Virtual Soirée Recording store
Not a Conley & Silvers Member, but want access to our Recording Library? Good news, we are making our past tour recordings available for purchase to all of our C&S friends!
With over 50 lectures already in the library, new tours will be added at the conclusion of each Virtual Soirée series. Recordings are available as a set of multiple tours packaged at a discounted rate averaging $10 per tour. Peruse the selection below and select the subject of your choice for access to stream our virtual tours online until September 30, 2022.
For an example tour, see this complimentary recording of a past talk where celebrated author Ross King joined us to discuss Monet’s Water Lilies as wartime paintings. Better yet, check-out the kind words by our loyal C&S fans here.
Upper Crust Virtual Soirée: A Leisurely Amble through British Culture
Upper Crust Virtual Soirée: A Leisurely Amble through British Culture
Your purchase includes four tour recordings. Upon purchase, you will be emailed a link where you can download a PDF of your recording list! This PDF will have descriptions, links and passwords to the tour recordings, and will expire on December 31, 2021.
What makes the British so bonkers? If you are what you eat, perhaps that explains it: this is a nation that happily consumes concentrated yeast on toast, cream you could use as wallpaper paste, something called 'bubble and squeak’, boiled eggs wrapped in pork mince and desserts made of old bread and butter, say, or smashed bits of meringue, over-ripe strawberries and yup, wallpaper-paste cream. Calorie count: infinity and beyond. YUM.
On the other hand, perhaps it is our class system, that famously rigid stratification of citizens, once allegedly evident in accents, clothes and general behaviour, which is so different from that of the Swiss, the Singaporeans - or the Cape Verde islanders, for that matter. Or is that a load of rubbish now our food is all straightened out and nobody knows what class they are?
Whichever, here’s a chance to investigate the history of class, food, tea versus coffee and the British love for animals (I write as the country goes into mourning for the demise of Cuthbert the Goose from Devizes, Devon - TikTok star, worldwide celebrity and now an ex-goose). Did they form us, or do they reflect us? And what, precisely, is a glottal stop?
Topics
Food (Not So) Glorious Food: The rollercoaster ride of English food: the pleasure, the pain, the politics... We'll look at the original English diet, the arrival and subsequent disappearance of olive oil, the philosophical battle of food v fuel and, brace yourselves, THE 1970s, the great nadir, followed by a slow and uphill struggle to present glory in London, if not all the regions.
A Tiptoe Through the British Class System: You could call this treading on eggshells, because it makes Brits really nervous, especially if they are with people they don't know. But it's time to examine the evidence and work out what makes somebody posh: we'll go right back to the 1066 invasion by the Norman French and work our way forward using clothing, accents, eating habits, furniture names and pronunciation as our guide. Cheers, dears!
The Great British Tea Off: How did an entire nation become fixated on a drink that no other nation either liked or drank in the same way? How did strong Indian tea become the driver of a nation and has coffee really usurped its position as the nation's favourite? Who puts the milk in first? Not to mention where did the cakes come from, who invented the cucumber sandwich and what exactly is Gentleman's Relish? This is your chance to find out.
The Great British Fake Off: Get your aprons and join British cookery expert Sophie “Straw” Berry with guest epicureans Adam “Tea for” Tooze, Tim “Jammy” Jepson and Julian “Bakeoff” Brown for a deeply serious discussion on the history and economic significance of the British afternoon tea.
This will include when to put in the milk, why American-English muffins differ from English-English muffins, the great Marmite vs Gentleman's Relish debate and whether to put jam (not jelly) or cream on first when eating scones, which could get very ugly.
And you are not just spectators at the feast - oh no, no. You are invited to join in with our very own C&S Soiree Scone-Off. Chef-Patron Strawberry will conduct the messy bit and as the scones brown in ovens on either side of the Atlantic the debate will begin.
Ingredients: flour, butter, milk, caster sugar, vanilla essence, jam, cream and YOU!
*Scone recipe & teatime snack lists included with purchase.