April 2017 saw the release of a new documentary-length film about Gertrude Bell, Letters from Baghdad featuring remarkable footage and recreations of Bell’s life from her correspondence and photography. Helen Berry joined the film’s Directors, Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum, diplomats and politicians from the Middle East for a round-table discussion of Bell’s life and legacy with a public audience of 200 at the Royal United Services Institute, London. View a trailer for ‘Letters from Baghdad’ narrated by actor Tilda Swinton here, and a video of the panel debate.
Category Archives: Talks
The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell
Watch Helen Berry – and Ella the horse – feature in a video made for The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell Exhibition at the Great North Museum (2016) – click here
Gertrude Bell and the ‘Woman Question’
Click here to listen to Helen Berry’s ‘Insights’ public lecture at Newcastle University (February 2016) on ‘Gertrude Bell and the ‘Woman Question’, including fascinating examples of photography from the Gertrude Bell Archive.
This lecture was in association with ‘The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell’, a blockbuster exhibition at the Great North Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne (January-May 2016).
Fairfax House, York 22-23 October – Shops, Shoppers and Shopping in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Gertrude Bell on BBC One
The BBC One Inside/Out feature on Gertrude Bell presented by Professor Helen Berry is now available on YouTube – click here
Are we living through a new eighteenth century?
If Mrs Thatcher thought she was living again through Victorian England, we are now living through the eighteenth century. This special edition of BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking series explores London as the centre of the world then and now, financial bubbles bursting then and now, and the lust for consumption then and now, whether of bodies or bodices.
Listen to historian Helen Berry in conversation with chairman Philip Dodd, the MP and author Kwasi Kwarteng, historians Jerry White and AN Wilson, and playwright April De Angelis for a discussion which was part of BBC Radio 3’s eighteenth century season of programming
Free Thinking Listen Again.
28th March 2012 – Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival
The Castrato and His Wife
Book Signing, Edinburgh
Book signing at Blackwells, Edinburgh
Wednesday 26th October, 2011
‘Castrati and Other Curiosities in Georgian England’
‘Castrati and Other Curiosities in Georgian England’
Notes and Letters, King’s Place, London
Sunday 9th October, 2011