Click on the title of a talk below to find out who gives it, how much they charge and their contact details. Please note that inclusion in this list does not signify OLHA’s recommendation.
1066: Oxfordshire’s part in the Norman Conquest – a light-hearted romp
1940s Brownies: how the Brownies helped to win the war
600 years of Morris dancing in 60 minutes
A crystal vision of Victorian Britain: the Great Exhibition of 1851
Afflictions and their curious remedies in days gone by
A literary tour of Oxford(shire) waterways
Apples! The myth and mystery of England’s favourite fruit
A short history of the GWR Abingdon Branch
A tiger in the bathroom and bullets up the chimney
A walk along the Thames Path from the source near Cirencester towards Oxford
A way with water: Farnborough Hall and the development of a Georgian estate
Alice, Lewis Carroll & the River Thames
Architecture of Oxford University
Armistice 1918 and After: Some Local Perspectives
Beer, sausages and marmalade: Oxford food and drink in the 19th century
Black Death: its nature and effects on society
Bridging the Gap – Goring and Streatley through the ages
Britain’s most eccentric sports
Brome and Whorwood families of Holton Park: recusants and royalists
Canal history: the world to Wiltshire, from 520BC to the present day
Canal restoration: benefits to wildlife and the environment
Capability Brown at Radley: rediscovering a lost landscape
Catholic recusancy in Berkshire
Catholic recusancy in Oxfordshire
Charles Dickens as social reformer and medical observer as illustrated in his novels
Child labour in 19th-century Oxfordshire
Children and war: children’s experiences of the Second World War in Oxfordshire
City of Oxford during the Civil War, 1642-46
Combe, the Mill on the Evenlode: The story of the Mill and Combe Mill Society
Common right – private property: how enclosure shaped the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire landscape
Conscientious objectors in First World War Oxfordshire
Covert Catholics of the Bampton area
Covert Catholics of the Lambourn Valley and Downs
Covert Catholics of the Vale of White Horse
Crime and punishment in Victorian Britain
Cropredy: developing the archaeology of a village
Dad’s underground army: the Auxiliary Units of the British Resistance Organisation
Daniel Harris: Oxford Castle gaoler extraordinaire
Deserted settlements of Radley
Disaster Waiting – The Severn Bridge Disaster
Dressing up the past: historical pageants – the re-enactment of Oxfordshire local history
Drovers’ roads in Oxfordshire and Beyond
Early Oxford-Cambridge boat races
Early women professional gardeners, including the founders of Waterperry
England observed: the photography of John Gay
Fair Mile Hospital: a quick overview
Famous Belgians: more than you might think
Fight against fascism in Oxford
Fore and Aft – The Purton Ship Graveyard
Four generations at Fair Mile Hospital
Frenzy: the notion of madness in medieval times
From biplanes to BAC via bouncing bombs: the aeronautical career of Herbert Jeffree, FRAS
From Thames to Rhine by bike in 1966
From Trevithick to Barnes Wallis: engineering in the family
German bands in Victorian England
Getting started with family history
Glenn Miller: the magic and the mystery
Goring: an Oxfordshire Village in the 1960s
Goring & Streatley’s Hall of Fame
Green Man trail in Oxfordshire
Harcourt Arboretum: the first 50 years
Holton Park: an estate and family through the lens of the 1890s
Holton Park: from medieval manor to secondary academy – 1,000 years of change and continuity
Hospitals and infirmaries in the Middle Ages
How many architects named Gilbert Scott do you know?
Impact of the First World War on Oxford’s women’s lives
In Defence of the Drift – A Gloster Boy Abroad
Indian Army during the First World War: an Oxf and Bucks Light Infantry Perspective
Industrial archaeology in your garage, shed and attic
Ingenious inventions of Alex Moulton
Intriguing and surprising themes in Medieval illuminated manuscripts
James Sadler and me: how the first Englishman to fly enabled me to overcome lifelong height anxiety
James Sadler of Oxford: the first English aeronaut
John Taylor the Waterpoet: mad, sad, glad and bad Civil War Oxford
Kidlington in the Great War: The lost soldiers’ stories and remembrance in an Oxfordshire village
Kingerlee: the family and the building firm
Leisure and entertainment in Victorian and Edwardian Oxford
Life in the medieval monastic cloister
Light in the Darkest Hour – Dunkirk’s Little Ships
Local aspects of commemorating the deceased in the Middle Ages
Lord Nuffield’s great generosity to Oxford colleges
Lost villages of Oxfordshire (or Northamptonshire / Warwickshire / Buckinghamshire)
Lydney’s Lost Fleet – The Lydney Ship Graveyard
Meet at Dawn, Unarmed: the Christmas Truce of 1914
Memories of the Vale: a lost way of life before the railways came to the countryside
More than three men in a boat: the rise and fall of pleasure boating on the Thames
Morris dancing [tailored to area where appropriate]
Morris’s motopolis: the motor works and the transformation of Oxford
Nineteenth-century women travellers and explorers
No corsets! The aesthetic and rational dress movements come to Oxford
Northamptonshire and its hearth taxes
Nuffield College’s “Island Site” in west Oxford
Olive Gibbs, local politician and peace campaigner
On two wheels: the fascinating story of the bicycle
Otmoor Riots in a wider context
Our Boys 1914-1918: who were the fallen of one Oxfordshire valley?
Oxf and Bucks on the Somme, 1916
Oxford Botanic Garden: the first 393 years
Oxford Castle: 17th- and 18th-century crimes, escapes, and punishments
Oxford in the history of medicine
Oxfordshire in the British Civil Wars 1642-51
Oxfordshire in the Second World War
Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
Oxfordshire Home Front, 1914-18
Oxfordshire’s Military Heritage – 43AD to the present day
Pagans & puritans – the story of May Morning in Oxford
Papists at the Manor: the Yates and Throckmortons of Buckland and Lyford in the Vale of White Horse
Peripatetic poor in the eighteenth century
Place-names, landscape and settlement in the Banbury region
Poor Law in the eighteenth century: the crisis in the parishes
Port to Port – A Historical Journey, the Length and Breadth of the Sharpness to Gloucester Canal
Poverty, pestilence and public health in Victorian Britain
Power and personalities: politics in Victorian and Edwardian Oxford
Radley gentry, yeomen and land
Radley timber framed buildings
Raleigh-ing to the cause: the bicycle in wartime
Ridge and furrow – what’s it all about?
Remembrance after the Great War
Rout on the Riviera – Exercise Tiger – The Slapton Sands Disaster
Ruskin College: the ‘ups and downs’, a history of the college
Saints and sinners: Victorian and Edwardian religion in Oxfordshire
Scandal in High Society Oxfordshire: selected tales of toffs in trouble
Sculls, skiffs and steamers: the history of Salter’s Steamers
Seventeenth century village – who was in charge?
Sex, drink and death in the 17th century
Sharpness Scuppered Ships – The Sharpness Ship Graveyard
Sleeping through the ages: historical aspects of human sleep
Soldiers, Saints and Sinners: Oxfordshire Characters from the British Civil War, 1642-46
Steam and steel in the Vale of White Horse
Stolen Lives: Individual tragedies of the Great War
The Abingdon waterturnpike murder
The Air Transport Auxiliary: unsung heroes of World War II
The Battle of Cropredy Bridge and the Oxfordshire Campaign, 1644
The Cherwell Crossings Battlefield Archaeology Project
The Church in revolt? Conscientious objection, religion and the public in Oxford in 1916
The coming of the railway to Oxford
The common lodging-house in Victorian England
The corruption of Parliament? MPs, money and public service in modern Britain
The duke and the miner’s daughter
The gender agenda: the British suffrage movement
“The Great Stink!” Engineers, sewerage systems and the Victorian battle against dirt
The history and folklore of European witchcraft and attempts to combat its influence
The history of Oxford University
The history of Radley College: school, grounds and buildings
The history of the development of printed maps of Oxfordshire and of the adjoining counties
The history of the River Thames
The Home Front in World War II
The life and times of Thomas Butler Gunn
The man who who collected Oxfordshire: the antiquary Percy Manning
The medieval wall paintings of St Mary’s Church, Chalgrove
The parish of St Thomas the Martyr, West Oxford
The prehistory of the upper Thames
The pursuit of pleasure: Victorian and Edwardian leisure
The river at war: why the Thames was such an important strategic feature in World War II
The Roman invasions, occupation and colonisation of Britain
The Tudor warship, the Mary Rose
The turbulent lifetime of Thomas Vachell
The Upper Thames Patrol: the waterborne Home Guard of the River Thames
The US Ninth Air Force in the UK in World War II
The water gypsy: how a Thames fishergirl became a viscountess
Thousands of miles in the Rob Roy canoe: the life and times of John MacGregor
Titanic Effort! – RMS Carpathia’s Dash to Save a Stricken Liner
Tom Carter of Marsh Baldon: the invisible collector
Town Lands: the story of Henley Workhouse
Transport in the Goring Gap – an illustrated history
Travels with Auntie: my life at the BBC World Service
Turning over Stones – Nun’s Acre, Goring and its architect Percy Stone
Victorian and Edwardian development of East Oxford
Victorian and Edwardian industrial buildings of Oxford
Votes for women in Oxford (and/or Oxfordshire)
Voyages to the House of Diversion: Hanwell Castle and its Jacobean park
West Country defences in World War II
Where are the Boys? The first fateful day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916
Who were the Hildesleys? – the story of a secretive Thames Valley gentry family
William Castle: a notable Banbury eccentric and Morris Fool
William Gill: Victorian explorer and spy
Wilts & Berks Canal: past, present and future
Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) in World War II: the largest female voluntary organisation ever
Wreckers’ Tales – Ship Breakers of the Severn
Wrecks to Relics – Purton’s Mulberry Blueprint
WWI memorials: public schools in the Great War
X marks the spot: ballot papers in Britain, France and the US, c. 1750-1950
Yesterday’s runways: airfields of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds