A public lecture exploring 100 years of crisis, community and creativity in Portsmouth, with three expert talks by local historians and writers.
From Strikes to Storytellers: 100 years of crisis, community and creativity comes to Guildhall on Thursday 17 September, a public lecture that looks at Portsmouth's first century as a city. It's been exactly a hundred years since King George V granted the city its status in 1926, and the evening traces that century through three talks.
Dr Melanie Bassett takes you back to that starting point. 1926 was a heavy year: the Coal Miners' Strike triggered an energy crisis and a General Strike, and the Royal Dockyard was the centre of local life as the city absorbed workers coming in from Rosyth and Pembroke Dock. It's a look at the city's early days as a city, when the dockyard still shaped almost everything around it.
From there, Dr Alison Habens leads a walk through Southsea, following in the footsteps of Kipling, Conan Doyle, Dickens and H.G. Wells, alongside local figures Besant and Doudney. She looks at them through their science fiction and fantasy writing, so it's a bit of a different way to see the area you probably walk through every day.
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Dr Maggie Bowers then turns to the present, exploring Portsmouth's emergence as one of the country's most prolific literary cities. She draws on interviews and publications from the city's writing and spoken-word community, so it's as much about the people still writing here as it is about the names from the past.
It runs from 5.30pm to 7.00pm at Guildhall Walk, Portsmouth, PO1 2AB, and entry is free.
