Photo: Alan Murray-Rust / Hansom Hall, Belvoir Street / CC BY-SA 2.0

The Annual Members' Meeting, is open to all members of the Lit&Phil. The meeitng will start at 6:40 PM. Further details to follow

The Annual Members Meeting will take place in Hansom Hall, beginning at 6.40pm. The meeting will be the first of the 2025 - 2026 season. 

The Annual Members' Meeting is an opportunity to hear about, and discuss, the Society’s business and plans for the 2025/26 season, as well as any other matters which members wish to raise.

Images courtesy of the speaker The President's Address Hazel Graves Retired Medical Research Technician, Retired Special Needs Education Technician, Currently Amateur Naturalist. Lecture outline Conservation of our natural environment is now widely recognised as essential for the welfare of future generations.  We cannot conserve what we don’t know about. This lecture will give a flavour of the endeavours of Leicestershire naturalists past and present to identify and understand the wealth of wildlife in Leicestershire and beyond. Biographical note After a career in medical research followed by a short spell as a stay-at-home parent, I re-entered the workforce specialising in Education for Children with Visual Impairment and Braille production.  Following retirement I initially immersed myself in Botany, volunteering for Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust, undertaking grassland, woodland and hedge surveys, and for the BSBI, spending many hours square-bashing for the 2020 Atlas. I then branched out into other areas of natural history such as regular moth recording at home and on Wildlife Trust reserves, butterfly and bird transects on farmland being managed for nature, plus a keen interest in recording hoverflies, leaf mines and plant galls and anything else that I find. I have been Chairman of both Leicester Lit & Phil Natural History Section and Loughborough Naturalists’ Club for approximately 7 years until recently and often lead Field Meetings to places of natural history interest for these organisations. Attending the lecture The lecture is open both to members of the Society and to guests. The lecture will take place in Hansom Hall - how to find Hansom Hall. Please note that tea and coffee drinks will be available between 7.00pm and 7.15pm before the formal start of the event at 7.30pm. The lecture will also be streamed on Zoom. A recording of the lecture may be available to members only.

Corinne seated by Wordsworth Museum - copyright Gary Calton

Professor Corinne Fowler MA PhD Professor of Colonialism and Heritage, Museum Studies, University of Leicester.

Lecture outline

In this talk, Professor Fowler entwines local and global stories in illustrated journeys to show how Empire profoundly shaped the British countryside.

Biographical note

Leading historian Corinne Fowler wrote the National Trust’s 2020 report on the historical links between its Country Houses and the British Empire and now has written the critically acclaimed Our Island Stories: Ten Walks Through Rural Britain and its Hidden History of Empire (Penguin 2024).

Attending the lecture

The lecture is open both to members of the Society and to guests.

The lecture will take place in Hansom Hall - how to find Hansom Hall.

Please note that tea and coffee drinks will be available between 7.00pm and 7.15pm before the formal start of the event at 7.30pm.

The lecture will also be streamed on Zoom. A recording of the lecture may be available to members only.

To be given by:

Professor Bryan Williams, Chair of Medicine Population Science & Experimental Medicine, UCL, and Chief Scientific and Medical Officer, British Heart Foundation.

Details to follow.

The Arthur and Jean Humphreys Lecture

To be given by:

Dr Elizabeth Eger PhD, Reader Emerita English Department, Kings College London.

Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth

Details to follow.

Details to follow.

To be given by:

Dr Nana Siaw-Badu BEM, CEO of Badu Sport

Details to follow.

Details to follow.

Details to follow.

To be given by:

Professor Mike Searle PhD, Worcester College, Professor of Earth Sciences Worcester College University of Oxford

The Geology Section Joint Lecture

Details to follow.

To be given by:

Sandra Penketh MA, Director of Collections & Research, National Museums Liverpool.

Joint Lecture with the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery

Details to follow.

To be given by:

Dr Alastair Fothergill OBE, CEO of Silverback Films.

The F.L. Attenborough Lecture

Details to follow.