Since 1986, Timothy has given 1,500 public lectures.  This was originally part of his work as director of the Oxford University Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014.  Botanic gardens are often described as living museums, and garden curators lecture about them in the same way as museum curators talk about their collections.  Since 2014 he has been a college lecturer and tutor at Somerville College Oxford.  Gardens are often thought of a place where science and art meet on equal terms.  Timothy’s lectures investigate this relationship.

A Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral, and gives tours around each venue.  He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations.  Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London.  He is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

Peter appears in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar, giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music and the arts.  He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Anna is a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in contemporary art.  During the 1990s, she oversaw the development of the first British Master’s Degree in the subject at Sotheby’s Institute.  She has also taught at institutions including The City Lit, the Royal Academy and Tate London, as well as lecturing in cities ranging from Dubai to New York.  Anna currently teaches at academic institutions in London and Paris and runs her own courses.  Her books include Abstract Art (1990, enlarged ed. 2020) and Sculpture Now (2013), both published by Thames & Hudson.  Anna enjoys introducing art to audiences in a lively and approachable way to make modern and contemporary art both accessible and interesting.

Mary Branson is best known for her large scale conceptual light installations, particularly the iconic New Dawn 2016 sculpture in the Houses of Parliament, which celebrates the centenary of the Suffrage movement and is the first permanent piece of contemporary abstract art in the Palace of Westminster.

She has created works for the London 2012 Olympics, The Magna Carta Memorial at Runnymede, Royal Holloway University and more recently Harvest a huge site-specific installation at Box Hill Surrey in collaboration with the National Trust.  Her latest work is Ladders of Light, a piece for Sky Arts 50 that fills Salisbury Cathedral.

She is an award-winning print maker, a choreographer for performance and dance events, and a mentor and public speaker, having lately returned from a lecture tour to New York and Washington DC.  Mary has held a number of artistic residencies, including for Parliament, the British Council, Crisis, the National Trust and HM Prison service, where she led an art group for women prisoners.  Currently she is artist in residence at Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey.

Roger Butler is a landscape architect and an experienced writer, photographer and lecturer.  He has a particular interest in the unique history, architecture and traditions of our canal network and worked on some of the UK’s major canal restoration projects.  He has also acted as a consultant to bodies such as Waterways Ireland, Natural England and the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.  He regularly contributes to waterway and heritage magazines and writes and provides images for a range of countryside and outdoor titles.  Roger is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society and a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute.

David has been a wine retailer, importer and distributor for 30 years.  In that time, he has publicly presented tastings and talks on wine to trade and private audiences.  These have taken the form of wine ‘tastings’ or charity events where a particular subject is presented and wines tasted.  He has developed a talk, A Brief Story of Wine, a great subject, and full of rich evidence, going back 7,000 years, in the form of paintings, decorated drinking vessels, buildings and literature that contribute to the story.

Tessa is a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society along with other organisations such as the V&A, English Heritage and the National Trust.  She’s the author of two books of social history: The Housekeeper’s Tale – The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, and Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather – Fashion, Fury and Feminism, Women’s Fight for Change.  Her interest lies in uncovering stories of invisible women of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, revealing how they drove industry, propped up high society and manipulated politics.  Tessa has an MA in English Literature from Oxford University, a diploma in Art History from the British Institute of Florence, and has enjoyed a long career in journalism for national newspapers and magazines.

Having obtained a postgraduate degree in Fashion Curation from London College of Fashion in 2010, Jacob took up a position at The Fan Museum, Greenwich, the UK’s only Museum dedicated to the history of fans and craft of fan making.  As the Museum’s Curator, he is responsible for co-organising its temporary exhibition programme and overseeing loans from the Museum’s extraordinary collections to organisations such as the Palace of Versailles and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 2020 Jacob curated an exhibition of The Fan Museum’s treasures at SCAD FASH, Atlanta, Georgia.  He is currently working with the National Trust on a landmark exhibition to be staged at The Fan Museum in 2021, the year in which it celebrates its thirtieth anniversary.

A writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide.  Gavin lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.  Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York, as well as for history of art societies and The Art Fund.

Dr Griffiths is a lecturer, conductor, pianist, and composer.  He is a Music Research Fellow (City, University of London) and DPhil., Musicology (Christ Church, Oxford, 2008), PGCE (Cambridge), and BMusHons (Edinburgh).

He is Musical Director Grupo Novo Horizonte de Sao Paulo (featured on BBCR3); lectures, concerts, and recordings (UK, Denmark, Brazil, Russia); Guest of The British Council; University lecturing at Bath, Bristol, Canterbury (Christchurch), City (London), Oxford.  Guest appearances at St Petersburg International Conservatoires Festival performing lost works by Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940) re-discovered by Griffiths.  This research featured in the BBCRadio3/AHRC celebration Five Forgotten Female Composers on International Women’s Day (8 March 2018).  Griffiths’s work has been featured by public service broadcasters in several countries.