Details of the speakers for our 2011 meetings can be found below.

January 12^th 

Jon Cooksey

Blood and Iron - Hugh Montagu Butterworth and Letters from Flanders

Jon is a leading military historian who takes a special interest in the history of the world wars and the Falklands War. He is the former editor of Battlefields Review and the current editor of Stand To! He is the author of several books and has taken part in a number of TV documentaries. Jon will describe the experiences of Hugh Butterworth, a highly educated, sensitive and perceptive individual whose letters, which describe his experience of war in poignant detail, have been rediscovered.

February 9^th

Simon Jones

Underground Warfare

Simon is a freelance military historian specialising in the First World War. He is the author of World War I Gas Warfare Tactics and Equipment (2007) and Underground Warfare 1914-1918 (2010). He was formerly Exhibitions Officer at the Royal Engineers Museum and Curator of the King’s Regiment Museum, Liverpool. Simon's talk will describe the ancient method of siege warfare that was developed to an extraordinary extent during 1914-1918. By 1916, thousands of men were working underground beneath the Western Front in conditions of extreme danger and adversity.

March 9^th

Gordon Corrigan MBE

Myth and Reality in the First World War

Commissioned from The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1962, Gordon was an officer of the Royal Gurkha Rifles before retiring from the Army in 1998. He is now a military historian, the author of several books and has presented five TV documentary series on various aspects of military history. In this talk, Gordon argues that the picture of blinkered butchers and bunglers who threw away the lives of a generation of young men to no purpose is not supported by the facts and that the war was in general as well conducted as it could be, given the assets available at the time.

April 13^th

Pete Starling

"War is the only proper school of the surgeon" - the RAMC and medical improvements in WW1

Pete is a retired RAMC officer and is now Director of the Army Medical Services Museum having previously been Curator Royal Army Medical Corps Museum. He is a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Medicine and is the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries' Lecturer in the History of Medicine to the Army. After reminding us of the differences between wounds of the South African War and of the First World War, he will explore the various advances, especially in surgery and anaesthesia, necessary to keep pace with the new weaponry of 1914-18.

May 11^th

Members’ Evening

+ the branch AGM

Members’ evening plus branch AGM. Further details will be published nearer the time.

June 8^th

Graham Keech

Scuttling at Scapa Flow

Graham joined the WFA shortly after its foundation and held several committee posts before becoming Deputy Chairman in 1987 and Chairman from 1990 to 1994. He was also Surrey Branch Chairman for five years until 2006. Graham's talk will cover the creation of the German High Seas Fleet from the mid 1890s and the associated build up of tension leading to the naval race following the construction of H M S Dreadnought in 1906. It will include personalities involved and deal in detail with the reasons for the scuttle and the fate of the ships during the 1920s and 30s.

July 13^th

Martin Middlebrook

The Changing Composition of the BEF

Martin is one of the most influential and popular historians of the Great War. He has written many books that deal with important turning points in the two world wars and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In this talk he draws on his extensive research and knowledge to describe how the BEF that achieved victory in 1918 was very different in organisation, numbers and capabilities from the 'Old Contemptibles' of 1914.

August 10^th

Professor John Derry

The Blue and the Grey

Professor Derry is Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Before moving back to near his home town he served in the Royal Air Force and held other academic posts, including Fellow and Director of Studies at Downing College, Cambridge. The Blue and the Grey is about the American Civil War; a war that saw dramatic developments in military and naval technology and tactics, in economic warfare and the significance of a naval blockade. In some aspects the Civil War anticipated the First World War, and its consequences shaped US history.

September 14^th

Alan Wakefield

The Austro-Hungarian Army 1914-1918

Alan graduated from the University of Reading in 1990 with a degree in History and followed this with an MA in War Studies. He has worked as a curator at the National Maritime Museum and RAF Museum and since 2000 he has been a curator in the Photograph Archive of the IWM. The Austro-Hungarian forces received a generally bad press at the hands of their former German allies and numerous historians. It is hoped that this talk will show how, despite many weaknesses, this multi-ethnic force remained in the field with its cohesion intact until the final months of the war.

October 12^th

Jerry Murland

Aristocrats Go To War

Jerry retired from teaching five years ago and began writing about the Great War and the men who fought in it. His second book, Aristocrats Go To War was published in July 2010. Compared to the huge conscripted European armies, the British army of 1914 was considered insignificant by its rivals, indeed Bismarck once famously said, if necessary he would send a German policeman to arrest it! But, as this talk makes clear, its great strength lay in a regimental system that fostered a regimental pride and spirit that was at the very heart of British military tradition.

November 9^th

David Boyd Haycock

The War Art of Paul Nash and C.R.W. Nevinson

David is a freelance historian. He read 'Modern History' at the University of Oxford, and has an MA in the History of Art from the University of Sussex. He is the author of 'Paul Nash' (2002) and 'A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War' (2009), which was selected as The Guardian's 'Book of the Week'. David will show how new movements in modern art shaped the way in which the brutally modern and mechanised war of 1914-18 was recorded, and how Nash and Nevinson used their differing talents and interests to make a series of powerful records of the fighting and the destruction on the Western Front.

December 14^th

The Chris Baker Christmas Lecture

Operation Hush and the Beach Party that destroyed it

One of the forgotten aspects of the British Army's war on the Western Front was a planned amphibious landing further up the Belgian coast. Eventually planned as "Operation Hush" it became a key component of Haig's Ypres offensive in 1917. Much preparation and detailed training was undertaken, involving not only the army but the Royal Navy which would enable the landings to take place. But all was wrecked by a surprise German attack codenamed "Strandfest" ("Beach party"), which wiped out two British battalions and had an important effect on Third Ypres. Chris Baker looks at the genesis of the operation and the fighting that took place in this little-known battle.