Thrill to a dramatic account of how the actions of a group of assassins brought about a change in the passport regulations; how the unmasking of a spy caused a modification in passport design and how, for one man,
the passport itself turned into a killer.

(A dramatic talk without slides.)

Discover the truth about writers, publishers and bookshops. In a step by step exposé you will learn what I had to do to get my first book published. Prepare to be shocked, entertained, amazed and amused.

(A humorous talk without slides.)

Do you see your passport as a necessary nuisance or perhaps an obsolete facility? What do you know of its history? Travel through the centuries to learn how passports went from copperplate and wax seal to digital photograph and plastic cover. Reflect upon the lives of those travellers stranded in wartime or merely off on a jaunt. They, all of them, hoped that their travels would be achieved without let or hindrance.

(A talk with Powerpoint slides.)

Using illustrations from my collection of historic passports I show you how passport design developed from the handwritten paper to the technically complex document we use today and how art and artisanship has played an important yet secret part in this longstanding desire to confound the forger.

Once you have seen how the forgers have responded to the challenge of secret safeguards, you will never look at your passport in the same light again.

(A lecture with Powerpoint slides.)

In 1931 an earthquake destroyed the town of Napier in New Zealand. Within two years it was rebuilt in the architectural style of the day – Art Deco.

This lecture introduces you to pre-earthquake Napier as a flourishing port and commercial centre; it then takes you through the unfolding of the earthquake, the running of the rescue operation and looks at the factors which influenced the rebuilding.

Finally, on a photographic tour of the town, you see the buildings
as they are today.

Bilbao in Spain has been producing iron for centuries, drawing in workers from all over the country. Its rapid industrialisation in the nineteenth century was helped in no llittle measure by British capital and entrepreneurship. Ships carried Welsh coal to Spain and brought back Spanish pig-iron for the steelworks of South Wales. By 1985, it was all over. But the rise, heyday and demise of the Bilbao iron industry has been forever fixed in oils, water colours and bronze.

In this lecture I first show how iron is made into steel; I illustrate the machinery involved and explain the processes used. I then introduce you to the evocative paintings which have recorded this industry in its various stages and you are then able to understand what you are looking at and recognise the activity depicted.

(A lecture with Powerpoint slides)