FOR ALL WITH AN INTEREST IN THE HISTORY
OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE BRITISH RAJ
ONLINE LECTURES
Online lectures run from November to April. They are broadcast via Zoom and are available UK-wide and to an international audience. Lectures are recorded and will be available online for two weeks for those unable to attend and those in different time zones. Links are emailed to all ticket-holders.
HOW TO BOOK
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Tickets £5 per lecture
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Tickets may be booked online by selecting ‘BOOK NOW’, by post or by bank transfer.
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If booking by post or by by bank transfer, please follow the instructions given here.
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How to book
LECTURE PROGRAMME 2024–25
MONDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2025 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
The Rise and Fall of the City of Lucknow
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Lucknow enjoyed a short but spectacular rise after the Nawabs of Avadh made it their capital. Celebrated as a city of palaces, shrines and extraordinary European-inspired architecture, the arts of dance, music, drama, poetry, painting and silverware flourished under its immensely wealthy rulers. This cultural splendour ended when the East India Company annexed Avadh and the Indian Mutiny erupted. The city was occupied by rebel sepoys and Lucknow became famed throughout the Empire for the defence of the British Residency by its garrison of soldiers and civilians, its reliefs by Havelock and Outram and its eventual fall to the British, which reduced sectors of the city to rubble.
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE is a renowned historian of colonial India. Her many books include Lucknow 1857 (2022); The Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah; The Uprising of 1857; A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow; and, most recently, Empire Building: The Construction of British India, 1690-1860.
TUESDAY 18 MARCH 2025 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Second Arakan 1943-44
Tim Moreman
The hard-fought Second Arakan campaign was a second attempt by Allied arms to advance in the coastal Arakan region in western Burma. It shattered the myth of Japanese invincibility that had crippled the Allied cause and offered the prospect of successful offensive operations. Tim Moreman examines the range of actions that made up Second Arakan, from XV Indian Corps’ push down the Burmese coast towards Akyab Island to the key events of the Japanese Ha-Go operation launched by Twenty-Eighth Army. These include the Battle of the Admin Box near Sinweyza, where the surrounded 7th Indian Division inflicted a serious defeat on the Japanese 55th Division; the reinforcement of Imphal and Kohima; and the seizure of Razabil, the Tunnels and Point 551 between March and May 1944.
Tim Moreman is a freelance military historian who was formerly a Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College, London, and briefly Resident Historian at the Staff College at Camberley. His books on the Indian Army include Second Arakan 1943–44: Shattering the Myth of Japanese Invincibility (2025), Japanese Conquest of Burma 1942 and Chindit 1942-45.
TUESDAY 15 APRIL 2025 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)
Fighting Retreat: Churchill and India
Walter Reid
Winston Churchill was closely connected with India from 1896, when he landed in Bombay with his regiment, until independence in 1947. No other British statesman had such a long association with India―or interfered in its politics so consistently and harmfully. Churchill strove to sabotage any moves towards independence, crippling the Government of India Act over five years of dogged opposition in the 1930s. As Prime Minister Churchill frustrated the freedom struggle from behind the scenes, delaying independence by a decade. To this day he is ‘the’ imperialist villain for Indians, held personally responsible for the Bengal Famine. At the Colonial Office Churchill was outstandingly liberal, risking his career with his generosity to the Boers and the Irish, and later speeding up independence in the Middle East. Why was he so strangely hostile towards India?
Walter Reid was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. His books include Fighting Retreat: Churchill and India (2024); Neville Chamberlain: The Passionate Radical; Churchill 1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire; and several works on the First World War.