As I’m way behind on eNewsletters and there have been a number of London meetings since my last edition, I thought I’d just highlight February’s meeting, as both talks were fascinating from different perspectives:-
- 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 talked about and showed 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, travelled the world in search of the best send offs. She described 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. We joined Sarah for an engaging and highly personal discussion in which she talked 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).
See http://makinganexit.net/sarah-murray-biography/ for more details of Sarah’s remarkable interests !
The London branch’s future meetings are detailed at London Meeting Programme.
London 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 – then the meeting rolls forward to the next weekend.
There is no London meeting in August, so we start afresh each September.
For more information, contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 7193 2586, or visit the web site: https://globetrotters.co.uk/local-meetings.html.