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Festival of Ideas
Prospect Magazine Subscription Offer
Try Prospect for just £1 – and get a free copy of Timothy Garton Ash's book.
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Festival of Ideas
Democracy Season, 2021
Our series of events in 2021 on democracy and freedom of expression.
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Film2021
Film 2021
The programme marking the centenary of the death of Bristol-born film pioneer William Friese-Greene.
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Bristol Ideas
Our New Name
Find out about our name change from Bristol Cultural Development Partnership to Bristol Ideas.
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Bristol2014
Douglas Reynolds VC
You can read the full, recently revised manuscript on which it is based here. 50 years ago, I marched into Le Cateau to receive the freedom of the town with 93 Le Cateau Battery, Royal Artillery; the successors of the WW1 – 37 Howitzer Battery, Royal Field Artillery. As I speak, 93 Le Cateau Battery are […]
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Bristol2014
‘Planting Memory’ The Challenge of Remembering the Past on the Somme, Gallipoli and Melbourne
Read the full article here. Gardens have long been regarded as a ‘palliative for melancholy’ and a congenial environment for solitary contemplation. In Western Christian teaching the garden is seen as a place for spiritual reflection, a space designed to stimulate meditation, introspection and the easing of the imagination. Furthermore, gardens are liminal enclaves, withdrawn from […]
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Bristol2014
In perpetuity? Bristol’s famous war memorial The Memorial Ground
Meanwhile, moves were afoot to find a suitable home for Bristol rugby – led by Francis Cowlin, the great friend of rugby in Bristol. Buffalo Bill’s Field, which had been acquired by Frank Cowlin, was generously donated by him, and conveyed to trustees, for the use of the Bristol Rugby Club. The Memorial Ground was […]
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Bristol2014
Two Brothers from St Philips and their First World War
But Alfred was not ‘killed in action’. He had been shot at dawn on 1 November 1916 for attempting to desert from the 6th Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry by trying to catch a ferry back to England. We cannot now know why the Army reported the his death in this way; perhaps they did […]
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Bristol2014
‘That vile place’ Stanley Spencer RA, a medical orderly in Bristol
It’s not quite clear why the artist Stanley Spencer took such an exception to the inoffensive church overlooking the railway station in Bath Spa: perhaps it reminded him of his grim experience at another ‘loathsome’ building on the north-east shoulder of Bristol – the military hospital known during the war as ‘the Beaufort’. The vast […]
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Festival of Ideas
From Flesh and Bone to Bronze and Stone World War One Memorials in Bristol
Plaques and tablets, which were made from a variety of materials such as wood, metal, glass, stone or ceramics, remain the most common form of remembrance. These are primarily found inside places of worship, government buildings, banks, professional establishments or schools, both state and private. Crosses and crucifixes are the next most popular form of […]
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Bristol2014
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska in Bristol
A solitary child, immersed in books, school work and drawing, Gaudier showed such aptitude that at the age of 12 he won a scholarship to the Benjamin Franklin Secondary School in Orléans, and four years later, in 1907, was awarded two further scholarships to study overseas. The first took him to Bristol, the second – […]
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Bristol2014
Beaufort War Hospital in the First World War
The mentally ill patients were dispatched to asylums across the South West and the building transformed into Beaufort War Hospital. The first convoy of wounded was received on May 24 1915. The greatest number of soldiers sleeping under the roof of the Hospital on one night was 1,487. Over the four years, 29,433 patients were […]