All my talks are bookable direct. Please get in touch for availability, bookings and fees.
I also take commissions to talk to your chosen subject, event or family service – just get in touch to discuss.
get in touchABSURVD ON THE FEET
In a parallel paradoxical universe I do actually get out from behind the keyboard and into the real world and talk about a variety of subjects.
In previous roles as a Business Consultant I’ve dealt in business change and seen what works and what doesn’t, in life as well as in commerce.
I also I like digging around in chunks of history and current affairs, looking for the patterns, connections and coincidences that lie close to the surface of life.
And so the talks were born. All are illustrated, just that. I talk and there are pictures which will illustrate and explain as a background to the subject.
As you might expect from what you see around here the talks are amusing, a little abstract but ultimately thought-provoking.
I can adapt and tailor my talks to your audience as part of a fixed price. I also take commissions for specific material/audiences. Get in touch and we can talk about talks.
My aim is to engage and inform the audience without being too serious. This will be a sideways view of life and the audience will need to think a bit, laugh a bit and take a new thought away with them.
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BOOKABLE TALKS
THE BOMBER IN THE BACK YARD
On 11 July 1944, Vic Doe was 6 years old when a USAAF B-24 Liberator Bomber crash-landed at his family’s farm on the Isle of Grain, Kent, UK. This is the story of what he witnessed and the enduring friendship between that young boy and an exceptional 24-year-old pilot from Richmond, Virginia.
It is also the extraordinary story of this crew from the US 448th Bombardment Group based at Seething, Norfolk, UK. They had only been in England three weeks when flak and fighter damage forced them down. Stumbling out into a field in Kent they were treated to Potato and Leek soup with freshly baked bread – which they never forgot.
After 36 missions some – not all – went home. For others their journey continued through Korea and Vietnam. Remarkably this incident, only three miles from the Chatham Naval Dockyard, would echo down one family’s generations to the tragic sinking of HMS Coventry during the Falklands War.
Proceeds from this talk are shared with the Seething Control Tower Museum and the D118 HMS Coventry Association.
book nowSTAFF NURSE EMILY CONNELL’S AUTOGRAPH BOOK
Emily Connell was a remarkable woman; hailing from Bootle and having enrolled in the Territorial Force Nursing Service in 1908, she was appointed as Staff Nurse at 3rd Western General Hospital in Cardiff (the hospital where Sapper Clay was treated) when war broke out in 1914.
As well as serving there throughout the First World War, she kept an autograph book in which her patients drew and wrote messages.
This is the story of her own highs and lows and struggles with the system. It is also the story of the remarkable work the TFNS did with Shell Shock sufferers and sheds light on some of the soldiers who left their incredible pictures and anecdotes in her book.
FINDING SAPPER CLAY
Sapper Clay was a First World War Royal Engineer from Nuneaton so how did I come to dig up his medal 100 years later in my garden in the Surrey Hills?
The search for this old soldier’s family uncovered a remarkable series of coincidences spanning 19th century brickmaking in Warwickshire, the Somme, Gallipoli, a disastrous gas accident, family and estrangement and bizarrely, would reach further back in time to connect with a landmark in women’s literature – George Eliot’s first story collection published in 1857.
Just who was Sapper Clement Cecil Clay R.E.?
For this talk I donate £10 of my fee to the Poppy Appeal.
THE DOODS ROAD GREAT PIGEON LOFT
In this third part of the Sapper Clay trilogy we start another gallop through history chasing down medal winners – starting with the house next door to Sapper Clay’s in Reigate, Surrey.
What was so important about his neighbours that they required an armed guard in both World Wars? We look at the lives, times and medals won by its secret inhabitants, who they worked for and ask just what it had to do with James Bond and Spike Milligan (Musician, Goon, Author and Comedian)?
THE FARMHOUSE AND KING HENRY IX
The renovation of a derelict Somerset farmhouse in the 2010s unearthed some artefacts belonging to the previous owners. That wasn’t the surprise for the new owners who’d bought the house at auction. The surprise was that unknown to them, their families were already inextricably linked by the property to a joint history shared with the British Monarchy spanning 350 years from the 30 Years War in Europe to the 20th Century’s largest sea battle at Jutland.
This is the story of the bizarre collision of three connected worlds through a single place on the Somerset Levels. The previous occupants of the house had borne witness to events that could so easily have created King Henry IX, changed the face of the Monarchy and modern history. Lynette and Paul didn’t choose Poplar Farm; it chose them.
HOW FAR CAN RETRO GO?
Out of date, outmoded, out of here – fashion is only predictable in as much as it is fickle and perhaps in knowing that what goes around, will come around.
Is Retro really a style or just recycling – how much of it can we digest when we remember it from the first time around? Was it even new then?
This talk looks at what it is that appeals in the past – pure nostalgia or just marketing departments using tried and tested formulae?
WHO’S WALLY?
Walter Stafford Colby came from a long line of Yarmouth fisherfolk and was drafted into the Royal Navy early in World War 2. 80 years on and 25 years since he passed away, we discover that he was a Stoker 1st Class aboard the carrier HMS Indomitable when it was struck by an Italian torpedo during the Invasion of Sicily.
Back in service, aboard the frigate HMS Redmill, ‘Lucky’ as he was now known, found himself supporting the D-Day landings, on an Arctic Convoy and hunting subs until the Redmill was torpedoed – this time by U-1105 – only days before the end of the European War.
Like many, Wally never told his story, but now we can. And what was so special about U-1105 that after surrendering it went missing for decades until it was found in Maryland, USA?
TALKS BLOG
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