Box Office 0870 343 1001 www.sundaytimes ... - Blackwell's

1 WEDNESDAY
APRIL 2009
John Harris, Steward of Christ Church
Nick Barratt and
Mark Pearsall
The Family Face…
401
6pm / Garden Marquee, Christ Church / £7.50
Who Do You Think You Are The TV programme has
inspired this question in many minds. But family
history researches sometimes result in lifeless
lists of names and dates. Here genealogist and
adviser to BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are, Dr Nick
Barratt, and Mark Pearsall, family historian from the
National Archives (which contain 1.000 years of UK
records from parchment to online), show us how you
can find the hidden stories of your ancestors to bring
your past alive.
John Harris 404
Malt Whisky Tasting
5.30pm-7pm / Hall, Christ Church / £12.00
Bottles outnumber books at this festival event, a tutored
journey through Scotland’s unique whisky heritage.
From gentle floral and honeyed notes to heather, peat
smoke, and the salt sea’s tang: the diversity and appeal
of Scotch Malt Whisky continues to grow. Tasting
participants will enjoy samples from some less
well-known distilleries as well as famous brands.
The session will include an example of a unique
cask-strength dram.
Sponsored by The Whisky Shop, Oxford
Lynda King Taylor 438
The Queen’s English Society
4pm/ McKenna Room, Christ Church / £7.00
The Queen’s English Society has been, for the last
40 years, upholding the good usage and enjoyment
of English. Lynda King Taylor, author and passionate
user of good English, tells us about her delight in
the QES book ‘Shakin’ the Ketchup Bottle’ and the
pleasure it can bring to anybody who wants to read
well-written English. This entertaining book is a selection,
including some really curious bits, culled from the
QES journal, Quest.
Adam Sisman 420
THE SAMUEL JOHNSON
LECTURE
Dr Johnson’s Second Wife
6pm-7.30pm / Pembroke College, Pembroke Street /
£10.00 (includes tour of Pembroke College’s Rare
Books’ Room to view the Johnson Memorabilia and
a glass of wine)
Visiting Dr Johnson at his lodgings, James Boswell
took advantage of a moment while his host’s
attention was elsewhere to peek at his journal,
which lay open on the desk. He copied down a few
entries, and afterwards stored this information
among his papers, where it remained unseen
until the 20th century. Once discovered, these few
scribbled sentences revealed a side to Johnson
previously unguessed at. What these tantalizing
clues reveal about his biographer, though, is even
more remarkable. In teasing out the significance of
these fragments of evidence, Adam Sisman, author
of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, builds a case as
intriguing as any detective story.
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