Dr Andrew Lownie to Talk on Writing Modern Political Biography


Speaking at next meeting of the Ealing branch of the Historical Association


Andrew Lownie. Picture: James Gifford Mead Photography

January 9, 2025

Dr Andrew Lownie will be the guest speaker at the next meeting of the Ealing Branch of the Historical Association.

The Senior Research Fellow in Modern British History at the University of Buckingham is talking on the subject ‘Issues in Writing Modern Political Biographies’.

His books include biographies of the writer John Buchan, spy Guy Burgess (winner of the St Ermin’s Hotel Intelligence Book of the Year) and the top ten Sunday Times bestsellers: The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves and Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Drawing on his own experiences over the last forty years, Andrew Lownie looks at the challenges facing modern biographers, not least that of missing archives.

The meeting is being held at 7:30pm on Tuesday 14 January at Ealing Green Church, The Green W5 5QT with doors opening ten minutes before commencement.

All are welcome to attend . Members pay £15 per annum and for visitors a donation of £5 per talk is suggested with no payment expected from students.

Meetings are usually held on the second Tuesday of each month at Ealing Green Church at 7.30pm, with the exception of the November meeting which takes place at Twyford School at 6.30pm. Talks are live events but with the speaker’s permission the association aims to make a recording available afterwards to those registering on Eventbrite (the booking link will be available on our website one month in advance of each talk)

Programme to June 2025

11 February Anne Fletcher, author, ‘Widows of the Ice: The Women that Scott’s Antarctic Expedition Left Behind’

11 MarchEmeritus Professor James Manor, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, ‘The Debatable Resilience of Nehru's Liberal Democracy in India ‘

8 April Julia Boyd, author, ‘Off the beaten track: researching and writing social histories of the Third Reich'

13 May Professor Rebecca Earle, University of Warwick, ‘What can you learn from a cookbook (other than how to cook)?’

10 June Dr Ismini Pells, Oxford Department for Continuing Education, ‘Maimed Soldiers, War Widows and the Human Cost of the English Civil Wars: stories from the Civil War Petitions project’

For more details of the association’s programme of talks for the coming season visit its web site.

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