The Hendrick's Lecture Series

Prepare yourself for the unusual with The Hendrick’s Lecture Series at The Last Tuesday Society, a ‘Pataphysical organization founded by William James at Harvard in the 1870s. The Society is presently run by The Chancellor, Mr.Viktor Wynd and the Tribune, Suzette Field with the aid of The Fellows of The Society. It is devoted to exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic aspects of life in London and beyond.

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CECIL BEATON - Malice in Wonderland
with Hugh Vickers
Cecil Beaton moved easily through the world of mid-20th-century celebrity, photographing, caricaturing and sleeping with the people he met along the way. What was his secret? Hugo Vickers thinks he produced a kind of magic and in his lecture will examine exactly how. Not only did he photograph most of the interesting, alluring and important people of the 20th century, but he made them look stunning. But there was more. He was a traveller, arbiter of taste and fashion, war photographer, painter and exceptionally wicked caricaturist. He was able to mix with actors, painters, musicians, film stars, society figures and, later in life, the wilder representatives of the so-called "Peacock Revolution" of the 1960s. He managed to elevate himself from being a star-struck young man gazing at his idols in the street to a favoured guest at their tables...
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BOYISHNESS
with Carol Mavor
In 2008 Grayson Perry proclaimed Carol Mavor’s book, Reading Boyishly as his book of the year. He described her meditation on boyhood not only as “a thrilling mix of philosophy, photography, and biography,” but as a piece that touches upon “what it is to be a creative man.” Carol accomplishes this feat by investigating the lives of four famous boyish men and one boy —J. M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, D. W. Winnicott, and the young photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue. As paintings from the famous boyish artist, Stephen Tennant, adorn the walls of the gallery, Carol will once again romp through the lives of these famous men weaving an intricate tapestry of Oedipal desire, maternal attachment and nostalgia...
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CITY OF SIN - London and it's Vices
with Catharine Arnold
If Paris is the city of love, then London is the city of lust. For over a thousand years, England's capital has been associated with desire, avarice and the sins of the flesh. Richard of Devises, a monk writing in 1180, warned that 'every quarter [of the city] abounds in great obscenities'. As early as the second century AD, London was notorious for its raucous festivities and disorderly houses, and throughout the centuries the bawdy side of life has taken easy root and flourished. Award-winning popular historian Catharine Arnold turns her gaze to the city's relationship with vice through the ages...
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IN SEARCH OF THE ENGLISH ECCENTRIC
with Henry Hemming
The English eccentric is under threat. In our increasingly homogenised society, these celebrated parts of our national identity are anomalies that may soon no longer fit. Or so it seems. Henry Hemming will describe his thought-provoking quest to discover
the most eccentric English person alive today, unearthing a surprisingly large array of playfully outspoken, original and inspiring characters...
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EVELYN WAUGH AND NANCY MITFORD
with Selina Hastings
Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford:A Literary Correspondence Course describes the pupil/teacher relationship that existed for almost fifteen years between Evelyn Waugh (the teacher) and Nancy Mitford (the pupil). Their friendship endured much longer, but this particular aspect of it, charming, comic and frequently contentious, existed while Nancy was engaged in writing her three best novels, The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing...
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MACHIAVELLI'S LAWN - The Great Writer's Garden Companion
with Mark Crick
Botanically-inspired author Mark Crick appeals to the green-thumb in all of us as he comes to discuss his new book Machiavelli's Lawn: The Great Writers' Garden Companion. For those of us who could use some literary inspiration in our outdoor domestic lives, Crick delivers a lecture on the gardening advice of great authors. From Sylvia Plath's struggles with autumn bulbs, to JD Salinger's helpful hints on growing from seed, Crick will be sure to have us laughing and begging for his gardening tips...
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SIEGFRIED SASSOON
with Max Egremont
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was an English poet, author and soldier. He is best know for his poems about the First World War which not only describe the horrors of the trenches, but satirise the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for the pointless deaths of millions. Egremont's talk investigates the life and work of this great war poet placing particular emphasis on the suffocating gloominess of the poet's postwar life...
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MASTERCLASS OF BEING A GENTLEMAN
with Gustav Temple
A master class for the modern gentleman including invaluable advice on vintage attire, trilby choice, sock suspenders, braces, 1930s and 1940s grooming, the best moustache wax, top hat and bowler... Gustav Temple, that louche, debonair and most exquisitely dressed editor of The Chap magazine, comes to the Last Tuesday Society to share his tips on living as an anarcho-dandy in the 21st century...
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CRYPTOZOOLOGY - On the Track of Unknown Animals
with Richard Freeman
Cryptozoology refers to the search for animals which are considered to be legendary or otherwise nonexistent by the field of biology. Mongolian death worms, giant crested serpents and man-like apes ... As one of Britain's few cryptozoologists, Richard Freeman has searched for them all. In his lecture, Richard will be discussing what cryptozoology is and how it is studied, talking about his expeditions in search of hidden animals...
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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME
With Doug Fishbone
Artist Doug Fishbone will be performing one of his celebrated comic slide-show lectures, taking his audience on a journey through his mildly warped imagination. Illustrating his narration with hundreds of images downloaded from the internet, Fishbone has come up with a new and innovative form of story-telling that sits strangely at the crossroads between high and low, leading one critic to describe him as a “stand-up conceptual artist”...
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THE STRANGE GENIUS OF SIR JOHN SOANE
with Tim Knox
Tim Knox tells the story of Sir John Soane (1753-1837), one of the greatest of all British architects. Born the son of a humble bricklayer, he rose - through hard work and professionalism, and an advantageous marriage – to eminence as architect of many of the most prestigious buildings of the Regency era, notably the Bank of England, a Neocloassical masterpiece which he called ‘the pride and boast of my life’...
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WILLIAM BURROUGHS AND THE TORSO MURDERER
with Oliver Harris
It was 1951 Mexico City when William S Burroughs, fledgling author and heroin addict, accidentally shot and killed his wife, Joan, in a drunken re-enactment of the story of William Tell. The experience sparked a creative awakening which produced masterpieces of Beat Generation literature such as “The Naked Lunch” and “The Soft Machine”...
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BATAILLE, HAITI AND VODOU
with Dr John Cussans
John Cussans' talk "Bataille, Haiti and Vodou " discusses the influence of Haitian Vodou on the development of social psychopathology in Europe during the 19th century, from the theoretical legacy of Anton Mesmer, through Le Bon, Charcot and Freud, to the Revolutionary Surrealism of Georges Bataille and the Acephale group in the 1930s...
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WOMEN OF THE GOLDEN DAWN
with Geraldine Beskin
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development. It has been one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism...
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