The next Drill Hall Dialogue talk is being held at the Guildhall Museum room DA002 in Rochester on Tuesday 11 June 2019 at 10.00. The focus is on Upnor Castle and the Dutch Raid.

Plague and Fire swept through London in the 1660s and have become established as infamous episodes in England’s history. But the disaster that followed is less well-known, and it happened right here, on the River Medway. This illustrated talk will look at the causes of the event, at the people involved and how it all unfolded in a few momentous days in June 1667.

Dr Jeremy Clarke, who is giving the talk, has been Education Officer at the Guildhall Museum in Rochester since 1998. He is responsible for all formal education and learning programmes supported by the museum collection or its listed buildings.

Most of his work is with or in local schools, but he also runs courses, lectures and illustrated talks for adults. He has also run partnership projects to support children in making music for Dickens’s novels, in illustrating scenes from Great Expectations, and in working with actors at locations made famous by the novel. In 2010 he hosted a shared reading of Great Expectations in the original parts, timed to coincide with their publication 150 years before.

Drill Hall Dialogues is a monthly series of talks held at the Drill Hall Library, the learning resource centre for the Universities at Medway collaborative project. A wide variety of topics has been covered including prison libraries, NHS libraries, Dickens and Christmas, Medway regeneration, the Medway Floods of 1953 and Fort Amherst. We have also received talks from academics based on the campus including the Centre for Journalism (UKM) and the Faculty of Education (CCCU). The talks take place on the first or second Tuesday of the month and usually last no longer than 45 minutes with 15 minutes allotted for any questions and answers.  All staff are welcome to attend.

For more information visit www.campus.medway.ac.uk