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Ben’s Book Club: ‘Christmas Traditions’ by George Goodwin

Wednesday December 9th 2020, 5pm BST/12pm EDT. Register here.

Join us for the December instalment of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes relating to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th century, and American history.

This month we will be taking a festive break by talking to George Goodwin, our Author in Residence, about his book Christmas Traditions, an entertaining and enlightening guide to the sacred and secular traditions of Christmas, with many of the latter being 19th-century Anglo-American creations that owe much to Washington Irving and Charles Dickens.

When first experienced in childhood, Christmas seems all of a piece and to have a wondrously timeless quality, as its different aspects blend snugly together. With a collection of charming facts, quotations and anecdotes, George considers the history of the season’s most important festive elements. Beautifully illustrated with images from the British Library’s own vast collections, Christmas Traditions rekindles the memories that are an essential part of the magical nature of Christmastime.

George Goodwin is Honorary Author in Residence at Benjamin Franklin House in London, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Makin Fellow at the British Library’s Eccles Centre for American Studies, who sponsor his Christmas talks. As well as being the author of Christmas Traditions (2019), George has written three highly-acclaimed historical studies which include Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father.

Christmas Traditions is published by the British Library and most of its illustrations come from the BL’s own magnificent collections. It is available here and here and through all good bookshops.

Join us even if you don’t have a chance to read the book by the event date!

This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.

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US Presidential Debate 2020

US Presidential Debate with representatives from Republicans Overseas and Democrats Abroad and moderator, veteran pollster, Sir Robert Worcester   

In association with the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library

 

 

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Just weeks away, the contentious 2020 US presidential election between incumbent Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden is set against deeply divided ideological lines and a global pandemic.  Veteran pollster, Sir Robert Worcester, will ask Greg Swenson, representing Republicans Overseas and Bill Barnard, representing Democrats Abroad why each believes their candidate is best placed to lead the United States over the next four years.

Sir Robert Worcester is the founder of opinion research firm, MORI. He spearheaded the 800th Anniversary Commemoration of the Magna Carta and is a governor of the Ditchley Foundation. He is Chairman of the Emeritus Governors and Honorary Fellow, LSE; Visiting Professor and Fellow, King’s College London; Honorary Professor, Warwick and Kent (former Chancellor); Adjunct Professor, University of Kansas; Deputy Chairman, Magna Carta Trust; Vice President, former Chairman, Pilgrim Society; Vice President, International Social Science Council/UNESCO, United Nations Association, European Atlantic Group; Governor, English-Speaking Union; past Member, Fulbright.

Greg Swenson is a member of Republicans Overseas and a founding partner of Brigg Macadam Ltd, an emerging market investment banking firm in London. He has over twenty years of banking, alternative investments, and global markets experience.  He spent his first eleven years in the industry at Lehman Brothers, holding several positions in the fixed income area from 1992 to 2003. Greg holds an undergraduate degree from Boston College and MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University and is a frequent business and political commentator on BBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and other media platforms.

Bill Barnard is university professor and author of Dixiecrats and Democrats. Former Chair of Democrats Abroad UK, and former international Treasurer of Democrats Abroad, the official arm of the Democratic Party of the United States. He attended five Democratic conventions (two as a member of his state delegation and three as a political analyst and commentator for state-wide public television) and two Republican conventions as an analyst and commentator.  Bill says he was a Democrat by inheritance, passing out flyers for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and “a Democrat by persuasion by 1960,” campaigning for John F. Kennedy in the deep south at the age of 18.

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Washington, Franklin, and the British

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Monday November 9th, 5pm BST/12pm EDT

George Goodwin discusses his latest research on George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and the intelligence networks that shaped the War for Independence.

George Goodwin is Author in Residence at the Benjamin Franklin House in London. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father (Yale University Press) and contributor of the Benjamin Franklin entry in The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington.

He is the recipient of two separate international research fellowships at the Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello. This research project will provide a core element of his forthcoming book, Benjamin Franklin’s War: London, Paris and America’s Fight for Independence. Goodwin is an Eccles Centre Makin Fellow at the British Library, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a graduate of Cambridge University.

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Franklin’s Young Inventors Science Club: Balanced Diet

Saturday 19 June, 11.30am BST. Register here for this 30-minute virtual class.

Franklin’s Young Inventors is our weekly science club for aspiring scientists in Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14). We are delivering our science club virtually via Zoom on Tuesdays at 4.30pm BST or Saturdays at 11.30am BST. Participants will learn all about the experiments carried out by Benjamin Franklin and his British friends as well as trying their hand at practical investigations. This week we’ll be exploring the core biology topic of maintaining a balanced diet.

If you would like to create your own eat well plate or balanced meal dairy, you can download the templates here. If you would like to recreate the investigation into the effects of different foods on our teeth, you will need the following items: 4 eggs, 4 cups/jars, water, coffee, vinegar, coca cola, toothpaste.

Most suitable for Years 7-9 (US Grades 6-8) but all ages welcome!

Please note that the session will be recorded. A parent, carer or teacher should register on behalf of participants.

By registering, participants agree to follow our Online Safety Agreement. For more information, contact our Education Manager.

Funding for Franklin’s Young Inventors has generously been provided by the United States Government and the DAR Walter Hines Page Chapter.

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Robert H Smith Family Foundation Lecture in American Democracy – Democracy and the Supreme Court: judges and the politicians

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Watch this lecture here.

Join us for the annual Robert H Smith Family Foundation lecture in American Democracy which aims to promote the importance of international diplomacy and democracy in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin as a diplomat and politician.

The settled position of law and the judges in our constitution has undergone very severe stress testing over the last five years, through Brexit and coronavirus.  Those two crises demonstrate the dominance of the executive, who as coronavirus demonstrates can change the law at will if circumstances demand it, and the dominance of politics – if the politicians don’t like the limits set by the law they will not only change the law, they may change the constitution to neuter the judges.  How much at risk is the rule of law?  And what should we do about it?  Has politics prevented us from defending the rule of law? The lecture will set out the threat which is real, the consequences which are dire, and the steps we can take both to form a coalition which defends the rule of law and the specific constitutional changes needed to embed the rule of law.

Charlie Falconer (@LordCFalconer) is an English qualified barrister and partner based in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s London office.  The former UK Lord Chancellor and first Secretary of State for Justice spent 25 years as a commercial barrister, becoming a QC in 1991.

Chaired by Paul Apostolidis, Associate Professorial Lecturer and Deputy Head of Department for Education in the Department of Government at LSE.

This event is hosted in partnership with the Department of Government (@LSEGovernment), the world-leading centre for study and research in politics and government.

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Franklin & Washington: Edward J. Larson in conversation with Dr. Márcia Balisciano

During their lifetimes and in the years since, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington have been the subject of great literary interest. Yet each has typically been a minor player in the chronicles of the other – until now. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward J. Larson’s new book, Franklin & Washington, uncovers the close relationship between these two principal founders of the United States. Professor Larson, University Professor of History and Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University, who was also an inaugural Fellow at the Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, will be in conversation with Dr. Márcia Balisciano, Director of the Benjamin Franklin House in London, the world’s only surviving Franklin home. On the table will be the genesis of Franklin and Washington’s friendship and its impact on the American story, and their legacies in a time of challenge.

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

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Ben’s Book Club: ‘The Knife Man’ by Wendy Moore

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Join us for the October installment of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes ​related to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th ​century, and American ​history.

This month we will be talking to Wendy Moore about her first book ‘The Knife Man’, a fascinating biography of the 18th century surgeon John Hunter. This celebrated anatomist was a contemporary of Dr William Hewson, a fellow resident of 36 Craven Street during Benjamin Franklin’s stay, who ran a private anatomy school from the garden. Both were trained by John’s elder brother William. In later years John advised Franklin on his health.

Revered and feared in equal measure, John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of eighteenth-century London. Rich or poor, aristocrat or human freak, suffering Georgians knew that Hunter’s skills might well save their lives but if he failed, their corpses could end up on his dissecting table, their bones and organs destined for display in his remarkable, macabre museum. Maverick medical pioneer, adored teacher, brilliant naturalist, Hunter was a key figure of the Enlightenment who transformed surgery, advanced biological understanding and even anticipated the evolutionary theories of Darwin. He provided inspiration both for Dr Jekyll and Dr Dolittle. But the extremes to which he went to pursue his scientific mission raised question marks then as now.

‘The Knife Man’ won the UK Medical Journalists’ Association Consumer Book Award and was short-listed for the Marsh Biography Award and the Saltire Award. Other titles by Wendy Moore include ‘Wedlock‘, ‘How to Create the Perfect Wife‘, ‘The Mesmerist’, and her latest publication ‘Endell Street’ tells the story of the suffragette doctors who ran a Military Hospital in the heart of London in World War One. Wendy is a prize-winning author and freelance journalist who has written for numerous national newspapers including the Guardian, Times, Sunday Telegraph and Express as well as for medical journals including the Lancet and BMJ. She is one of the members of the judging panel for the annual Benjamin Franklin House Literary Prize for young writers and you can watch her virtual talk on ‘Endell Street’ here.

You can buy ‘The Knife Man’ here.

Join us even if you don’t have a chance to read the book by the event date!

This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.

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Ben’s Book Club: ‘A World on Fire’ by Amanda Foreman

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Join us for the November installment of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes ​related to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th ​century, and American ​history.

This month we will be talking to Dr Amanda Foreman about her brilliant narrative, ‘A World on Fire’, in which she tells the fascinating story of the American Civil War–and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle.

Between 1861 and 1865, thousands of British citizens volunteered for service on both sides of the Civil War. From the first cannon blasts on Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, they served as officers and infantrymen, sailors and nurses, blockade runners and spies. Through personal letters, diaries, and journals, Foreman introduces characters both humble and grand, while crafting a panoramic yet intimate view of the war on the front lines, in the prison camps, and in the great cities of both the Union and the Confederacy. In the drawing rooms of London and the offices of Washington, on muddy fields and aboard packed ships, Foreman reveals the decisions made, the beliefs held and contested, and the personal triumphs and sacrifices that ultimately led to the reunification of America.

‘A World on Fire’ was the winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award for Civil War History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was selected for the New York Times Top Ten Books of 2011. Amanda Foreman is also the author of the best-selling ‘Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’. In 2016, Foreman served as chair of The Man Booker Prize. That same year, her BBC documentary series, ‘The Ascent of Woman’, was released. Currently, she is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal bi-weekly ‘Historically Speaking’ and an Honorary Research Senior Fellow in the History Department at the University of Liverpool. Her next book, ‘The World Made by Women’, is scheduled to be published by Penguin Random House in 2021.

You can buy ‘A World on Fire’ here.

Join us even if you don’t have a chance to read the book by the event date!

This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.

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Ben’s Book Club: Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography with Dr George Boudreau

Please note this is a past event. View upcoming events and all past virtual talks here. 

Join us for our first edition of Ben’s Book Club, a monthly virtual gathering looking at themes ​related to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th ​century, and American ​history.

This month we will be exploring Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography with the help of Dr George Boudreau, public historian and Benjamin Franklin expert. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is both an important historical document and Franklin’s major literary work. It was not only the first autobiography to achieve widespread popularity, but after two hundred years remains one of the most enduringly popular examples of the genre ever written.

Dr George Boudreau is a cultural historian of early Anglo-America, specializing in the history of Philadelphia, the work of Benjamin Franklin, material culture, and public history. Boudreau was the founding editor of the journal Early American Studies, and has won six major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a fellow at Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington in 2019-20 and has previously completed fellowships at the Jamestown Rediscovery and the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Winterthur Museum and Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the David Library of the American Revolution. A 1998 Ph.D. from Indiana University, he is currently senior research associate at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Academic Advisory Panel for Benjamin Franklin House.

This event was free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.

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Virtual Talk: American Sheet Music at the British Library

Although once disregarded by historians as sentimental and ephemeral, today American sheet music is valued for the unique light it sheds upon the nation’s concerns and aspirations. In this talk, Eccles Centre for American Studies librarian Jean Petrovic will share items held at the British Library. She will consider how this music moved ‘from the sacred to the secular and from the timeless to the timely’ and will explore how songs associated with World War I and the movement for female suffrage captured, reflected – and possibly even shaped – the cultural and political zeitgeist.

Image: Marie Zimmerman, Votes for Women. Suffrage Rallying Song. Philadelphia: E.M. Zimmerman, 1915. British Library shelfmark: H.3992.r.(18)