Lecture note
HHS kicked off its New Year lecture programme with a fascinating talk by Peter Barber, the society’s President. Peter engrossed forty people who attended in person with another twenty or so online.

His subject started in an unusual location – the cantons of Switzerland four hundred years ago. There was already a steady stream of emigration of skilled artisans to different parts of Europe and, in the nineteenth century many, Swiss-Italian restaurants were established in London – including one in Finsbury Park.
Peter told the story of how revolutionary politics in Ticino involved these settlers and, via a possible intervention by Queen Victoria’s arty daughter Louise, a failed attempt to extradite one of the ringleaders set a precedent for how political asylum seekers are protected by British Law to this day.
Image credits
David Winskill