Moving Story of Britain's War Memorials
01 December 2022A Very Ceremonial Christmas
17 November 2022How Napier, NZ, became the Art Deco Capital of the World
20 October 2022Canal History and Heritage
15 September 2022The Anatomy of Collecting - Collecting and Great Collectors Through History
21 July 2022Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture
16 June 2022"Wonderful Things!" - Tutankhamun's Tomb and Treasures
19 May 2022Artimisia Gentileschi - Her Life and Her Art
21 April 2022"Happy & Glorious" - Celebration of the Queen's 70th Anniversary of Accession to the Throne and her Coronation in 1953
17 March 2022Fashion, Fury and Feminism
17 February 2022Bandstands - History, Decline, Revival
20 January 2022The Glamour Years - Jewellery & Fashion 1929-1959
02 December 2021In the Kingdom of Sweets
18 November 2021The Journey of the Magi
21 October 2021The Healing Power of Plants
16 September 2021Treasures of the Fan Museum, Greenwich
15 July 2021Now You See It, Now You Don't - The Art of Visual Deception
17 June 2021The Field of the Cloth of Gold: 6,000 Englishmen in France for 18 days - How did they do it?
20 May 2021Great Railway Stations
15 April 2021The English Country Church
18 March 2021'All Done on Ginger Beer' - Lilian Baylis and the Old Vic Theatre
18 February 2021A Load of Old Balls
21 January 2021Heraldry of the City of London and its Livery Companies
03 December 2020The Magic of Pantomime
19 November 2020Pox and Pestilence - Art and the Unforgiving
15 October 2020The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and the Architecture of Frank Gehry
17 September 2020Collecting & Collectors - The Antiques Roadshow
16 July 2020Basingstoke and its Contribution to World Culture
18 June 2020Jane Austen - Life, Letters and One or Two Early Works
21 May 2020Artemesia Gentileschi
16 April 2020Five Men Behaving Badly
19 March 2020The Glamour Years - Jewellery and Fashion 1929-1959
20 February 2020The Many Faces of William Morris
16 January 2020100 Years of Deception - Hoaxes and Swindlers in the 18thC
05 December 2019The Inventors of Christmas
21 November 2019Zaha Hadid - Architectural Superstar
17 October 201920th Century Glass - New markets
19 September 2019Celebrating a Rich Legacy - Colonial architecture in India
18 July 2019What Really Happened on Easter Island
20 June 2019The Origins of the 'Tudor Rose'
16 May 2019Dazzling Dufy - invitation to a luminous feast
18 April 2019The Art of the Steal - Nazi looting during World War II
21 March 2019Painter of Northern Light - Krøyer and the Skagen Art Colony
21 February 2019Sir Christopher Wren and the City of London Churches
17 January 2019From Bronzes to Banksy - an armchair tour of public art and street art

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The Cullinan Diamond Laurie Wickwire Thursday 16 July 2026

When the Cullinan Diamond was discovered in Pretoria, South Africa in 1905, it raised so many questions..."who will own it, where will it be kept, can it be divided into numerous gems, how much is it worth?"  Join the journey as we experience the stress on Joseph Asscher as he attempted to cut and polish this historic gem. We travel from Rock to Royalty, where our priceless 3,106 carat diamond rough was 'tossed' out of the sorting room window (as it was not believed to be real!) before being 'popped in the post' on its way to King Edward VIIth.