Smart Talks 2026
Smart Talks | 6pm – 8pm
Join us for our monthly Smart Talks – a series of talks by learned academics, non-academics, and smart people across a variety of topics.
Tickets cost £30.00 per head which includes the presentation, supper and a drink.
Find our full programme below, how to book tickets and a synopsis of our next talk.
| March 19th | Ross Beadle | ‘The Rocky Road to stalemate: How and why the First World War descended so quickly into trench warfare‘ |
| May 21st | Elizabeth Goldring | ‘Holbein: Renaissance Master’ |
| September 17th | Tony Bray | ‘The fall of Ében-Émael’ |
| November 19th | Corina Apostu | ‘A New Addition to Our Collections: A Book from Robert Dudley’s Private Library’ |
March Smart Talk | 6pm – 8pm
‘The Rocky Road to Stalemate: How and why the First World War descended so quickly into trench warfare’ by Ross Beadle
In the late summer of 1914 the First World War descended, in very short order, into deadlock, the battlefield dominated by trenches, barbed wire and machine guns. That this seems to have been wholly unpredicted is the embodiment of idea that the generals in charge were utter donkeys, oblivious to technical change, leading their armies to slaughter. But as Ross Beadle argues, the only recent actual European wars they had to go on were mobile, open and dominated by railways and flank attacks. There was even conflicting evidence from other wars, notably in Manchuria and South Africa , that while modern firepower had irredeemably changed war, the traditional verities held true. The over-riding human dimension of high morale was still a match-winner. Stagnation was not inevitable.
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the military castes in all European grappled with a revolution in military affairs – a combination of new technology and much enlarged conscript armies. And much of this came in the last few years before 1914. Yet their inspiration was a battle fought on the plains south of Naples in 216BC.
About the Speaker
Ross Beadle has been lecturing on the subject of the First World War and military the developments that preceded it for 15 years and is consistently in demand by specialist societies like the Royal Artillery Historical Association, the British Society for Modern Military History and the Western Front Association. He has a degree in history and an MBA from Birmingham in First World War Studies. He has written for specialist military history publications and specialises in entertaining and animated lectures.
His specific area of interest is in pre-war planning. This centres on the German Schlieffen Plan and the developments in the British Army in the late 19th and early 20th Century that led to Britain breaking with tradition and committing to fighting on the continent of Europe. Inevitably that means going back further, particularly to the nid 19th Century German Wars of Unification. He is currently writing a history of the origins of the Schlieffen Plan.
March Smart Talk Menu