BEN VILJOEN
Date: October 3rd
Ben spoke on the history of English landscape gardening in the 18th Century. His talk gave an overview of the work of Bridgeman, Kent, Brown and Repton with particular emphasis on Rousham and Stowe, as well as Blenheim. Ben also told the story of the discovery of one of the lost Repton Red Books, showing that new discoveries can still be made even in an area as intensively researched as the history of landscape gardening.

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LAURENCE REES
November 7th 2008
Laurence is creative director of BBC TV Factual Programmes and has won many awards for his four series on World War II, including The Nazis: A Warning from History. Under his editorship, Timewatch, BBC TV’s historical documentary series, won three Emmys in three years. His new six-part series, called World War II – Behind Closed Doors, is due for transmission this autumn.

IVO DAWNAY
September 18th 2009
Ivo Dawnay, Director of Communications at the National Trust, who delighted the audience with a talk with the intriguing title: Revoluntionaries in Pearls. .

ROBERT HARDY
October 16th 2009
Robert is one of the country's leading actors, having appeared in many celebrated roles on stage, television and radio. He is also a world authority on the longbow and its use in medieval battles, in particular at Agincourt. .

Lone Droscher-Nielsen
November 9th 2009
Founder of a rehabilation centre for orangutans in Indonesian Borneo, which is the world's biggest primate rescue project, caring for over 700 animals. Orangutans are seeing their habitat destroyed after the rainforest is cleared to produce palm oil - an ingredient in many products we all use on a regular basis. Lone recently starred in Orangutan Diary on BBC Two and has been voted the World's Greatest Living Dane. .

Rupert Sheldrake
2010
Without doubt, our most cerebal speaker so far was Rupert Sheldrake, the science writer and broadcaster who has a doctorate in biological research from Cambridge. In the past, Rupert has been branded “the most controversial scientist on Earth” on the basis of many of his theories, including his radical idea of memory in nature. .

Michael Lowe
2010
Michael lives in Wootton and is one of the country's leading lute-makers, with his craftsmanship renowned in many parts of the world. He has made instruments for many of the most celebrated lutenists, such as Sweden's Jakob Lindberg, who regularly uses Michael's instruments whilst playing in some of the world's major concert halls. They are also played when accompanying Dame Emma Kirkby, the leading early music soprano and a close friend of Michael's.

Oliver James
2010
A packed hall of 105 people listened to a fascinating talk entitled "Affluenza - Did Thatcherism Drive Us Bonkers?" on March 19th by Oliver James, the psychologist and author.

Prue Leith
2010
Living in a bed-sit in London in the Sixties, after arriving from South Africa, Prue Leith started out making lunches for directors' dining-rooms and ended up as one of the country's most successful businesswomen, running large catering companies and a teaching school, as well as serving on the boards of several major organisations.

Paul Oliver
2010
Wootton is lucky in having several people who are the best in their field, but it is fair to say that Paul Oliver is unique in being a world authority on both the Blues and vernacular architecture. Having spoken last year on music from the Deep South, Paul gave a magisterial talk on May 7th about different styles of dwelling around the world

Colin Dexter
2010
One of the most moving passages in Colin Dexter's captivating talk on June 4th was when he described how one exceptional teacher at his school in Stamford gave him the chance to borrow any book from his library. Colin chose a novel by Thomas Hardy and so he developed his love of words and stories, which was to culminate in his own contribution to the canon of English literature with the Inspector Morse novels.

Gerry Anderson
2010
One of the most moving passages in Colin Dexter's captivating talk on June 4th was when he described how one exceptional teacher at his school in Stamford gave him the chance to borrow any book from his library. Colin chose a novel by Thomas Hardy and so he developed his love of words and stories, which was to culminate in his own contribution to the canon of English literature with the Inspector Morse novels.

Sam Kiley
2010
The conflict with the Taliban was brought into sharp focus when Sam Kiley, one of th e world's leading war reporters, showed detailed footage of soldiers he had taken during the six months he spent with the British Army in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.

Will Hutton
2010
Will is a world-renowned political-economic commentator, who the Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently invited to head a major enquiry examining top public sector pay. He has also had an illustrious media career as a former Editor-in-Chief of The Observer, as well as Economics Correspondent of BBC TV's Newsnight. Will was chief executive of The Work Foundation from 2000-2008 and is currently its executive vice-chairman. In 1992, he won the What The Papers Say award for Political Journalist of the Year.

Tony Buzan
2010
Tony is a world-renowned author and educational consultant, and a proponent of so-called Mind Mapping and mental literacy to improve memory and maximise the use of brain power. He has worked with Olympic athletes, leading academics, politicians and businessmen around the world, as well as many other leading figures in teaching them how to devlop mental power.

Tony has appeared at the Albert Hall on a number of occasions and we are thrilled that he has agreed to speak in Wootton. He has written or co-written over a hundred books in 30 languages and he has launched his own software program to support Mind Mapping, called iMindMap.

Clive Aslet
2010
Clive is a former editor of Country Life magazine and is now its editor-at-large, and is an expert on British architecture, as well as a campaigner on countryside and other issues..

Tim Willcox
December 13TH
TIM WILLCOX, Wootton's own BBC TV foreign correspondent, will give an illustrated talk about his experiences covering the recent remarkable mining rescue operation in Chile, which transfixed the world - from the first desperate days to the thrilling climax. Tim's reports were viewed around the world and he used his Spanish to interview the Chilean president, Sebastian Pinera. His covereage won plaudits in the letters-column of the Radio Times. Mulled wine and mince pies will be served.

Marek Kukula
March 18th
Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory, in Greenwich Marek often appears on radio and television, including on the recent landmark series, Stargazing Live on BBC Two, which attracted record viewing figures and confirmed astronomy as a major emerging field of interest among the public in the UK.

Robin Lane Fox

For over one hundred people, the perfect end to a glorious spring day on April 8th was to listen to Robin Lane Fox, the Financial Times gardening writer for 40 years, in full flow for an hour and a half (without a single note) recounting anecdotes about his own magnificent garden at Milton-under-Wychwood, as well as the dramatis personae in Oxford colleges, and discussing the merits of the best suppliers of plants and fertilisers.

Harry Sidebottom

Dressed in jeans and with his infectious dry wit, Harry Sidebottom was the polar-opposite of the stereotype of a classics and ancient history teacher. As well as lecturing in Greek and Roman history at Oxford, Harry is the renowned author of the three best-selling Warrior of Rome novels, which have sold in their thousands around the world and have established him as one of the leading exponents of fiction based on the Roman Empire, with his books always riding high in the Sunday Times charts.

Paul Smith

At a time when most stories about the environment are full of doom and gloom, it was wonderfully uplifting to listen to Paul Smith talk about the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, which is undoubtedly one of the world's greatest conservation projects.

Lucinda Lambton

A packed hall; was treated to the inimitable delivery of Lucinda Lambton (without doubt a national treasure) when she spoke on June 24th about the Queen Mary's Dolls' House, the magnificent little bulding created between 1921-24 under the guidance of Sir Edwin Lutyens, renowned at the other design extreme as the architect behind much of New Dehli, in India, as well as iconic country houses.

David Rooney

"What time is it?" - an easy question to answer nowadays when many people can just glance at their wrist or look at their computer screen - but less so in the past when far fewer people had time-pieces. Yet David Rooney, a former Curator of Timekeeping at the Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, told the fascinating story of the Belville family who - from 1836 to 1940 - sold the time to subscribers in central London, using an 18th Century pocket-watch, called Arnold.

The Martin Kemp Talk

Leonardo da Vinci is probably the most diversely talented man who has ever lived and, on October 14th, we had the privilege of having as our speaker Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University, and the world’s leading expert on the Renaissance genius.

The Jon Snow Talk

Veteran news anchor Jon Snow has presented Channel Four News for over twenty years and has interviewed many powerful politicians and world figures.