GW300 Online Autumn Talk Series

We are continuing the Gilbert White 300 celebrations with a series of Online talks throughout October and November.

We have asked experts from all over the country to join us on Zoom to share their knowledge on Gilbert White himself and related topics.

Each talk is £5 to join, on the day of the talk you will be sent a link which you can use to connect you to the talk and later Q&A session.

These talks will be recorded but not made available on You Tube like some of our other online events so you need to sign up to join!

Heritage Apples

First up is Chris Bird, Curator of Sparsholt College’s National Plant Collection of Hampshire & Isle of Wight Apples (Malus) Pre-1960. Chris will be discussing Apple types & ID; cultivar selection; rootstock selection; pollination; growing tips; storage and main Pest & Diseases to spot and treat. Or even better prevent.

This is just what Gilbert White would be thinking about at this time of year so we cannot wait for this timely and practical talk.

The talk will take place on the 22nd October at 7pm, please click here to book. 

The Gilbert White of Bognor 
On Thursday 29th October at 6:30pm Christine Taylor, curator of Natural History at Portsmouth Museums will tell us about HLF Guermonprez (1858-1924) who was an enthusiastic naturalist who assembled a huge collection of Natural History specimens which are now held in Trust by Portsmouth Museums. In 1957 the local paper published an article ‘ The Gilbert White of Bognor’.  This talk explores some of Guermonprez’s collections and draws comparisons to Gilbert White of Selborne.

Autumn Animation

Gilbert White: An Eighteenth-Century ‘Parson Naturalist’

Gilbert White is remembered primarily as a natural historian and writer, but to the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Selborne he was first and foremost their village curate. Today, we often think of religion and science as incompatible but in fact White was only one of many eighteenth-century clergymen for whom the study of ‘God’s creation’ was an essential part of their faith. On the 12th November at 7pm Professor Brycchan Carey will look at the ways in which White combined the roles of clergyman and natural historian, and show how he was just one in a long tradition of ‘parson naturalists’. Click here to book! 

 

Annotating Nature in Gilbert White’s Selborne

Books were central to Gilbert White’s interests in natural history. In this talk, Edwin Rose will examine several books annotated by White himself and discuss how these were used when collecting information on the natural world. White’s books encapsulate his fieldwork in and around Selborne and arrange this alongside the information he received from a global network of correspondents. Much of the information White added to his annotated books was later incorporated into the letters he sent to Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington that formed the basis for The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789).

Edwin Rose is currently Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge University and a research fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. The talk will be at 6:30pm on the 26th November. Click here to book.