Glyn Davies

John is a retired academic and former history teacher and headteacher in Sheffield, but was raised in Manchester.  His interest in the Peterloo Massacre is because he knows the place where it happened. In Saxon times each village had three fields for the villagers to grow food crops.  One field was for Spring use, one … Read more

Peter Brown was a secondary school teacher. He stopped teaching in 2004. As a child ‘I-Spy’ books introduced him to information about birds and then ‘The Observer Book of Birds’ extended his knowledge.  In 1959 his father, who was a policeman, was asked by a neighbour to deal with a ‘parrot’ that he had seen … Read more

Mike’s extremely well-illustrated  talk was about skyscrapers – there are about 4,800 in the world! The idea of building tall buildings is not new – even in biblical times they thought up the Tower of Babel! In more modern times the tower of Lincoln Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State … Read more

Kerry told us that she has been doing ‘magic’ for about 21 years. She started her talk by choosing assistants from our audience because she does ‘close-up magic’ and needs help when using Zoom. Kerry started with ‘card magic’. Kerry showed us a special pack of cards that were all jokers and asked if we … Read more

Britain is an island and, during the war, almost all materials coming in or going out of Britain had to go by sea. The Germans knew this and used their U-boats, E-boats and aircraft to isolate Britain. The first WW2 ship to be sunk by torpedo was Athenia, but the Germans denied responsibility, probably because … Read more

George told us that, in the past, he had visited several areas along the ’Silk Road’ but had never been to Iran.  When he  told his family and friends that he was considering a trip to Iran they were unhappy, because they thought that it was a dangerous place for British, Europeans or Americans to … Read more