Melody Foreman is an author, journalist, cultural historian and biographer. She is a graduate of the University of Kent, and the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. She has worked as a researcher on ITV documentaries, and was the editor of an award winning newspaper. She is the author of four non-fiction titles published Pen & Sword. These include the best selling - A Spitfire Girl, The Wreck Hunter, From the Battlefield to the Big Screen, and Dad’s Army Goes to War. Melody has interviewed many actors and artists and has entertained audiences at a variety of leading venues across Britain including Benenden School, Bentley Priory Museum, historic houses and beautiful churches. She has also worked as an expert bookseller. Melody is a member of The Arts Society Egerton, Kent.

Colin Pink has a BA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Southampton and a MA in the History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London. He specialises in twentieth century and contemporary art in Europe and North America. He lectures at Morley College London. He has also curated exhibitions of contemporary art and has published four books of poetry: Acrobats of Sound, 2016, The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, 2019, Typicity, 2021 and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy, 2021. 

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century. She developed new forms of performance and earth art before her tragic death at the age of only 36. Tate Modern will be holding a major retrospective of her work in the summer 2026. Mendieta was born in Cuba but was sent to the USA by her parents after the Cuban revolution. Exiled in the USA she grew up an orphan in an alien culture. Mendieta’s early work expressed her experiences through TASS Lecture Programme for 2026 2026 performance art that challenged gender stereotypes and confronted the audience with body norms and the reality of sexual violence.  Mendieta used her own body to perform rituals that explored our connections with the earth. In her classic Silueta series of earth sculptures she created earth art, based on her body form in many remote places. These temporary sculptures were made out of flowers, mud, or ice, and vanish over time but are recorded in the form of photographs and videos taken at the time they were made. Her work forces us to think about our relationship to the earth, ecology and the cycle of life and death. Both challenging and profound few artists have succeeded in creating such powerful and ultimately life-affirming art. 

Dr Graham Jones started his professional life as a musician in the British Army and over a glittering career spanning nearly forty years he retired as the Senior Director of Music, Household Division and Director of Music, Coldstream Guards a position unequalled throughout military music in Great Britain. During his illustrious career he has recorded over 40 albums and been responsible for the largest commissioning programme of wind band music in recent history commissioning over 30 new works for wind band. He pioneered a music education programme with the University of Salford for military musicians resulting in a new Master of Music in performance degree. Graham was made a Member of the British Empire by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace for outstanding service to military music in 1993. Having retired, at the start of 2012, from military service Graham is enjoying a second career as a guest conductor, adjudicator, guest speaker, lecturer, clinician, recording consultant and educator. He is also the Artist Director of London International Band Week, music consultant to Henley Music Festival, resident conductor of the British Imperial Orchestra, visiting conductor in residence at Troy University, Alabama, USA and guest lecturer on cruise ships. Graham’s charitable work includes event planning in support of the Royal British Legion and sitting on the London fundraising committee of the Army Benevolent Fund - the Soldiers Charity. Graham is married to Susan and resides in Worcester Park, Surrey

Lt Col Jones provides a personal account of the behind the scenes preparation and build up to the National Day of Remembrance held at the Cenotaph at Whitehall in November each year in the presence of the Her  Majesty the Queen and Royal Family, Heads of State on behalf of the Royal British Legion and the Nation. Timing and precision are everything; find out how the music for this event is prepared ahead of the big day in this fascinating behind the scenes presentation.

Peter Ross has a BA in the History of Art, an MA in London History, and a PhD in the cultural history of the early eighteenth-century criminal, Jack Sheppard. Until 2023, he was the Principal Librarian at the City of London’s Guildhall Library. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Peter has appeared on television and radio as a consultant on crime in eighteenthcentury London, the history of English food, and Shakespeare’s First Folio. Peter’s The Curious Cookbook, Viper Soup, Badger Ham, Stewed Sparrows, and a Hundred more Historic Recipes was published in 2012 by the British Library and subsequently published in the US, China and Taiwan. Peter is currently engaged in writing a book - Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London to be published by Bodleian Library in 2026.

The foods we eat at Christmas have a long, curious and visually spectacular history. This lecture narrates and illustrates that history from Medieval boar’s head and brawn, by way of highly decorated seventeenth century mince pies to the almost forgotten Twelfth Night Cake. Medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings and prints from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and illustrations from cookery books provide us with images of some of the lost glories of the British Christmas feast.