Professor Brendan Simms: Exploring British Imperial Power - The 26th Wellington Lecture Event
For more information regarding this event, please email events@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
"The longest afternoon: The 400 men who decided the battle of Waterloo" - Exploring British Imperial Power: the 26th Wellington Lecture
Established in 1989 with an endowment from the Spanish Ambassador, the annual Wellington Lecture explores aspects of the life and times of the first Duke of Wellington, one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century.
Over the years the University of Southampton has welcomed a host of distinguished speakers to present the lecture. This year eminent academic and author Professor Brendan Simms will recount how 400-odd riflemen beat back wave after wave of French infantry, until finally forced to withdraw, but only after holding up Napoleon for so long that he lost the overall contest.
Drawing on previously untapped eye-witness reports for accurate and vivid details of the course of the battle, Professor Simms will capture the grand choreography and pervasive chaos of Waterloo: the advances and retreats, the death and the maiming, the heroism and the cowardice.
About the speaker
Brendan Simms is a professor in the History of International Relations and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. The author of Europe, shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, he lives in Cambridge, England.
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