Not Quite a Cèilidh (NQaC)

2019

Pirates of Gothenburg

300th anniversary of the Golden Age of the Gothenburg pirate empire. An evening of light entertainment about piracy, kidnapping, Danes and other unspeakable things. 

You will meet Daniel DeFoe, Lord Carteret (the British Ambassador) and Long John Silver himself (although we know him as Long John Sahlgren), the cutthroat Mary Read and our own Yorkshire born Gothenburg pirate captain Thomas Chapman will compete to see who can talk most like a pirate. 

2018

Lloyd George’s Daughter and the Suffragettes.

We celebrated the the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote in the UK; meanwhile in Sweden, a woman’s place was still in the resistance.

The little-known visit to Gothenburg of Megan Lloyd George, teenage daughter of the British prime minister, in the year 1918. We meet the Pankhursts and a very sexist Winston Churchill. Women at the evening were able to re-enact the march (indoors). Sashes were worn but no windows were broken; only one suffragette chained herself to the railing. A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance! 

2017

The Royal Wedding of the Millennium 1017 -2017  A Danish King and a Norman Queen created Britain as a one nation state and led to the union of England, Denmark and Norway. A sort of alternative European Union which we will refer to as the DNA union – the union of the Danish, Norman and Anglo-Saxon peoples.  If you call yourself British – what’s your DNA?

2016

400th anniversary – To Be or Not To Be Shakespeare 

The Anglo-Swedish archives revealed a previously hidden incident in the history of William Shakespeare. It is recorded that as a teenager William was found guilty of poaching in Stratford and his punishment was to work off his sentence by delivering a herd of deer from a Warwickshire estate to Slottskogen in Gothenburg for hunting. 

2015

800th anniversary of the Magna Carta 

Was King John really as bad as people say? We put him on trial. Witnesses for the defence and prosecution were called to testify. 

– Despite a spirited defence King John was found guilty! 

2014

200th anniversary of the publication of Mansfield Park – An evening with Jane Austen 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that members in possession of good wine will make proposals of marriage to characters in a Jane Austen novel.

2013

The case of the gloved piaonist

A Sherlock Holmes mystery evening. The year is 1906. Holmes and Watson eagerly advance into the 20th century and are thrust into the investigation of a murder that would have been impossible only a few years earlier. 

Teams will compete to solve the 'who-done-it' with a series of clues throughout the evening.

2012

An evening with Charles Dickens. 

From Bleak House The Signalman had Great Expectations of hearing The Chimes calling Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist across A Tale of Two Cities, but Our Mutual Friend wandered through The Old Curiosity Shop in search of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. These were Hard Times.