Festival Brochure 2021 - Flipbook - Page 13
Tuesday 25th May, 11am: HMT Pine and Royal
Navy Patrol Service” with Revd Chris Bessant
“What lies at the bottom of the sea?” If you ask a
wreck diver you may get some interesting answers.
Chris Bessant – The Rector of Haslemere – was, in a
previous existence, a keen wreck scuba diver, with
a passion for marine archaeology. In 2013 he worked with a team to investigate and
recover some of the history of HMT Pine, an armed trawler sunk off the south coast.
Their work was well received and won an award from the Duke of Edinburgh’s Jubilee
Trust. This talk will look into some forgotten areas of maritime WWII, the Royal Navy
Patrol Service, and about how such underwater archaeology is quite a challenge to
undertake. Haslemere Museum, £5
Tuesday 25th May, 2.30 pm: Picasso’s Guernica:
The greatest anti-war icon with Gijs van Hensbergen
Guernica is a very large 1937 oil painting on canvas by
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is regarded as one of the
most moving and powerful paintings in history. Picasso
painted Guernica in response to the bombing of
Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain, by
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the
Spanish Nationalists. It portrays the suffering of people
and animals wrought by violence and chaos. It is a very
complex painting with images that convey the story in
subtle detail. Our speaker, Gijs van Hensbergen (a world expert on Picasso and
biographer of Gaudi) has made a special study of the painting and its subject.
Haslemere Museum, £5
Wednesday 26th May, 11am: Anniversary Talk - “One More Year”:
The Earl, the Castle and the Tomb with Diana Mitchell
Almost 100 years ago, ‘Tutankhamun’ became the most exciting ever discovery in
archaeology, attracting world-wide attention then and today. Behind the front-page
news is the story of how an English Earl developed a love of Egypt, was persuaded to
give ‘one more year’ to what was
thought to be a no-hope quest, and
died in Cairo before he could return to
his beloved home at Highclere Castle.
Diana Mitchell, Head Guide at the
Castle for nearly twenty years, tells
this fascinating tale and its place in
the wider story of a place, a family
and a more recent claim to fame – as
“The Real Downton Abbey”.