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The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to the British Museum in September 2026 until July 2027 so we are delighted to welcome Imogen Corrigan to talk to us about this wonderful work of art at our Summer Special Interest Day.
 
There is far more to be discovered about the Bayeux Tapestry than could ever be covered in one or two lectures. Who made it, where and why are the most frequently asked questions – although they might also be seen as less important beside the information the tapestry itself offers us. It is not just a narrative of the most famous battle in English history, but also of the build-up to it. It is a moral story showing that good cannot come to those who break their word. It is a story of kings, chivalry and ambition. Intriguingly, many crucial events are omitted and we can only speculate as to why. The tapestry itself is made using only 10 different colours on linen, but remains as vibrant today as it must have been 900 years ago. The lecture looks at many of the scenes in detail and explores what might be learned from this depiction of a turning point in our history. 

After nearly 20 years in the British army our lecturer Imogen Corrigan went to the University of Kent to study Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art, graduating with 1st class honours, followed by an MPhil from the University of Birmingham.   She works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe as well as lecturing on small cruise ships and running study tours and courses on land.  She has written Stone on Stone: the Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published 2019 and is a Freeman of the City of London, being a Member of the Company of Communicators.  Imogen is also an Advisor on memorials and monuments for Canterbury's Diocesan Advisory Committee.

Two lectures.  Coffee/ tea and lunch.  Ticket required  £32.0 email info@tascroydonarea.org.uk

At the turn of the last century, Vienna was the capital of a vast empire and one of the most exciting artistic laboratories in the world. It produced painters such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, architects like Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Looking at these and others figures in the context of the society in which they worked, this Special Interest Day asks how and why the City of Dreams became a cultural hotbed around 1900.

Gavin Plumley is a writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. Lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, was published in June 2022

2 Lectures,  Coffee/tea, Lunch.   Ticket only 

10.00am to 2pm
Please be seated by 9.45am

Tickets are available at £32.00 please email  info@tascroydonarea.org.uk

Paintings Land and Light: Great 19th Century Danish Painting
Eckersberg, Lundbye, Ancher, Krøyer, Købke, Hammershøi, and more... These 19th century artists from Denmark are little-known outside their native country. They were brilliant artists whose works possess Danish specificities, all the while resonating with European movements. In this special interest day, we will study them from two main perspectives: the Golden Age of Danish Painting (ca. 1800 to 1850), and the advent of modernism in the last three decades of the 19th century, particularly around the artists colony in Skagen.

Lecture 1: The Golden Age of Danish Painting
Lecture 2:  The Modern Break-Through: The Skagen Painters

Dr Caroline Levisse is an art historian based in London.  Born in France she studied art history there before moving to Copenhagen.  In Denmark, she focused on research work and completed a PhD on the relations between art and religion in contemporary Scandinavian art.  After graduating in 2013, she moved to London and started teaching art history with adult education providers.  She has since developed a range of courses focusing on 19th and early 20th century Western art.  She has published articles in French and English in academic journals as well as magazines and newspapers, such as Church Times and Arts Sacrés.

The names ‘Florence’ and ‘Medici’ are inextricably linked with each other. From the late 1300s to 1737 the family advised, ruled, were exiled, returned and ruled again in Florence in continuing cycles, eventually stamping their authority on the city with authoritarian firmness. At the same time they were responsible for helping to create one of the most vibrant artistic centres of the Renaissance and beyond. This is a story filled with larger-than-life characters and great art alongside stirring historical events, occasional assassinations, and the eventual decline of a remarkable dynasty.

Jo Walton has combined teaching and lecturing with a career in art bookselling and has been a volunteer guide at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Now a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society, The National Gallery, The Art Fund, and local art societies

10am -2pm: Two lectures followed by lunch, tickets are available price £32.00, email info@tascroydonarea.org.uk

     Depiction of everyday life as a subject in its own right seems to have been established in Classical times in fresco and mosaic but, with the beginning of Christianity, the subject all but disappeared. Domestic details and street scenes begin to emerge in the 14th and 15th centuries, although it is not until the 16th century with Flemish artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder that it once again becomes an independent subject.  In the work of 17th century Dutch artists such as Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer, genre painting gains in importance.  Everyday life continues to be a vibrant subject for 18th and 19th century painters from Hogarth and Greuze to Millais, Tissot, Berthe Morisot and Frith.

Lecture 1:  Medieval and Renaissance Paintings of Everyday Life from the Renaissance to the Baroque 1400-1650.
 
Lecture 2: Everyday Life as a Subject in its Own Right from Pieter de Hooch to Van Gogh 1650-1890.

Clare Ford-Wille
Honours degree in History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London.  Regular commitments include Centre for Lifelong Learning, London University, National Gallery, V&A Museum, WEA, Morley College, the City Literary Institute, the Art Fund and National Trust. Study tours abroad.

The mass migration of the French Protestant Huguenots in the 16th and 17th centuries impacted the arts, the military and the finance sectors of the countries to which they fled after suffering Catholic persecution in their homeland.  It is estimated that upwards of 50,000 people settled in the British Isles and that perhaps one in six of the country’s current population descends from the Huguenot lineage.  These lectures focus on three areas of the arts impacted by the migration: the growth of the silk weaving industry in Canterbury, Spitalfields and later Sudbury and Macclesfield:  the silversmiths and ceramicists who ushered the French Rococo style into Britain: and the baroque style of Versailles that arrived in London through the great Huguenot designer, Daniel Marot, who worked for William and Mary at Hampton Court.

Vivienne Lawes
I am an art historian, curator, author and journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the art market. I teach at several Higher Education institutions, including the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. In January 2021 I received the Geoffrey Bond Bursary for Art, an annual prize awarded by the Worshipful Company of Educators to an “outstanding educator” nominated by their institution.
My articles, essays and reports have been published in numerous specialist journals, newspapers, catalogues, handbooks and websites, aimed at both the academic and general readership in print and online. The title of my current book project is The Bronze Horse: Themes in Equine Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present Day; in Spring 2021 I will embark on a critique and biography of contemporary Filipino artist Andres Barrioquinto.
Since 2011 I have been Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia and have co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. I am also Head of Education for the London Asian and African Contemporary Art Fair (founded 2020).
When time allows I lecture as an on-board art historian for cruise lines.

Further information

Websites :
Huguenot Museum Rochester:     https://huguenotmuseum.org/
History of London:      https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/huguenots/
Huguenot Society of great Britain and Ireland https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/
Historic UK :https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Huguenots/
Huguenots od Spitalfields :https://www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org/

Tickets are £32 and include tea/coffee and  Lunch with a glass of wine or soft drink. To purchase a ticket please  email info@tascroydonarea.org.uk

At the heart of this story lies desire- a passion felt by a man of legendary power and matchless physical strength for a fragile, delicate, white ceramic material called porcelain. He was Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1773), a self-styled sufferer of ‘La Maladie de Porcelaine’  - the insatiable yearning for the 'white gold' of the Orient. Porcelain was very costly as it was beautiful, exotic, rare and mysterious. Every piece was unique and hand-crafted and the Elector’s collection, displayed at his court in Dresden, was vast. As a mark of his passion for porcelain, Augustus needed to discover 'the Arcanum' or porcelain's secret formula, a dream finally realised by alchemists, including the hapless Johann Friedrich Bȍttger, working in enforced secrecy within the fortress of Albrechtsburg in nearby Meissen. The lecture follows the story from the discovery of the ‘Arcanum’, through the so-called Bȍttger years of experimentation and on to the golden years of whimsical painted chinoiseries and vases and tea wares with brilliant jewel-like colours. We admire the factory’s creativity in sculpture, from the life-like animals of Augustus’s white porcelain menagerie to animated small-scale figures of tea-drinkers, entertainers, freemasons and lovers created by the master modeller Johann Joachim Kändler and his followers, which embodied the spirit of the baroque and rococo periods.

Lecture 1 will include the vast collections of Chinese and Japanese porcelain owned by Augustus the Strong of Saxony, which so inspired him to become the patron of a new porcelain factory close to Dresden. We will also look at the discovery of the secret of making porcelain by the alchemist Bottger, the first steps taken by the new factory during its first few years of production and the story of the Japanese Palace with its porcelain menagerie.

Lecture 2 will look at the golden age of Meissen porcelain from the third decade of the 18th Century including the skilful modelling of small-scale delicate and expressive figures by the sculptor J J Kandler and also the making of elaborately decorated vases and services for dessert, tea and coffee.

Anne Haworth is a lecturer at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum and the Queen’s Gallery. She is a visiting lecturer for Regent's University, Sotheby's Institute and SOAS. Since 2008, she has been a member of the London faculty of Eckerd College, Florida, teaching Art History and is also an accredited Arts Society lecturer. For ten years she guided private evening tours of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. She lectures extensively for private groups, guides museum tours in London and has lectured on William Morris for the British Council and British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.  
After studying Modern History at Durham University, she trained and became a senior specialist in ceramics at the head offices in London of Bonhams (1981-1986) and Christie's (1987-1995). From 1995 to 2002, she was resident in Shanghai, China and gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community of diplomats and expatriates in Shanghai and Beijing. On returning to London in 2002, she worked on a short project cataloguing Chinese ceramics

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/205267

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/203075

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/206023

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/201427

Born in Venice in 1697, Giovanni Antonio Canal, usually known as Canaletto (little Canal),began working as a screen painter before painting landscapes of Venice for the aristocrats on the Grand Tour.  When the War of Austrian Succession temporarily put paid to any Grand Tours and halted the lucrative market in paintings of Venice, Canaletto came to London instead.  He arrived in 1746 and stayed until 1755.  As well as his beautiful landscape paintings of London scenes, he also painted views of Warwick and Alnwick Castles and Badminton.  He was the exact contemporary of William Hogarth who was also born in London in 1697.

    At our December Special Interest Day we enjoyed two very entertaining and well illustrated talks by Andrew Davies about these two great artists  He compared and contrasted their work to illustrate their different views of Georgian England and the incomparable record they left.

    Canaletto painted a sunny, happy, blue skied, aristocratic England, with no sense of civil strife, whereas Hogarth painted ordinary people leading ordinary lives with all the ups and often considerable downs.   Canaletto gave us fantastic views of the changing cityscape of Georgian London which was very much a river city with the new bridges over the Thames such as Westminster and Blackfriars and the coming of the Embankment.  He also painted Whitehall and Eton College, as well as the Vauxhall and Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens. He presented Georgian Society at its most respectable.  Although he was not interested in detailed faces, Canaletto’s buildings were meticulously painted, with lots of detailed scenes within the landscapes.  He made use of the camera obscura and tracing paper for even more detailed work.  One notable painting was The Stonemasons Yard  in the National Gallery  https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/canaletto-the-stonemasons-yard

Canaletto returned to Venice in 1755 and died there in 1768. His paintings rarely come on the market and King Charles III has the best collection.

    The second lecture focused on the work of Hogarth whose work was a  more "warts and all" depiction of London life.  He would have liked to have been a formal portrait painter (and we saw his wonderful portrait of Sir Thomas Coram) yet he is better known as a satirist.  Much of his work was in the highly accessible medium of prints such as The Rakes Progress and The Harlot’s Progress, described in detail, which showed the more seedy side of life in Georgian London.  Hogarth died in 1764.

Our excellent and highly engaging lectures were followed by a tasty lunch and a chance to meet and mingle with friends.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/811512/a-harlots-progress

http://collections.soane.org/object-p40

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/william-hogarth

Jean Aarons

In May 1746 the great Venetian artist Canaletto moved to England.  European war had prevented Englishmen from embarking on their Grand Tour so Canaletto reasoned that if they would not come to him, he had better go to them.
For the next nine years he created nearly 150 works of art showing us Georgian England, from the Lord Mayor's show and the construction of Westminster Bridge to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, Eton College and Warwick Castle.  
We will revel in the delights of Canaletto's stay until in 1755, he returned home to Venice for good.
The cost is £32 per person
There are 2 lectures with a Coffee/Tea break in between, followed by Lunch with a glass of wine or soft drink.
Special deiatary requirements ( vegetarian or vegan ) can be catered for.
Please be advised that the 1st lecture will start promptly at 10.00am
We would therefore appreciate it if you can arrive no later than 9.50am.
All Saints Church Hall, Onslow Gardens, Sanderstead, CR2 9AB
Please email info@tascroydonarea.org.uk for more information about purchasing a ticket.

Andrew Davies
Extra-Mural Tutor for London, Essex and The Open University; Author of nine books, including The East End Nobody Knows; frequent contributor to radio and television; has lectured all over the world; organises walks to complement his lectures

Review of Special Interest Day - 11th August 2022
Charles Hajdamach
Two great French Masters of Art Nouveau and Art Deco Glass.
Émile Gallé (1846 - 1904) and René Lalique (1860 - 1945)

In his two beautifully illustrated talks, our lecturer, Charles Hajdamach outlined the lives of these two great French Masters of Art Nouveau and Art Deco Glass.  Charles spoke about the influences on their work and the complex processes used in the making of their wonderful vases and other objets d’art.  Both Gallé and Lalique were designers par excellence.  Neither actually made the glass but they were extremely knowledgeable about its chemistry, experimenting with different materials and complex techniques.
Emile Gallé was from Nancy in Lorraine. In the aftermath of the 1870 Franco Prussian War, Alsace Lorraine had been ceded to Germany, although Nancy remained French and became the centre of the region’s manufacturing. Gallé’s heritage is the famous L’École de Nancy.
https://www.nancy-tourisme.fr/en/discover-nancy/the-french-capital-of-art-nouveau/ecole-de-nancy-nancy-school/
Émile Gallé took over and developed his father’s glass business, pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved artistically using glass, opening his own glassworks, the Gallé Works in 1894.
Japanese, Islamic and Arabic motifs influenced his work.  Symbolism was an important feature of his complex vase designs.
The words of Charles Baudelaire in "Les Fleurs du Mal” inspired the exquisite vase ”Blue Melancholy", which is in the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia.

https://chrysler.emuseum.com/objects/25790/footed-bowl;jsessionid=0EFED1E6E5A28E8346FB30E1B13DE63E?ctx=6c732340-2cb4-46ae-a2a3-3dc7c8596ff2&idx=6

Many political emblems were incorporated in Gallé’s designs, such as the thistle of Lorraine and in the vase named "Les Hommes Noirs”, as a committed Dreyfusard, he represented the dark forces laid bare by the Dreyfus Affair.  The ringed vase in the photo here of Gallé’s furnace at the 1900 International Paris Exhibition is said to be "Les Hommes Noirs" vase.

As an expert horticulturist and botanist, Gallé drew inspiration from nature and featured dragonflies, butterflies, insects in his designs. He was also heavily influenced by the underwater exploration which was very popular in France at the turn of the 20th century and incorporated sea motifs too into his designs.

René Lalique started out as a jewellery designer, often working with less expensive materials such as horn, enamel, appliqués and glass as well as with gold and silver and precious gems.  We saw a beautiful bracelet made for Sarah Bernhardt and also the exquisite half woman, half beast corsage “Dragonfly” he made for Calouste Gulbenkian, whose museum in Lisbon contains many Lalique pieces.  
https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/works_museu/dragonfly-broach/
 Peacocks and serpents were popular emblems of Art Nouveau and like Gallé, Lalique was also inspired by other flora and fauna from nature.
 

Lalique started producing glass sculptures using the "Lost Wax Technique”.  He also designed exquisite perfume bottles for François Coty and other perfume makers like Roger&Gallet.  
He made very decorative glass stoppers and used incredible packaging which was almost as good as the bottle inside!  The best one for me was designed for Lucien Lelong in 1929 in classic Art Deco style which resembled the Chrysler Building in New York. 
https://www.musee-lalique.com/en/bottle-lucien-lelong
In 1925 the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratives, which gave rise to the term Art Deco, took place at the height of Lalique’s fame and our "Maître Verrier" designed a spectacular illuminated fifty feet high crystal fountain for the Exhibition.               

https://en.worldfairs.info/expopavillondetails.php?expo_id=33&pavillon_id=2782

In the 1930s, Lalique designed glass car mascots which served as radiator caps on luxury cars such as Daimler, Pontiac and Rolls Royce. My favourite was the Spirit of the Wind for Citroën cars but the most expensive was a glass fox which sold for £110,000 in 2021.               

If you happen to visit Jersey, do try and visit the Glass Church of St Matthew in Millbrook which was restored by Lalique in 1934 in memory of chemist Jesse Boot, as commissioned by his wife, Florence. https://stmatthews.je/glass-church                                               

In 1935 Lalique worked as an interior designer of the huge First-Class dining room on the transatlantic liner the Normandie, incorporating walls of lighted glass and spectacular coloured glass columns

Lalique died in 1945 and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.  The Lalique tradition continued after his death, through his son and granddaughter.  Lalique is now a big successful multinational company under the chairmanship of Silvio Denz.  The Musée Lalique is in Wingen-sur-Moder in Alsace.

Émile Gallé - Google Arts & Culture

René Lalique - Google Arts & Culture

Our 2,000-mile canal network is now more than 200 years old and offers a

fascinating combination of working heritage and industrial history; unique

architecture and heroic engineering; traditional arts and quirky landmarks. Only the National Trust and the Church of England have more listed buildings and structures than our canals. This study day will look at their history and aspects of their clever ingenious design.

Features include locks and bridges; cottages and warehouses; tunnels and

aqueducts; and even clock towers and tiny bollards. The traditions of the

decorative Roses and Castles paintwork can still be seen on colourful narrowboats.London’s waterways. The capital’s canals are still a bit of a secret and this talk will look at some of the many features of interest. There

will also be a look back at the short-lived Croydon Canal which opened in 1809 but closed in 1836.

These lectures will be a survey of Hogarth’s life and career, from early ephemera to his engravings as a mature artist, set against his historical background, the social and political context in which he worked in London  in the first half of the 18th century, and his friends and acquaintances, including the composer Handel, Thomas Coram and David Garrick.

As in December, the Special Interest Day will consist of two morning lectures with coffee in between and lunch afterwards.  We would appreciate your reaction to this switch from 3 to a 2-lecture day.

(This Study Day will consist of two lectures followed by lunch.)

Edgar Degas said "A painting requires as much fraudulence, trickery and deception as the perpetration of a crime."  Artists can manipulate colour, form, composition and subject-matter (even facts!) in order to explore universal themes such as life, death, feelings, or politics, and to engage our emotional participation in the work.

In this study day we will see how artists use colour, composition, subject matter and other means to engage our emotions or provoke a response.  We will also examine the way that modern treatments of traditional genres, by artists like Manet, Picasso or Damien Hirst, can add to, or change, our understanding of the subject and its message.  We will also explore the way in which Poussin, Reynolds and Max Beckmann, for example, frequently manipulate perspective, composition and reality in order to convey more than meet the eye.

It has long been recognised that the worlds of the visual and the aural arts link with extraordinary power when one medium inspires the other.

The lectures span over 600 years of the arts, analyse and discuss a range of related works, bringing together the music of Martinu with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, Botticelli's Birth of Venus with Respighi's Trittico botticelliano, Böcklin's Isle of the Dead with Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem and Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie with the piano playing of Albert Ammons.

The moving image has been a powerful source for imagination from the first moment a magic lantern flickered into life in the 17th century.  On this Special Interest Day we will be looking at how the Motion Picture Industry first developed throughout the late 19th and early 20th century.  How it then went on to change the face of entertainment and inspire the imaginations of some of the greatest artists of the early 20th century.

The pattern for the day is three one-hour lectures between 10 am and 3 pm, interspersed with breaks for coffee and lunch (with sandwiches and wine).  This day gives us an excellent opportunity for socialising - as well as learning!.  It is held at our usual venue, All Saints' Church Hall.

Classical Rome and its Legacy:  the Pantheon, Colosseum and Basilica of Maxentius.

Dan Evans will look at these three inspirational buildings each with a different form and function - these were the edifices that could be seen in ruin ever since the Sack of Rome, and provide the basis for understanding Roman Renaissance painting and sculpture.

The Flight of the Renaissance:  Frescoes by Fillipino Lippi in the Carafa Chapel, Michaelangelo's Pieta in St Peter's and Raphael's School of Athens.

These allow us to trace the development of theology, philosophy and aesthetics along with the emergence of the High Renaissance.  These are bright, intelligent frescoes and a sculpture of breath-taking brilliance.

Giants of the Baroque:  Caravaggio's painting in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Bernini's San Andrea al Quirinale and Bernini's Ecstasy of San Theresa.

These are three of the most celebrated Baroque embellishments in Rome.  A gritty series of paintings by a notorious sinner, a scandalous religious sculpture group and interactive architecture by the Baroque's mastermind will allow us to understand the context and purpose of the flamboyant art and architecture of seventeenth century Rome.

Our lectures on this day will be on the French Impressionists who lived and painted in London, Camille Pissaro, Alfred Sisley and Claude Monety, and they will be given by Nicholas Red who has lectured, arranged exhibitions and written several books on this subject for many years.

Camille Pissarro the father of French Impressionism, paid four visits to this country and produced over forty oil paintings whilst working here between 1870 and 1897.  They include views of Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace, Kew, Richmond and Chiswick.  Three of his sons also lived here and painted many scenes of London.

Alfred Sisley lived here during the summer of 1874.  He produced 17 of his paintings from his stay in the Hampton Court area, which were described by the art historian, Kenneth Clarke as "the high point of French Impressionism".

Claude Monet paid his first visit to London in 1870-71 and produced several pictures of the Thames as well as two of London Parks.  On his return visits in the winters of 1899-1901 he produced nearly 100 magnificent paintings, most of them looking out from his window at the Savoy Hotel overlooking the Thames.

£25 ticket includes three one hour lectures, coffee and sandwich lunch with wine.

First Lecture Begins at 10 AM.

Antony William Roland Penrose (born 9 September 1947) is a British photographer. The son of Sir Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, Penrose is director of the Lee Miller Archive and Penrose Collection at his parents' former home, Farley Farm House.

Antony Penrose was born on 9 September 1947 in the London Clinic, central London. He is the son of Lee Miller, a model, fine art photographer and noted war correspondent, and Sir Roland Penrose, the surrealist artist, poet and biographer of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Man Ray, and Antoni Tàpies, who co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 1947.

His grandfather was Irish painter James Doyle Penrose, and his grandmother was the daughter of the philanthropist Lord Peckover. His uncle was polymath Lionel Penrose, whose children include mathematician Oliver Penrose, polymath Sir Roger Penrose, chess grandmaster Jonathan Penrose, and geneticist Shirley Hodgson.

He first lived at 11 Downshire Hill in Hampstead, but in 1949 his parents bought Farley Farm House, a farmhouse in the village of Chiddingly, East Sussex. His mother suffered from depression during Penrose's childhood, meaning he had a nanny, Patsy Murray, from a young age. Penrose had dysfunctional upbringing, saying of his mother "She was a hopeless mum. She had no natural maternal instincts." He suffered from dyslexia when he was growing up, but nevertheless went on to attend the Royal Agricultural College.