If you are looking for a speaker during 2024 and 2025 covering family or local history, here are my list of talks for the period.
They are:
- Charles the Pigeon and a Yorkshire Spy.
- Local Links to the Lusitania.
- My Batley St Mary’s One-Place Study. (Covers aspects of the Catholic parish of Batley St Mary of the Angels until circa 1929).
- The Home Front: the White Lee Explosion of 1914.
- Tips for Researching your Great War Ancestors. This is based around my book about Northern Union – rugby league – players killed in the First World War. For local history groups, I can drop the research tips aspect, and base the talk solely about the players.
The first four have a distinctly Yorkshire flavour, whereas the final one is far broader despite its rugby league connections.
Charles the Pigeon and a Yorkshire Spy is the story of an unsung Yorkshire hero, living behind enemy lines and carrying out works of espionage and sabotage during World War One. His adopted pigeon Charles played an important part in these wartime exploits. Their daring deeds are more like a boy’s adventure story than real life. But this is a true tale of wartime courage, and one which deserves wider telling.
Local Links to the Lusitania focuses on people with Yorkshire connections on board the Cunard liner, torpedoed and sunk off the Irish coast on 7 May 1915. The sinking did not affect only the rich and famous. Many Yorkshire people were involved. This talk explores some of their stories.
There is a possibility this talk can be tailored to your local area.
My Batley St Mary’s talk is based around my one-place study into the Catholic parish of St Mary of the Angels, with a focus on its early history and period up to the aftermath of the First World War. It investigates what a one-place study is, why I embarked on one, why I chose this particular study, as well as my findings – including the Irish migration angle, and with a focus on ordinary parishioners – including some of their tales.
The Home Front: the White Lee Explosion of 1914 is a talk based around the events of December 1914 when a devastating explosion, caused during the manufacture of picric acid for the war effort, took place at White Lee. It resulted in deaths and injuries, as well as damage across a vast area of Batley, Heckmondwike and the Spen Valley. It is an event often overlooked because of later explosions in Yorkshire at Low Moor and Barnbow. This talk aims to provide more information about this Heavy Woollen District incident, the forerunner to the later explosions. The talk will explore the unlucky history of the site as well as the events on the day and the aftermath.
Based on my groundbreaking book The Greatest Sacrifice: Fallen Heroes of the Northern Union about rugby league players who died in World War One, the talk investigates the stories behind some of the men. It is also packed with tips for researching your own Great War Army ancestors.
For more details about these talks, including booking one, please contact me at: pasttopresentgenealogy@btinternet.com
PastToPresentGenealogy 