The new Martyr Worthy Lecture Series for 2025/26 has an exciting programme, with four excellent speakers and we hope that you will be keen to join us.  Tickets are easy to book with our online booking system.  Tickets are £25 each, available to buy here BUY TICKETS

The Lecture Series kicks off on Tuesday 25th November 2025 with The Fall of Margaret Thatcher – A Whodunnit.  Charles Moore, the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, will present – jointly with Kate Ehrman – a semi-dramatisation of the final days of Lady Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister, after which he will take questions.   Lord Moore is a former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator.   A new single volume of his biography is being published this Autumn, to coincide with the centenary of Lady Thatcher’s birth.   Click here to BUY TICKETS

There will be three further lectures in the series:

Lesser Known Tales of Space Exploration on Friday 23rd January 2026 with Libby Jackson.  Exploring space, with the stunning images of Earth, and life and death situations, can seem just like the movies.

Head of Space at the Science Museum, Libby is a leading expert in human spaceflight with nearly two decades working in the field, including working at Mission Control.  She will be sharing some of the most fantastic and captivating true stories of space exploration from the earliest days of America and the Soviet Union racing to dominate the heavens, through to today’s adventures on the International Space Station.  Every story is told just as it happened, no matter how extraordinary they may seem.

The Restless Coast, A Journey around the Edge of Britain by Roger Morgan-Grenville is on Friday 13th February 2026.  This is a moving and beautiful account of a journey around the island of Britain, during which the author travels its length to discover its challenges and opportunities, and to talk to the people trying to protect it.  Overarching the journey is the extraordinary natural history of the coastline, together with how man has imprinted himself on its very geology and shape for countless centuries.  Into the account, Roger Morgan-Grenville threads the modern challenges that the shoreline faces, and the people who are trying to protect it.  Informative, passionate and funny, The Restless Coast is a very personal love letter to our island edge.

HMS Victory: 200 years of Reconstruction, Restoration and Conservation on Friday 27th February 2026.  Andrew Baines’ talk will explore the history of efforts to preserve HMS Victory and provide an overview of the latest 10-year, £45 million project to preserve the ship for the next fifty years.  Andrew is based at the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth and is Executive Director of Museum Operations at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.  He has been the Project Director for the HMS Victory Conservation Project for the past 13 years.   In that time, he has established a dedicated in-house team of 40 expert craftsmen, supervised the structural analysis and support of the ship and led the work to develop and implement the more than 10 year conservation project, which began in 2022.

All four lectures will again be held in Itchen Abbas & Avington Village Hall, SO21 1BQ, in aid of the four churches of the Itchen Valley Parish.  6.30pm for drinks and canapes.  Lectures will last an hour starting at 7.00pm.  Tickets are £25 each and available online here BUY TICKETS

The Martyr Worthy Lecture Series 2025/26 has been kindly sponsored by Savills

Enquiries, please email Sophie Parry at martyrworthylecture@gmail.com