7.30 pm Friday May 17th 2024

As the Olympic Games are about to begin in Paris in July, we welcome Peter Radford, a British athlete who competed at 100 and 220 yards and broke world records and won medals at the Rome Olympics. This was made even more remarkable as Peter had been seriously ill as a child due to a hole in his kidney

Peter first broke the world record for 220 yards in May 1960, with a time of 20.5 seconds, at the Staffordshire Championships in Wolverhampton. Later that year, he represented Great Britain in the 100 metres and 200 metres at the Rome Olympics, where he won the bronze medal at 100 metres. He then teamed up with fellow British athletes to finish third in the 4×100 metres relay.

Peter won a second Commonwealth Games Gold medal in Peth, Australia, as a member of the England 4x100 yards relay team] and represented Britain as a quarter-finalist at both 100 metres and 200 metres at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Following Tokyo, he retired from competition, due to a recurring knee ligament problem but, at that time, and for at least another two decades, he was the most successful sprinter in Birchfield Harriers' history. He remained in the sport and became Executive Chairman of the British Athletics Federation, and was the founder-professor of the Chair in the Department of Physical Education at Glasgow University - as well as later the Professor of Sport at Brunel University. He was also instrumental in introducing drug-testing procedures for athletes.

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(Children over 16 welcome) Entry is £10 in cash and includes free food, featuring delicious sandwiches and sumptuous rocky-roads., with wine and soft drinks available for a modest donation

7.30 pm Friday June 14th 2024

Susie is a writer and broadcaster on language. She recently celebrated 30 years as a co-presenter and the resident word expert on Channel 4's Countdown, and she also appears on the show's comedy sister 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown. Susie comments regularly on TV and radio about words featured in the news. She has contributed to discussions on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Word of Mouth, Saturday Live, More or Less, Today, and on Radio 5 Live's Breakfast and Drive programmes. She has made guest appearances on many TV programmes including BBC Breakfast, Newsnight, This Morning, Test the Nation, Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, Not Going Out, and The One Show.

Susie answers notes and queries about words and phrases in weekly columns in the Radio Times, The Week Junior, the I newspaper, and Why Now. She has written for the Independent on Sunday, the Telegraph, and the Times, and is the author of several books, including her latest, An Emotional Dictionary: Real Words for How You Feel, from Angst to Zwodder, published in 2022.

Susie is a spokesperson for Oxford University Press, and has been a judge on the Costa Book Awards and on the Academy Excellence Awards. She regularly delivers key-note speeches to both small companies and major corporations on language and communication.

Susie lives in Oxford, where she has developed a passion for cycling - Lycra or no, she is never without her little black book for jotting down any new words picked up in the wild.

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(Children over 16 welcome) Entry is £10 in cash and includes free food, featuring delicious sandwiches and sumptuous rocky-roads., with wine and soft drinks available for a modest donation

7.30 pm Friday October 11th 2024

Angela is one of the world's leading forensic scientists - with her findings helping solve notorious cases such as the killings of Stephen Lawrence, Rachel Nickell, Roberto Calvi, Lynette White, Damilola Taylor and Gareth Williams. She also took part in the investigation of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, finding no evidence to support theories of a conspiracy

Angela visited her first crime scene in February 1978, looking for clues about the murder in Huddersfield of Helen Rytka, later confirmed as a victim of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper. She established her first company, Forensic Access, in 1986 - intended to provide services to criminal defence lawyers who could not rely on the Forensic Science Service at the time. Initially, she handled infidelity investigations alone but later moved into a well-equipped laboratory with staff - and soon began investigating murder, assault, and arson cases, as well as cold cases.

In 1991, when she was hired to re-examine the evidence on the apparent hanging-suicide at Blackfriars Bridge of Italian banker, Roberto Calvi. Angela had gained a reputation for unconventional methods and conducted experiments with her husband, who shared Calvi's proportions - proving that Calvi could not have hanged himself and that he was murdered.

Angela later founded Forensic Alliance and helped the Police on cases. In 1999, the company solved the 1988 murder of Cardiff teenager, Lynette White, after finding a microscopic flake of dried blood under two layers of new paint. It led to the release of five men who had been wrongly imprisoned for the killing. In 2021, Angela met John Actie, one of the five men - which was her first meeting with someone she had helped exonerate

The Police asked Angela to further review cold cases, including evidence in the 2000 killing of Damilola Taylor, aged ten. She used expensive techniques to find traces of Damilola's blood on the clothes of the two killers - an approach which also led to the conviction of serial killer, John Cooper, for the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path Murders of a couple out walking. Angela considers this one of the most satisfying cases in her career, saying the case would not have been solved without fibre examination. The same method proved successful when she was commissioned to investigate the 1993 murder of the black teenager, Stephen Lawrence

In 2010, Angela helped found Axiom International, which provides forensic and related advice to law enforcement agencies worldwide - and she has since worked in Libya, Iraq, Somaliland and Kosovo.[Angela was portrayed by Anastasia Hille in a 2021 TV miniseries about the Pembrokeshire Murders and was also played by Nancy Carroll in the 2021 series, called Stephen, a drama following the fight for justice for Stephen Lawrence. She was a guest on Desert Island Discs in October 2022.

If you are interested in attending this talk or would like to reserve a ticket please Contact us

(Children over 16 welcome) Entry is £10 in cash and includes free food, featuring delicious sandwiches and sumptuous rocky-roads., with wine and soft drinks available for a modest donation