The 2026 DVS AGM & Spring Meeting – Now Sold Out!

Dear DVS Members,

We are pleased to invite you to the 2026 AGM and Spring Meeting, taking place at the Victory Services Club in London.

The Annual General Meeting is free of charge and open to all members. Following the AGM, we invite you to join us for a sandwich lunch and the Spring Meeting, available at cost for £55 per person.

Nurture to Nature: Language, Nature, and the Next Generation

“Shakespeare’s Flowers” Kevin Gilvary explores the use of herbal and floral knowledge in the works of Shakespeare and relate them to four overlapping sources available to the dramatist, from vernacular wisdom to the encyclopaedic text-books known as herbals, with special reference to Henry Lyte’s Herball of 1578.

“Shakespeare, Shakspear, Shackspear” – Eddi Jolly. The Tudor and Jacobean period was a period of immense change in our language. We’ll look at a small selection of the key pronunciation and orthographical changes c. 1600, and how they might have affected the name of the playwright.

“Shakespeare and Early Trauma” by John Fletcher (with Charles Beauclerk).  John Fletcher worked as Dr Frank Lake’s assistant at the Clinical Theology Association in Nottingham. Their treatment involved patients re-experiencing very early traumatic events. John’s hands-on treatment of over 1000 patients led him to conclude that birth trauma and, in his last year, prenatal trauma, has a profound effect on the subsequent life of a person. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom, John recently made contact with Charles Beauclerk and in the course of a number of dialogues, between them they have produced a paper which shows how, if Shakespeare was the illegitimate son of an aristocrat or indeed of the queen, the pain of being unwanted as soon as his mother knew of his existence in her womb, would be projected unconsciously onto his plays and would give them their unique emotive power.

“All the World’s a Stage: Shakespeare and the Invention of Modern Theatre” Director Cheryl Eagan-Donovan will share a preview of her new documentary All the World’s a Stage: Shakespeare and the Invention of Modern Theatre. This will be a work-in-progress screening featuring the opening sequence, focusing on Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Edward de Vere’s early exposure to theatre, and research efforts to discover more about his life and work.

“Exploring the Shakespeare Authorship Question at Schools.” Charles Beauclerk & Richard Clifford will discuss how the Shakespeare authorship question can be introduced and explored in schools. They will consider potential classroom responses, the challenges of presenting alternative perspectives within the curriculum, and the value of encouraging critical thinking about authorship, evidence, and literary history.

Readings and interludes by our actor friends, Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford and Samantha Bond.

The day will conclude with a lively Q&A drawing threads together from flowers to phonetics, film to authorship, followed by an informal gathering at the bar.