Synopses for my two JW3 lectures this Thursday, 11th June

Morning: Humankind and Nature

1. The continuum: From Exploitation to Conservation via Management

2. English Woodland: Saxon and Medieval assarting (clearing woodland for agricultural purposes). Conservation and management of woodland for economic, environmental, and leisure reasons 1920-2020

3. Enclosure of common land and open fields for economic exploitation

4. The Amazon Rainforest: Today's problem, tomorrow's catastrophe

Some books referred to:-

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

Ecology and Enclosure by Shirley Wittering

In the Shadow of Vesuvius by Daisy Dunn

Man and the Natural World by Keith Thomas

Afternoon: Berlin's Jews

We start back in The Middle Ages and move forward to 1933, and Hitler taking power, by way of examples of periods of uneasy tolerance and periods of anti-semitism. This will provide the background and context for the horrors of the Nazi Regime. We shall look at events such as Kristallnacht in 1938, and the unspeakable horror of being a Berlin Jew as The Final Solution is imposed on the city, but we will finish on a note of hope by looking at those Jews who lived through the war years 'hidden in plain sight'. A depressing story, yes - but also an immensely important one to tell.

Key Text: Jews in Berlin by Andreas Nachama et al