Rag members Maria and Julian Sturdy-Morton met through a shared love of the arts. In 2010, the dynamic duo founded A Bit of TLC, an online members club for those passionate about theatre, opera, music and film. Since then, the Sturdy-Mortons have organised numerous outings – from West End shows and historic house visits, to exclusive concerts and performances – for their members to enjoy in the company of likeminded others, and at special rates.
We are delighted to announce a new affiliation with A Bit of TLC. We are working closely with Maria and Julian to add more colour to our Member Events Programme. Please scroll down to find out more and to make bookings.
Mishal Husain – Broken Threads; My Family from Empire to Independence
Monday 9th September at 11.00
‘I witnessed the dwindling glow of the British Empire; small men entrusted with great jobs played with the destiny of millions’
Mishal Husain always knew that the lives of her four grandparents changed forever in 1947, as the new nation states of India and Pakistan were born. But what she had was a partial story, a patchwork of memories and anecdotes: hurried departures, lucky escapes from violence and homes never seen again.
Decades later, the fragment of an old sari sent her on a journey through time using letters, diaries, memoirs and audio tapes to trace four lives shaped by the Raj, a world war, independence and partition.
Mumtaz rejects the marriage arranged for him as he forges a life with Mary, a devout Catholic from a struggling Anglo-Indian family, while Tahirah and Shahid watch the politics of pre-partition Delhi unfold at close quarters. As freedom comes, bonds fray and communities are divided, leaving two couples to forge new identities, while never forgetting the shared heritage of the past.
Mishal Husain is a broadcaster, journalist and interviewer whose work has taken her from elections and royal events to refugee camps and filming documentaries. She presents BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Today Debates, as well as the TV news on BBC1. Her first book was The Skills: How to Win at Work.
Sonia Purnell – Kingmaker; Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power
Monday 23th September at 11.00
The daughter of English aristocracy, Pamela Digby was a keen show-jumper and a talented linguist (she attended a German boarding school and undertook a course at the Sorbonne). Aged 20 in 1939, she met and married Randolph Churchill (Winston’s charming, ne’er-do-well son). She divorced him in 1945 and remarried twice, the last time to Averell Harriman. As Pamela Churchill Harriman, she became US Ambassador to France.
Conventional biographers have focussed on the remarkable list of men in her life. That misses the point. She was clearly intelligent, courageous and fun, using her natural ability to break the glass ceiling in international and domestic US politics. Sonia Purnell shows how PCH earned her place at the top table of power and retained it throughout her life.
She was posthumously awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur by Jacques Chirac, and President Clinton despatched Air Force One to collect her body from Paris (where she died at 76) for burial in her adopted home country, America.
