Autumn 2025

Our Programme of Morning Presentations and Afternoon SIG Sessions are coordinated by Jocelyn Welch and Sandra Hill. They can be contacted by email by clicking on their names and using our "Contact Us" page.

Thursday Morning Presentations in the Studio

Thursday Afternoon - Special Interest Groups - Click on name for more information

(St) Studio (MR) Meeting room

Date	1st Session 1.15 p.m.- 2.15 p.m.	2nd Session 2.30 p.m.- 3.30 p.m.
11th September	St - Philosophy MR - Family History	St - Science Questions Answered
18th September	St - Gardening MR - Bookshelf	St - Earth Science
25th September	St - Archaeology
2nd October	St - Art Appreciation MR - Family History
9th October	St - British Constitution and Human Rights MR - Creative Writing	MR - What the papers say
16th October	St - Earth Science MR - Poetry	St - Aspects of History MR - Play reading
23rd October	St - Archaeology	St - Gardening MR - Play reading
30th October	HALF TERM
6th November	St - Science Questions Answered MR - Creative Writing	St - Philosophy MR - Play Reading
13th November	St - Aspects of History MR - What the papers say	St - British Constitution and Human Rights
20th November	St - Gardening MR - Poetry	St - Earth Science MR - Creative Writing
27th November	St - Archaeology MR - Family History
4th December	St - Art Appreciation	MR - Bookshelf
11th December

Background Information about the Morning Speakers and their presentations

11th September - Robert Hughes - The Napoleonic Wars.

My name is Robert Hughes, I was a member of Talgarth Historical Society for a number of years. The talk on the Napoleonic wars will not cover the main battles of this period but will look at some lesser known events, with the particular effect some lesser known
individuals had on this period, and the effect these battles had on them.

18th September - Mark Belchier - South Georgia - The ecological recovery of the jewel of the Southern Ocean.

I’m a marine ecologist with over 19 years post doctoral research experience of marine fisheries ecology in both European and Antarctic environments. For over 14 years I have been the science leader of an independent BAS project which provides scientific advice to the governments of South Georgia and the UK in support of the sustainable management of the regions’ fisheries. I was involved in the establishment of the applied fisheries research laboratory at King Edward Point, South Georgia and continue to manage the science programme there. I have extensive fisheries research experience and have been the lead scientist on eight research surveys of fish resources in the South Georgia region of the Scotia Sea. My research is focused on the fish and invertebrates of the shelf and slope regions of the sub-Antarctic and, how gaining insights into their ecology can assist with implementation of ecosystem based fisheries management in the region. I have been a member of the UK delegation to CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) since 2001 and convened its working group on fish stock assessment (WG-FSA) from 2012 – 2015. In October 2015 I was elected as Chairman of CCAMLR’s Scientific Committee.

25th September - Gwyneth Evans - The Flooding of the Cwmtaf Valley.

My talk will be focussed on the Cwmtaf Valley - over the Beacons from Storey Arms to the top of Cefn Coed Village before the three reservoirs were built - Beacons, Cantref and Llwynon. I sincerely hope your members will find this of interest to them. They must be familiar with the road, en route to Merthyr Retail Park or Cardiff!

2nd October - Richard Walker - Che Guevara.

Born in Argentina in 1928, he grew up against a background of inequality and an economy dominated by the British, but subject increasingly to the economic predations of the United States. A chronic asthmatic, he qualified as a doctor and gained a unique insight into the suffering of so many, particularly indigenous people, by visiting Leprosy missions throughout
South America. This, together with the poverty and exploitation he witnessed resulted in a vision of a "United States of South America". As a revolutionary soldier he fought alongside Castro in Cuba and even found time to write a couple of Marxist manuals. He died in Bolivia at the rather tender age of 30 but is recognised alongside Simon Bolivar as one of the great champions of the poor and marginalised throughout South America. Importantly for the sake of this presentation he has always been one of my heroes!

9th October - Hugh Thomas.

Hugh served in the Royal Educational Corps for 22 years, resigning in 1984 whereupon he obtained employment with the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon, retiring as Diocesan Secretary on All Fools’ Day 2000. Together with Corinne he joined U3A at the next available meeting. Today’s talk is a brief sketch of the life of Princesse Edmond de Polignac accompanied by some of the music supported by her patronage.

16th October - Taniya Keoghan - The Turkish Invasion of Cyprus July 1974.

The talk will be in two parts, the first half being the background and the consequences of the invasion and the second half will be my experience of the invasion when I spent 10 days in Kyrenia in July 1974, which covered the invasion period. All with accompanying photographs.

23rd October - Gail Sequeira - Street Food and Other Stories.

The food we love across the world holds stories within it. Tales of great adventure and simple pleasures. Food connects people separated by time and place and technology in a way that nothing else can. We will all hopefully leave this talk thinking about the food we eat, whether we like it nor not, in a slightly different way. Gail was born in India and moved to Brecon in 2017. She began writing seriously during lockdown. Her writing reflects her feminist identity, interest in cross-cultural relations, solidarity with lost causes and the universal search for belonging.

6th November - Helen Fletcher - The Chemistry of DNA.

After taking a degree in Chemistry at Bristol University and then a PGCE, Helen began her teaching career in Bristol, then moving to Oxfordshire and Somerset, before settling in Wales in. For ten years she lived and worked at Atlantic College, teaching Chemistry, Physics and some Maths and raising two daughters. She returned to the State System and taught in Barry and then was Head of Chemistry at Tonyrefail for ten years. The final six years of her career were a complete contrast, as a Housemistress at St Swithun’s School in Winchester, before retiring to Llanfrynach. “I have always been most interested in theoretical aspects of Chemistry and first
gave a talk about DNA in about 1976 to the National Housewives Register(!) in
Frome.”

13th November - Aiden Seeley - Ozempic and Beyond - The Science Behind Weight-loss Drugs?

Dr Aiden Seeley PhD FHEA FBPhS completed a BSc Biomedical Science (Pharmacology) degree at the University of Aberdeen in 2015 and a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast. He is now based at Swansea University where he is Programme Director for the BSc Medical Pharmacology programme. He is Principal Investigator of the Swansea Worm Integrative Research Laboratory
(SWIRL) which looks at the Californian Blackworm, or Lumbriculus variegatus, as a new organism for studying drugs in living organisms as an alternative to the
conventional models of rats and mice.

20th November - Philip Grant - Aspects of Wilderness.

Philip Grant is happily settled in Brecon, after spending most of his life in Africa. The main purpose of his talk is to promote the awareness and appreciation of Wilderness, its ethics,
philosophy, principles and values. He will explain something of what Wilderness has come to mean to him after many years of exposure to pristine African Wilderness, and how these insights can be applied to the wilder spaces around us in Wales. He hopes to leave us with some food for thought, and ideas to muse upon.

27th November - Richard Suggett. Breconshire Houses Revisited.

Richard Suggett FSA, FLSW was Senior Investigator (Architecture) at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. He is the author of several Royal Commission monographs, most recently Painted Temples /Temlau Peintiedig (2021), a study of wallpaintings in Welsh churches. He is currently working on the legal record of early-modern Wales, pursuing some of the themes explored in A History of Witchcraft and Magic in Wales (2008), as well as continuing to explore the regional architecture of houses and churches.

4th December - David Mitchell. The Making of Ukraine

David has departed once again from Earth Science to history. Having in the past talked about three notorious Russian Tsars, he now considers how the country of Ukraine has come into being
despite subjection to the appalling actions of past and present Russian rulers. Although Ukraine only came into being as an independent state in the 20th century, its people have a long history of valuable traditions and were in fact the original Russians with their capital in Kiev.

11th December - Hugh Purcell and Margaret Percy. Castaways.

In 1980, Gerald W. Kingsland set out to become a modern day Robinson Crusoe. Lucy Irvine
answered his advertisement for a female companion. They each wrote a book on their experiences, The Islander by Gerald and Castaway by Lucy. Today we compare accounts.