THE MISBOURNE CLUB
Always a good lunch followed by a fascinating talk
MEETINGS
All meetings are held in the Kings Chapel, behind the Kings Arms hotel in old Amersham.
Members gather from 1230 in time for lunch at 1300
Upcoming Meetings
​6 January 2026 Peter Spring
Safer Driving for Seniors
A presentation reviewing Age-Related Changes in Driving Ability and strategies for coping with these.
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​3 February 2026 Timandra Slade
From a Hard Place to a Rock
This follows the exploits of two members of the speaker's family who were both separately captured by the Nazi Germans. Both men managed to escape and, together with fellow officers, make their way through France to Spain where they were again captured and held by the authorities. Finally arriving in Gibraltar it was here, sadly, that events in west Africa led to a Vichy bombing raid and not all of the party were to complete a 'home run'.
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​March 2026 John Graves
The Golden Age of Cruising
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Pre-retirement John was the Curator of Ship History at National Maritime Museum. He will be talking on the "Golden Age” of cruising using images from a superb collection of photographs in the collection of the Museum. This wonderful collection of photographs opens up a lost world of travel on the majestic ocean liners
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Past Meetings
DECEMBER 2025
Paul Whittle ​River Kwai Railway - The True Story
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The infamous Burma-Thailand WW2 ‘Death Railway’, the iconic 1957 film – and the many differences between fact and film-making!
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​Paul explained that the plot and characters of the film were almost entirely fictional with many historical inaccuracies.
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The conditions which POW and civilian labourers were subjected were far worse than the film depicted. During the railway's construction approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died together with an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians.
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Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey of the British Army was the real senior Allied officer at the bridge in question. Toosey was very different from Nicholson in the film and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. In fact, Toosey strove to delay construction. While Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this.
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All-in-all a fascinating talk dispelling the many inaccuracies of the film
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​NOVEMBER 2025
​Ian Wylie and Samel Taylor Coleridge's poem Xanadu
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​Ian Wylie’s talk, “In Xanadu” looked at Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1797 poem ‘Kubla Khan’, which, famously, was written in a remote farmhouse after an opium dream and, the poet said, was a fragment as he was interrupted by a “visitor from Porlock”.
Wylie showed that, far from being unfinished, Coleridge revised the poem over several years, finally publishing it almost two decades after it was begun, when it was received with a mixture of bewilderment and distain by the critics.
Ahead of its time, the short poem’s themes of genius, lost paradise and divine grace, imagery condensed into just 54 lines, are issues that appear over again in Coleridge’s work, and ‘Kubla Khan’ is now seen as one of the foundation poems of modern literature.
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OCTOBER 2025
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David Brittan, an Estate Planning specialist, covered three aspects of financial planning for older people.
Inhertance Tax: thresholds, estates left to partners and charities and the timescales for payment.
Care Fees: the effect on estates, the need for ensuring property is held by partners/spouses in the most tax efficient way.
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Lasting Powers of Attorney: the need for Lasting Powers of Attorney and arranging them before they are required.​​​​
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Further details from David Brittan; contact ria@silvertimelegaLco.uk
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Chiltern Compass; (chilterncompass.org.uk) also offer information in this area