https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/curious-histories-oh-what-a-curious-war-tickets-1384282850269
Curious Histories is thrilled to return to Hove's friendly Poets Ale and Smokehouse for a summer double-bill. There will be nicely unconventional talks from two great returning speakers, Linsay McCulloch and Den Knowles, plus a little something from your genial host.
This fundraiser will benefit one of our favourite small local charities: Food & Friendship. Twice a week, at their lunch clubs, they take leftover and unwanted food donations and cook them up into tasty hot lunches for elderly and learning disabled adults in the city, hosted at the Hove Methodist Church Hall, just around the corner from the pub.
Doors will open at 7pm, with first talk beginning around 7.30pm. There will be an interval at c.8.15pm and we aim to finish about half-nine. Do come early if you would like to sample the Poets' excellent menu before the show.
Our talks:
Realism and Tinsel: Women and the war effort in British film
The early 1940s saw a flood of British films celebrating women's contribution to the war, in military service, in the workplace and at home. Churchill called one such film "propaganda worth 100 battleships", and the movies played an important part in persuading women to do their bit... But they also had to entertain. Linsay McCulloch, podcaster and vintage cinema nerd, shows how these movies balanced the graft and the glamour, the utility overalls and the lipstick, to say something vital about women's roles while still leaving room for adventure, excitement and romance.
From Valves to Victory: The early computers that turbocharged World War Two codebreaking
In 1903, a magician's antics got a professor fired! This set in motion a strange chain of events that culminated in the creation of the first programmable computer, known as Colossus. It was this computer that enabled the codebreakers at Bletchley Park to unlock Nazi communications, which gave the Allies the information they needed to launch D-Day. Den Knowles takes up this forgotten tale.
Our speakers:
Linsay McCulloch is a Curious Histories' regular, having spoken on cinematic history subjects as diverse as film noir, screwball comedies, and Native Americans in Hollywood. She's also a local Brighton resident and prodigious film podcaster. Do listen to her podcasts on weird twentieth century movies!
Den Knowles is an Information Security Consultant providing advice and guidance to large corporate companies. On the side, though, he has an interest in the peculiar and absurd aspects of information security history and this is his second talk on the subject for Curious Histories. Do check out Freaks of the Wireless, his first book on IT history, which features the bizarre feud between Edwardian magician Nevil Maskelyne and Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio.
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