Speaking this month we have:

• Peter Cloudsley – The Magical World of Pablo Amaringo
  Pablo Amaringo (1938-2009) was an Amazonian shaman who became increasingly concerned by the disappearance of Amazonian ancestral knowledge and the destruction of the rain forest. He taught himself to paint and used this as vehicle to teach a new generation the value of indigenous ways and a new kind of spirituality free from dogma. This afternoon’s talk will be illustrated by Peter’s slides and recordings, and we will explore the stories behind Pablo’s pictures and what they aim to to transmit. We will delve into the world of Amazonian spirits and beings and see what they say about restoring balance to the world.
  Peter Cloudsley is a musicologist, researcher and writer who has lived in Peru since 1980. He founded the Amazon Retreat Centre in 2003 and coauthored ‘The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo‘ published last year.
• Doreen Tayler – George Orwell’s Police Postings in Burma, & Doreen Tayler’s Burmese Days.

This meeting is taking place at 2.30 at the Dragon Hall, 17 Stukeley Street, London, WC2B 5LT as there is another booking at the Church of Scotland.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

Speaking this month we have:

• Delia Cardnell – Madagascar, Along the Route du Sud and road to Morondava (RN34)

  Delia Cardnell takes us on a journey along the Route du Sud travelling straight through Central Madagascar, where the scenery is as stimulating and surreal as the culture.

• John Pilkington – Georgia to AfghanistanAfter his last talk for us, ‘A Stroll through the Axis of Evil‘, John promised a sequel and here it is. From the Caucasus he followed a spectacular branch of the Silk Road across the Caspian Sea to Samarkand, then turned south-east to the High Pamirs of Tajikistan and Afghanistan (a region well-known to Marco Polo and possibly one or two Globies), before finishing at the source of the Oxus where Afghanistan, Pakistan and China meet.

  See http://www.pilk.net/update1.centralasia.html more information about John and his adventures.

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend. There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

Speaking this month we have:

• Marion Bull – Upper Mesopotamia and Kurdistan

  Marion is a London-based travel writer and photographer, published in the Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent, Mail on Sunday, Observer, magazines and books.She has a special interest in early civilisation, neolithic art and artefacts, and is known for solo expeditions to deserts, especially in Africa and the Middle East. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage and in a TV documentary.Highlights of her career so far include meeting Nelson Mandela, being the first UK journalist to record and exhibit rock painting images from the Tassili N’Ajjer, Algeria, and the first to photograph the remote off-limits Northern Skeleton Coast of Namibia, which became a touring exhibition.

  She is currently writing a book about her journeys.

• John Kenny – Sub Saharan Journeys: 6 years of visiting Africa’s remotest communities John Kenny is a fine art photographer living in London. Since 2006 his focus has been on Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the pivotal role that traditional communities play in humanity’s survival in places where the earth’s resources are minimal. His work emphasizes the positive role that Africa and Africans play in the 21st Century and also highlights the threats to traditional ways of life today. John’s work has been exhibited worldwide through international art shows and has been featured in The Times of London, The Telegraph, and the international art and photography press. John actively supports organisations that work within traditional African communities and has been a guest on BBC Radio and at the London International Documentary Festival. Last year John donated works in support of Survival international, Concern Worldwide, and his work was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York in aid of ‘Art for Africa’.John has been visiting tribes across the African continent for six years as part of an ongoing photography project and will be talking through his most memorable experiences across West, East and Southern Africa. The talk will be accompanied by a slideshow featuring some of the remarkable people that he has met on this journey, and why these people and their communities matter to him in the 21st Century. To get an idea of John’s work you can see his website: http://www.john-kenny.com

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

Speaking this month we have:

• Neil Rees – In the Footsteps of King Zog of Albania Neil Rees researched King Zog of Albania and his exile in Buckinghamshire, England during the war. He has retraced his footsteps from his birth in rural Albania in 1895 to his death in Paris in 1961. He wrote a local history book called “A Royal Exile” about the story which has been translated into Albanian, and he is reliably informed that it is probably the first Buckinghamshire local history book ever to be translated into Albanian. It was launched at the national museum in Tirana in November 2011.
• Nadine Horn – Grateful for a spoon and getting trousers sewed by an Icelandic – Mission Spain What if you know that you like to travel, but simply don’t know where to start? Every day is the same and you feel that time is simply passing by? The talk is about the journey of creating unplanned adventures around you such as walking the Grand Union Canal from Birmingham to Northampton, walking from the heart of Edinburgh until encountering hills – discovering the motivation for the travel bug and ending up organising the first expedition in 30 days: Cycling around Spain solo – exploring a country you think you know but as a famous saying points out – it’s the journey that makes the difference. And then the stories follow…from being grateful for a spoon and getting your trousers sewed by an Icelandic.

  Find out more at www.nadinehorn.com / http://missionspain.wordpress.com/

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend. 

Admission costs, £3 for Members and £6.00 Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and we do not sell advanced tickets, please just come on the day, the doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.

Speaking this month we have:

• Neil Harris – “Ethiopia: A country of two halves; history in the north, tribal Africa in the south.”

  Neil Harris is a keen photographer and since retirement an avid traveller. He will talk about and show photographs of Ethiopia. A country of two halves. The north contains many historic monuments, it was one of the first countries to embrace Christianity, while in the south tribal peoples live a lifestyle largely unchanged since before the arrival of Europeans. The building of a large dam across the Omo River threatens this way of life, this, along with ongoing extensive improvement to the road system throughout the country means Ethiopia is about to change forever.

• Sarah Murray – From the Magnificent to the Macabre: Send-Offs for the Dead.

  Sarah Murray, author of Making an Exit, traveled the world in search of the best send offs. She will describe her encounters with everything from a spectacular Balinese royal cremation and a chandelier in the Czech Republic made entirely from human bones to the American death care industry’s biggest road show and a ghoulish Sicilian crypt where mummified corpses line the walls.Join Sarah for an engaging and highly personal discussion in which she talk about some of the extraordinary rites and monuments she found on her travels (she might even tell you about the plans for her own eventual send off).

London branch meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month, unless there is a UK public holiday that weekend.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.