On this page you can see the notes of previous monthly meetings in the current iU3A year. They are exactly as were written at the time, and will not be 'updated' as time goes by.

July — We were delighted to welcome Roly Keating, who is the Chief Executive of the British Library at St Pancras. It’s the 20th anniversary of the building, which was opened by the Queen in 1998. The library is, of course, old and new at the same time.

The building emerged after a hard-fought battle in the early 70s after it was agreed that we needed a stand-alone national library to support research and businesses and house the national collections. The site is particularly advantageous, being so close to the train stations and more recently home to technology and digital giants such as Google and Microsoft.

The idea of a library has changed enormously over time and has now embraced both the traditional past, focusing on academia, and the new world of the virtual and a global public. It is for everyone to enjoy and is a library for the world: 20% of visitors are now from overseas. It houses around 170 million pieces of material and every day more is added to this. Research is still at the heart of the service and the 1,200 seats for this purpose are always filled. The library is linked to all major city libraries to help businesses country-wide innovate and grow. Exhibitions and events bring in huge numbers of visitors as well as the thousands of school parties who come throughout the year. It works with international partners around the world and has the biggest collection of material outside the country of origin. The work on digitising all this material is enormous and this is a great global resource. Alongside this, demand for more physical space continues and there are plans to expand the campus to include more exhibition space and more reading areas. The wildly controversial building now has Grade 1 listed status and has been part of the transformation of the neighbourhood.

As usual there were plenty of questions from members and we ran out of time.

N.B. There is no monthly meeting in August
On Sept 27th we have Nick Higham who will talk on ‘The Making of the New River’.

June — Jean Willson OBE, ‘Growing Up in Islington After the War’.

Jean gave a wonderful talk about her childhood growing up in Islington, drawn from the memoirs she is writing in the IU3A Creative Writing Group. Her family first lived near King's Cross so during the war experienced the repeated bombing of the station area and as a child her playground was the many bomb craters of the area. Her family later moved to the Lower Holloway area, where Jean still lives. Her Nan was a formative influence in her life with exacting standards of behaviour and appearance, and the centre of her extended family life. Jean recalled many details of their daily life after the war which prompted memories in the IU3A audience: the coal man delivering sacks of coal, the rag and bone man with his horse and cart, Vick for chest complaints, bread and butter pudding and the pleasure of toasting bread on the coal life, Saturday cinema for children, and family entertainment at home, with singing and dancing. The 1950s brought changes, with immigrants arriving in the area, a fish and chip shop opening and the excitement of lining up in the Mall to see the Queen after her Coronation.

May — Julia Weiner, Senior lecturer in art history, Regents University London
The image of the Jew in Medieval and Renaissance art

Julia’s interesting and informative talk looked at the image of the Jew in art in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.  Art was meant to instruct and edify the laity and images of the Jew reflected canon law where Jews were required to dress differently from Christians so that they could be easily identified.  Jews were depicted with bird faces – was this the origin of the depiction in Nazi propaganda of Jews with large, hooked noses?  They are shown wearing pointed hats, the required yellow distinguishing bands and various distinctive badges.  The Nazis’ requirement that Jews should wear the yellow Star of David continued this theme.  The turban- wearing Jewish women depicted in the art of this period are shown as sexually provocative.
As the centuries went by the figure of the Jew in Italian art becomes more and more ugly and evil.  Michelangelo’s Moses has horns, reminiscent of the devil, “horns” almost certainly being a mistranslation of the Hebrew for rays of light in biblical texts.  Fear and mistrust of such religious practices as circumcision are reflected in more and more horrific depictions in the art of the time.  The belief that Jews murdered young children in order to obtain their blood for their unleavened bread took hold and influences such depictions.  Uccello’s series of paintings of the Profanation of the Host starkly demonstrates the fear and loathing in which Jews were held, reinforcing anti-Semitic beliefs in those who beheld them.  The examples Julia showed us were particularly sobering when we saw them alongside modern day images of the Jew in right wing extremist propaganda.
At the same time it should not be forgotten that the art of Venice at the time also reflected its position as a major trading port, looking towards the Middle East, with its depictions of Venetian and Ottoman fashions and architecture in the same painting. Carpaccio’s Sermon of St Stephen is a fine example of this. As well as the depictions of extreme prejudice in art, we must not forget that art can be a way of depicting the rich diversity and beauty of humankind. (Report: Julie Howell)

April — ‘Telling Stories’: why journalism and creativity rely on narrative’ by Rosie Millard, OBE
Rosie showed us how the power of stories was at the heart of journalism and creativity, whether this was in children’s bedtime stories, every day journalism or in major projects such as the city of Hull’s bid to become the UK City of Culture in 2017. Rosie had been Chair of Hull City of Culture during the four years of planning its cultural programme after Hull won this bid. The bid was won because of the power of the bid’s narrative: the old story of Hull as a depressed, deprived city had to be replaced by a new story if the bid was to be successful.

Rosie showed us the film made as part of Hull’s bid, ‘This City Belongs to Everyone’, which was filled with different positive stories: Hull’s architecture, Philip Larkin, William Wilberforce, the trawler industry, Hull’s special geography of rivers and coast, the demography of Hull. This new story of Hull was enhanced, serendipitously, by two recent cultural events which had received excellent international media attention: a Spencer Tunick performance art work involving 4000 Hull residents, and spectacular performances by a French circus in the town. As a result, the media responded very positively to Hull’s planned cultural programme and over five million people visited Hull in its year as UK City of Culture.

March — ‘Researching the Social Science of Pandemic Influenza: Sneezes, Panics and Spies’ by Tony Barnett, Professorial Research Fellow, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Tony is a social scientist researching infectious diseases such as flu, which is very infectious before symptoms begin. He stressed the importance of frequent hand-washing as the best defence against flu and told us that ordinary facemasks are ineffective. Increasing social distance can help as a defence against infection. but this conflicts with the need to help sufferers.

Important variables in infectious diseases which have an impact on social and economic life include: the reproductive rate of infectious diseases, ie the number of secondary cases from one primary case; the virulence of the disease; and its vectors or transmission agents. The flu virus is unstable and changeable as its genetic material mutates and incorporates new material from its host, defeating our immune systems and making it hard to develop a fully effective vaccine.

Zoonotoc viruses that transfer from animals to humans are of particular concern, because if the virus then becomes capable of transfer from humans to humans, a pandemic may result. This is how the Aids virus spread, initially transferred from chimpanzees to humans, and then between humans. Nowadays government and all major organisations have flu pandemic contingency plans because of the catastrophic social and economic impact of a flu pandemic, while at Porton Down work is done to assess whether an outbreak of disease is accidental, natural or intentional.

February — ‘The myth of the Titanic’ by Patrick Mylon

Patrick Mylon has been interested in ships since childhood after seeing the 1957 film ‘A Night to Remember’ about the sinking of the Titanic. The Titanic was a White Star Line ship, built in Belfast for size rather than speed, as part of the national rivalry between the US and Britain for the best transatlantic liners. On its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, which began on 12th April 1912, it carried 2,200 passengers. Patrick told us about all the different issues that contributed to the disaster of its sinking with great loss of life.

Like all large passenger ships at that time, it carried too few lifeboats (enough for only 1200 passengers) as the law required only 16 lifeboats. The weather was bitterly cold, but despite receiving six ice warnings the Captain did not slow down or double the lookouts. Although a message about a large iceberg was sent to the Titanic from another ship, the message did not have the crucial ‘MSG’ indicator that would have required the wireless operators to send the message to the Captain, so they took no action. The huge black shape of the iceberg was finally seen by lookouts at 11.38pm; the ship was turned hard to the left to try to avoid it, exposing the starboard side of the ship to the impact, which was catastrophic, causing it to break in two. It sank within two hours. Another ship, the California, saw the eight distress rockets fired by the Titanic but took no action. Finally the Carpathia reached the Titanic after 3½ hours and picked up the 700 survivors.

The disaster brought about changes in the law and in shipping practice. Lifeboat drills for passengers and crew became mandatory, as did carrying sufficient lifeboats and operating 24 hour lookouts. And 13 nations operating across the north Atlantic formed the Ice Patrol, a notification system about icebergs.
 
January — Professor Jonathan Butterworth, Head Physics and Astronomy Department, University College London, Atlas CERN — Smashing Physics: Journeys to the Energy Frontier.

Jon’s talk made a very complex topic accessible and interesting to the layperson. He introduced us to this world of particle physics by presenting a 'Map of the Invisible'. In the west lies the 'old world' of the 'Standard Model' i.e. the world of electrons, waves, energy, quarks, leptons and forces etc. Physicists are journeying further east into unexplored lands, made possible by the Large Hadron Collider and its detectors such as Atlas, the project which Jon has been involved with. The discovery of the “missing” particle, the Higgs Boson in 2012, represents the discovery of the last unverified part of the Standard Model, or does it? Is the Higgs the last fundamental particle? Are there hidden worlds beyond 'Bosonia'? Jon suggested that there are still areas ripe for exploration out there such as gravity, the rotational speed of galaxies, dark matter, neutrinos, super symmetry and further questions to be answered such as why there are three copies of everything or where’s the anti-matter?

Projects involving the Large Hadron Collider, whose tunnel at 27km is the same length as the Circle line, are making many discoveries and answering some fundamental questions but the installation of an even bigger collider whose length would be 100km would possibly enable this “smashing physics” to penetrate these hidden speculative worlds.