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 boy scouts: how they were recruited into Churchill’s secret army
1940s girl guides: a forgotten army of 750,000
350 years of glasshouses at the Oxford Botanic Garden
600 years of Morris dancing in 60 minutes
A crystal vision of Victorian Britain: the Great Exhibition of 1851
A guides’ guide: Working in historic houses in the 21st century
A literary tour of Oxford(shire) waterways
A short history of the GWR Abingdon Branch
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
Abingdon Abbey’s deer park and Radley Large Wood
Alice’s adventures in Oxford: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames
All that glitters: Woodstock’s cut steel industry
Apples! The myth and mystery of England’s favourite fruit
Archaeology of Stowe Landscape Garden
Architecture of Oxford University
Armistice 1918 and After: Some Local Perspectives
Artists in Wonderland: the Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford
Beating the ancient bounds of Oxford city: memorable moments from the last 500 years
Beer, sausages and marmalade: Oxford food and drink in the 19th century
Bridging the Gap – Goring and Streatley through the ages
Brome and Whorwood families of Holton Park: recusants and royalists
Can onions cure earache? Medical advice from the 1700s
Canal history: the world to Wiltshire, from 520BC to the present day
Canal people: the very many people who can be described as such
Canal restoration: benefits to wildlife and the environment
Capability Brown at Radley: rediscovering a lost landscape
Cemeteries of Oxford – More than a century of history
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
Common right – private property: how enclosure shaped the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire landscape
Conscientious objectors in First World War Oxfordshire
Cotswolds Cornucopia: a whirlwind tour taking in sites and stories, landmarks and surprises
Cowley Road, in the context of the social history of East Oxford (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)
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 ‘Damnable’ Harris: Oxford Castle gaoler extraordinaire
Deserted settlements of Radley
Disaster Waiting – The Severn Bridge Disaster
Drovers’ roads in Oxfordshire and Beyond
Early women professional gardeners, including the founders of Waterperry
Einstein and the Refugee Scholars in Oxford
Fair Mile Hospital: a quick overview
Famous Local Folk: the people behind the blue plaques of South Oxfordshire
Fight against fascism in Oxford
Food of the Gods: Adventures in chocolate
Fore and Aft – The Purton Ship Graveyard
Four generations at Fair Mile Hospital
From assembly rooms to public toilets: The uses and abuses of spa architecture
From Axtell to Zacharias: the men who built Oxford
Further Tales from the Historic Environment Image Resource (HEIR) Project
Glenn Miller: the magic and the mystery
Glimpses of the Other Oxford through the Eyes of a Victorian Mission
Goring: an Oxfordshire Village in the 1960s
Goring & Streatley’s Hall of Fame
Green Man trail in Oxfordshire
Harcourt Arboretum: the first 50 years
Hardit Singh Malik – The Flying Sikh
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
How many architects named Gilbert Scott do you know?
How the brownies helped win World War II, including their secret work for MI9
How the English fell in love coffee
How the English fell in love with tea
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
James Sadler and me: how the first Englishman to fly enabled me to overcome lifelong height anxiety
James Sadler, Oxford pastry cook and the first English aeronaut
Jericho: Oxford’s first industrial suburb, from cholera epidemics to gentrification (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)
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
Light in the Darkest Hour – Dunkirk’s Little Ships
Lives of Local Medieval Saints
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
My Gulf War (Operation Granby) – A look at life in HQ British Forces Middle East 1990/91
Nineteenth-century women travellers and explorers
No corsets! The aesthetic and rational dress movements come to Oxford
Northamptonshire and its hearth taxes
Not just Napoleon and Jane Austen: Lesser known weird and wonderful memories from 1815
Nuffield College’s “Island Site” in west Oxford
Olive Gibbs, local politician and peace campaigner
On this day in Oxfordshire: a true, historical story for every day of the year
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?
Over the hills to glory: the story of the Ascott Martyrs
Oxf and Bucks on the Somme, 1916
Oxford Castle: 17th- and 18th-century crimes, escapes, and punishments
Oxford in the history of medicine
Oxford Past and Present: Images from the Historic Environment Image Resource (HEIR) Project
Oxford’s 400-year-old Botanic Garden: notable keepers, visitors and events
Oxford’s historic waterways: the Oxford Canal, the Thames and the Cherwell
Oxford Preservation Trust – opening doors all year round
Oxford: town & gown: a literary and historical overview
Oxfordshire at the Great Exhibition
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 on Canvas: how artists have captured the local area and been influenced by it
Oxfordshire’s Military Heritage – 43AD to the present day
Pagans & puritans – the story of May Morning in Oxford
Paradise lost and restored: 400 years of garden design in Oxfordshire
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
Portraits of two 18th-century gentlemen
Poverty, pestilence and public health in Victorian Britain
Power and personalities: politics in Victorian and Edwardian Oxford
‘Professors of Rowing’: the first Oxford-Cambridge boat races
Radley gentry, yeomen and land
Radley Church and the Civil War
Radley: the thousand-year evolution of a manor
Radley timber framed buildings
RAF Brize Norton – Over 80 years of flying operations
Richard (Beau) Nash and the making of Bath Spa
Ridge and furrow – what’s it all about?
Remembrance after the Great War
Research at home using Oxfordshire libraries’ on-line resources
Rose Hill, Oxford: surprising contrasts and great historical interest
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
Shaw House: Berkshire’s hidden gem
Soldiers, Saints and Sinners: Oxfordshire Characters from the British Civil War, 1642-46
Stolen Lives: Individual tragedies of the Great War
‘Taking the waters’: The waxing and waning of the English spa
The Air Transport Auxiliary: unsung heroes of World War II
The Battle of Cropredy Bridge and the Oxfordshire Campaign
The Church in revolt? Conscientious objection, religion and the public in Oxford in 1916
The curious history of English prophets: Mother Shipton, Joanna Southcott and John Wroe
The coming of the railway to Oxford
The common lodging-house in Victorian England
The contradictory nature of Oxford: 800 years of social struggle and radical scholarship (n.b. this is a guided walk, but it can be offered as a virtual tour, via zoom or other on-line platform)
The corruption of Parliament? MPs, money and public service in modern Britain
The gender agenda: the British suffrage movement
‘The Great Stink!’ Engineers, sewerage systems and the Victorian battle against dirt
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 Home Front in World War II
‘The Joneses of Jesus’ and Oxford’s other Welsh connections
The man who who collected Oxfordshire: the antiquary Percy Manning
The parish of St Thomas the Martyr, West Oxford
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 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
‘Three weeks in wet sheets’: Hydrotherapy in 19th-century England
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
University of Oxford Botanic Garden: the first 100 years
University of Oxford Botanic Garden: the first 393 years
Unravelling the mysterious making of the Stonesfield Embroidery
Using Open Source LiDAR for archaeology – how to find, process, and understand the data
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
William Castle: a notable Banbury eccentric and Morris Fool
Wilts & Berks Canal: past, present and future
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