Inside Psychosis
"Inside Psychosis" is a clinical and therapeutic exploration of working on male and female acute psychiatric wards.
The author, Helen Holmes, is the Clinical Director of The Blues Clinic based in South Hampstead, with over 35 years experience working in education and mental health with children, young people, adults, couples and families. Educated at Oxford University, UCL, King’s College London and Heythrop College London, Helen has trained under leading international experts. Her books include a psychology textbook on pre- and perinatal mental health (2020), Inside Psychosis (2025), and a poetry anthology (2008).
Illustrated Talk on The Huntingfield Paintress
Pamela Holmes will talk about the research she did before writing the novel, The Huntingfield Paintress. Her illustrated talk will consider the life of Mildred Holland. Every day for six years, this Victorian vicar’s wife climbed up rickety ladders to lie on her back painting angels and saints in gold leaf and bright colours on the ceiling of her husband’s church. A Michelangelo in skirts. But what drove her up the ladder?
Book Talk on Orfeo's Last Act: A Novel in Two Parts
Michelene Wandor will talk about her work as a writer over many decades and many genres. 'Orfeo's Last Act' is her first novel, with half set in the seventeenth century and half set in the present. The story of Salamone Rossi, Jewish composer who worked with Monteverdi, melds into the present and a detective story about the early opera, 'Orfeo'.
Isokon & the Bauhaus in Britain -
The Intriguing Story of the Only Listed Grade I in Belsize Park
Event postponed to March 2026
In the mid-1930s, three giants of the international Modern movement, Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, fled Nazi Germany and sought refuge in Hampstead in Britain’s most exciting new apartment block. The hugely influential Lawn Road Flats, or Isokon building, was completed in 1934. It had been commissioned by visionary couple Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by architect Wells Coates. The building also became home to the crime writer Agatha Christie, as well as no less than five Soviet spies.
Leyla Daybelge and Magnus Englund are trustees of the Isokon Gallery, the museum in the building, and have written and lectured extensively both in Britain and abroad on Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain. Their richly illustrated talk is not just about design and architecture but also war, sex, death, espionage and famous dinner parties.
Events Coming Up ......
Details to be announced later
11 Dec 2025 by Wren Loucks: Interior Design
15 Jan 2026 by Bea Lewkowicz: Refugees in Belsize Park
19 Feb 2026 by Francis Beckett: A Fascist in the Family
19 Mar 2026 by Leyla Daybelge & Magnus Englund: Isokon & the Bauhaus in Britain