Children's books and monstrous queens are subjects of TimTubbs lunchtime lectures at Scarborough's YMCA

Secret Gardens and Neverlands: Classic Children’s Literature

Tuesdays January 31 and February 14, 21 and 28 (no lecture on February 7).

The Escape To Childhood – January 31

Following Wordsworth’s notion of the child “trailing clouds of glory”, free of the adult “prison-house”, the Victorians seemed to be sentimentally besotted with images of childhood as a lost paradise.

Alice and Subversive Nonsense – February 14

The inspired fantasies of Edward Lear’s Nonsense and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books gleefully subvert grown-up conformity. Their topsy-turvy worlds of excess, transformation and crazy logic were the creation of men who felt at odds with conventional adult life.

Secret Gardens, Lost Places – February 21

From the 1890s to the First World War, a generation of great writers for children, including Kenneth Grahame and Beatrix Potter, celebrated the redemptive power of childhood and a constant yearning for escape to lost places and secret gardens.

The Flight From Adulthood – February 28

JM Barrie’s and A A Milne’s “terrible masterpieces” Peter Pan and Winnie-the-Pooh offer idealised childhood in Neverland or the Hundred Acre Wood. Tragically entwined with their authors’ real lives, these classic stories celebrate the refusal to grow uo

The theme for Tim’s March talks is Monstrous Regiment: 16th Century Queens on

Tuesdays March 14, 21, 28 March and April 4

Bloody Mary and Lady Jane – March 14

Henry VIII’s only son Edward VI died prematurely, and a power struggle ensued between a Protestant régime of doubtful legitimacy and the Catholic heir. Both the short-reigning Jane Grey and Mary Tudor were made miserable in the process.

Catherine de Medici – France’s Black Queen – March 21

For 30 years the Italian-born Queen Mother struggled to keep her three weak, diseased sons on the French throne during civil wars and economic disaster, her realpolitik earning her history’s “Black Legend” as the wicked queen.

Marie de Guise and Mary, Queen of Scots – March 28

Scotland’s infant Queen Mary was whisked off to France, to escape the encroaching English, as a Protestant revolution struggled against female, French, Catholic rule, in the person of her embattled mother, Regent Marie de Guise.

Elizabeth I – England’s Gloriana – April 4

How did this extraordinary woman and exceptional queen beat the overwhelming odds to become the century’s most successful female ruler and one of England’s greatest icons? She should have come badly unstuck again and again, but…

The lectures start at 1pm. Tickets cost £5 (no concessions) Book a series of three lectures for £15 and get the fourth one free.

YMCA box office 01723 560750 or online at www.ymcascarborough.uk