Her research looks at societies in Andalucía and Sicily where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures flourished, each building on a Classical past. Jonathan Keates. Author, journalist and teacher. His books include Purcell: A Biography and The Siege Of Venice, and fiction includes short story collections Allegro Postillions and Soon to be a Major Motion Picture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Trustee of the London Library and Chairman of Venice In Peril. Professor Hugh Kennedy. Professor of Arabic at SOAS. He studied at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Beirut, and read Arabic and Persian at Cambridge. He is author of The Early Abbasid Caliphate, The Prophet & the Age of the Caliphates, Crusader Castles and Muslim Spain & Portugal. Dr Rose Kerr. Honorary Associate of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, having retired as Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the V&A. She graduated in Chinese studies and spent a year as a student in China during the last year of the Cultural Revolution, 1975–6. In 2014 she became an Honorary Citizen of Jingdezhen. Professor Helen King. Professor of Classical Studies at The Open University and Visiting Professor at the Peninsula Medical and Dental School (Exeter and Plymouth), and at the University of Vienna. Her publications include Greek & Roman Medicine and Midwifery, Obstetrics & the Rise of Gynaecology: Uses of a 16th-century Medical Compendium. Dr Jarl Kremeier. Art historian specialising in 17thto 19th-century architecture and decorative arts. He teaches Art History at the Berlin College of Acting and Berlin’s Freie Universität. He is a contributor to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and author of Die Hofkirche der Würzburger Residenz.
Dr Helen Langdon. Art historian and author. She studied at Cambridge and the Courtauld and was a Research Fellow at the Getty Institute, LA, and Visiting Fellow at Yale. Her books include Claude Lorrain, Caravaggio: A Life and Vision & Ecstasy: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s St Francis.
Professor Richard Langham Smith. Music historian, broadcaster and writer specialising in early music and 19th–20th-century French music. He co-authored the Cambridge Opera Guide on Pelléas et Mélisande and has published widely on Debussy and Bizet. He is a Research Professor at the Royal College of Music. Dr Luca Leoncini. Art historian specialising in 15th-century Italian painting. His first degree and PhD were from Rome University followed by research at the Warburg Institute in London. He has contributed to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and has written on Mantegna and Renaissance drawings. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Chair of Ancient Greek and Iranian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and specialist in the history and culture of ancient Iran, the Near East and Ancient Greece. Books include Ctesias’ History of Persia, Creating a Hellenistic World and King & Court in Ancient Persia. He has contributed to TV documentaries and is a regular reviewer for The Times. Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones mbe. An authority on colonial India. Among many publications, her Mutiny, The Great Uprising in India: Untold stories, Indian & British won critical praise. She lectures for the Asian Arts course at the V&A. She was awarded the MBE in 2015 for services to the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia and to British Indian Studies. Dr Gerald Luckhurst. Landscape architect and garden historian involved in both historic restoration and contemporary garden design. He is an expert on sub-tropical and Mediterranean garden flora and his books include The Gardens of Madeira & Sintra: A Landscape with Villas. His doctoral thesis is focussed on the gardens of Monserrate in Sintra, near Lisbon.
Dr Alexey Makhrov. Russian art historian and lecturer. He graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and obtained his PhD from the University of St Andrews followed by post-doctoral work as a Research Fellow at Exeter. He now lives in Switzerland where he teaches courses on Russian art. Andrew Martin. Journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012). During the 1990s he was ‘Tube Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. John McNeill. Architectural historian and a specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures at Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association. Publications include the Blue Guides: Normandy and Loire Valley, and Romanesque & the Past. Professor Charles Melville. Professor of Persian History at Cambridge. He studied Arabic and Persian at Cambridge and Islamic History at SOAS. His speciality is the history of Iran in the Mongol and Safavid periods. He is Director of the Cambridge Shahnama Project and has travelled extensively in Iran. Patrick Mercer obe. Military historian. He read History at Oxford and then spent 25 years in the army, achieving the rank of colonel, and subsequently worked for BBC Radio 4 as Defence Correspondent and as a journalist. He was MP for Newark from 2001 to 2014 and is the author of two books on the Battle of Inkerman.
our lecturers
Anthony Lambert. Historian, journalist, travel writer. He has worked for the National Trust for almost 30 years. Books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life and he writes regularly for the Historic Houses Association magazine. He has written numerous travel and guide books, and contributes to a range of newspapers and magazines.
Munich, Königsplatz, watercolour by E.T. Compton, publ. 1912.
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