Members of the Horndean & District U3A met for their regular monthly meeting on Friday 7th September 2018 at Merchistoun Hall. They were entertained by an interesting talk by Madeleine Salvetti about many of the famous and infamous people connected with Portsmouth over the centuries.
For all those with a love of history or an interest in Portsmouth and how it developed both socially and politically, this turned out to be an extremely interesting talk, providing a fascinating insight into the lives of the famous and infamous dwellers of this area in ‘days of yore’.
As a relative newcomer to Portsmouth and its surrounds, being a northerner born and bred, I was nevertheless captured by Madeleine’s descriptions of the myriad of characters that resided in this significant port through the ages and as a follow up to the talk felt the compunction to delve further into their lives to build up a complete picture of the kinds of people they were and how they influenced the city as it is today.
Madeleine herself has lived most of her life in Portsmouth. She was a Blue Badge Guide and former Chairman of Portsmouth Tourist Guide Association. She is also as Secondary Teacher of History and certainly knows how to whet the appetite of her audiences.
Her talk covered between 30 and 40 different personages, ranging from Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton, Rudyard Kipling, Neville Shute, Sir Alec Rose, James Callaghan, Harry Rednapp and even to Peter Sellers. The characters spanned at least 7 centuries and included the oldest woman ever to be beheaded by Henry VIII – Margaret Pole, the first ever female Royal Marine – Hannah Snell (1723-92) and philanthropist Jonas Hanway (1712-86) famed for introducing England to the umbrella.
It was indeed an eclectic collection of captivating celebrity.
When thanking Madeleine after her talk she did apologise for not including one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in English engineering history - Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Apparently his slide had mysteriously disappeared! Madeleine concluded our conversation by saying that her favourite talk was on the subject of “Mistresses” and their effect on social and political history. Undoubtedly a subject for a follow-up visit to U3A in the near future!
Elaine Brace