We are now engaged in looking at the American Civil War, starting with the background history of colonisation, and the immediate cause of the war, which was secession by the South. We are using the superb TV series by Ken Bruce, and we see the first modern war, with trenches, Ironclad ships, the Gatling machine gun etc. All these are illustrated by with hundreds of photos, extracts from letters, rarely seen before outside America, and realise that it was fought over such a small area. An absolutely fascinating, but very sobering topic, especially as we are now up to Gettysburg.

The size of group is limited, because it is home based, but we now have room for a couple more if anyone is interested.