Speaking this month we have:

• 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 will talk about and show 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, traveled the world in search of the best send offs. She will describe 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.Join Sarah for an engaging and highly personal discussion in which she talk 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).

London branch 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.

There is no London meeting in August, but we start afresh each September.