Newcastle Local History Group: Monthly Meeting Notes October 7

Monthly Meeting Notes October 7

Apologies from Peter who is having a break in Scotland, Irene who had a family bereavement, Joan who was not well, David who is doing a Guided walk, (hope the rain did not spoil things), Eric doing an Art Walk, Dorothy and Ann who had other engagements. We still had a good turn out to a rather wet morning. Ann left me with the reply from her councillors over the Adult Learning funding, there was not much they could do as the council do not directly fund Adult Learning. Full details to follow.

We talked about next year and it looks like Brunswick Methodist Church may be the best venue although Ann had previous suggested several venues that may be free and is worth looking at. We talked about setting up a self-programming course until we could get further details of tutor costs from Caroline Miller of Adult Learning. Maureen mentioned we could do a members’ talk where one of us volunteer to talk about a local history interest, John suggested we invite speakers, Joan said she knew of another history group who had guest speakers and would look into it. Talking to Eric he mentioned that he may be able to approach someone he knew. If anyone has any more suggestions please get in touch.

Joan mentioned the Northumberland & Durham Family History Society which has a library in Percy House on the corner of Percy Street and Blacket Street and that it may be possible to obtain a visit by our group to see some of their archives. Joan will get back to use when she has further news. The web site for the Northumberland & Durham Family History Society is below well worth checking out.

http://www.ndfhs.org.uk/

Joan has kindly agreed to give us a demonstration of how to use Ancestry Online and what we can do with it. We will arrange a session in the City Library for November or December so let us know if you are interested. You may want to bring some information along to start you off.

Origins of the second world War

Michael mentioned the next course he was setting up to run in January for 10 weeks in room 7 of the City Library. He has asked us if we would be interested in the origins of the second world war. The course would be run on the same time 10:30 on Thursday mornings.

The image above is from a Google search and shows the cover of A.J.P Taylor work a very controversial book that was heavily criticised by Taylors contemporaries however to quote from wikipeadia.org

‘Despite the criticism, The Origins of the Second World War is regarded as a watershed in the historiography of the origins of the Second World War’.

I am sure Michael can give us a good balanced view to this controversial subject