Welcome to another exciting year of Grange Lecture Society. We are enjoying our 117th year. Our Ten Talks programme for 2025-2026 has a range of different subject areas and, we feel, a good appeal to a wide audience of all ages.

We enjoyed two free talks now at the start of the season. The first was given by our own Professor Philip Helliwell. All You Wanted to Know About Arthritis and was accompanied by drinks and nibbles. This was followed by a talk by Stephen Trotter, in association with the excellent Grange Natural History Society. Our Ten Talks programme then commenced on Tuesday 14 October.

Since then we have enjoyed learning about the value of fish to our global industries, and explored the old turnpike roads around and across the Morecambe Bay Sands. Our magician was unable to attend due to illness, but we wove a little magic ourselves by finding a last minute speaker who provided an excellent talk about the Mutiny on the Bounty. It was a tale well told, about how not to look after your fleet and sailors. We have learnt about how the first Lake District Ordnance Survey in the 1850s influenced our place names.

Before Christmas we enjoyed a delightful evening of Christmas Carols and Customs with Richard Kay and we have started the new year by taking a journey back 480 million years to learn how geological events and processes shaped the countryside around Britain, Cumbria and the Lake District.

In February we will learnt about the Inspiration of Community Choirs from Emma Baylin which included a faboulous sing along with the audience. Everyone felt this was a tremendous ice breaker and it was great that everyone stayed chatting after the talk finished. And we had a very informative talk by Susan Major about Women Railway Workers in World War II. This included some delightful sound bites from women who actually took part in this work, recorded back at the turn of the century but still very valid today.

In March we will take a look at the history of Japanese Gardens with Marie Conte-Helm and finish our season with an insightful talk by Andrew Green about the History of Walking, based on his book Voices on the Path: A History of walking in Wales.

Our fee remains £46 (otherwise £10 per talk at the door). At £4.60 per talk, that’s less than a glass of wine for highly informative entertainment. Why not ask friends or a new neighbour to come along, or treat someone to membership for their birthday?