The monthly meeting will be with Martyn Bell on Thursday 18th March at 2pm
Martyn’s talk will be on Art, poetry and Love in the 1930’s and 1940’s
The illustrated Talk, which is for an adult audience, centres on the Garman brothers and sisters (nine in all) and their fascinating and influential relationships with a number of leading figures in the world of Art and Literature in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s.
The Garman children were all born in Walsall, in the West Midlands to middle- class parents – Dr Walter Garman (the Town’s Medical Superintendent) and his wife Marjorie Garman.
However, their eldest son Douglas’s time at Cambridge and eldest daughter Kathleen’s move to Art School in Chelsea led to a chain of events and connections which resulted in most of the family, including mother Marjorie, relocating to the Chichester area.
The Garman children were all born in Walsall, in the West Midlands to middle- class parents – Dr Walter Garman (the Town’s Medical Superintendent) and his wife Marjorie Garman.
However, their eldest son Douglas’s time at Cambridge and eldest daughter Kathleen’s move to Art School in Chelsea led to a chain of events and connections which resulted in most of the family, including mother Marjorie, relocating to the Chichester area.
Martyn Bell was born in Brighton in 1945. Now retired, he has served as a local Councillor in Chichester since 2007 and was Mayor of Chichester 2018/19.
A student at the University of Lyon in the early 1960’s , he is a former Chairman of the ‘Friends of Chartres’ Twinning Association and the Oxmarket Centre of Arts and also a Co-Founder and Trustee of the ‘Secret WW2 Learning Network (www.secret-ww2.net) which specialises in the history of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the French Resistance.
Involvement in the organisations above sparked Martyn’s interest in Peggy Guggenheim and in turn the Garman family.