Fundraising Lecture by Lord Asa Briggs

History and its Neighbours on Saturday 31 March at 2.30pm.

Professor Lord Briggs (Asa Briggs), is perhaps the best-known living historian in Britain and he is giving this fundraising lecture for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum. He gives this description of his lecture:

Historians of all kinds are concerned with perspectives. How and why do they change? In my lecture I will draw on my own experience inside and, just as important, outside universities. I shall also draw on some of the remarkale experiences of your remarkable Society* founded in 1853. I have been as deeply interested in the relationship between local, national and global history as your Society has. I have deliberately chosen the same title for this lecture as I chose for my inaugural lecture as Professor of History at Leeds University in 1955.

Lord Briggs was formerly Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chancellor of the Open University. He is a renowned historian and one of the most respected to write on the Victorian era.

*The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, which owns and adminsters the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, was formed in 1853.

Tickets cost just £10 and you will be helping us to continue to maintain the nationally important collections we hold. We are an independent charity and only 10% of our income comes from public funding. We face an annual deficit in excess of £50,000.

The lecture will be at Devizes Town Hall and tickets can be purchased online, or by contacting the Bookings Secretary on 01380 727369.

200th birthday of Devizes Town Hall

Devizes Town Hall is 200 years old this year, and the event is being celebrated by a Ball, with the lucky people that got a ticket dressing, acting and dancing like those that went to the launch party! We hope that the museum will be helping with education activities, and also by having a Georgian- themed Family Day on the day following the Ball. It should be great fun - and some of my colleagues are already thinking about costumes ...