ENGLISH SPEAKERS’ CIRCLE

International club for cultural and social activities
for speakers of English

Spring 2025 newsletter

At club meetings, pick up a drink at our drinks table from 16:15 and stop for a chat before the talk.

Theatre evening
The picture of Dorian Gray – CANCELLED!
A play by Oscar Wilde, performed by Dreampark

Unfortunately the theatre company had to cancel this performance because of personal family illness affecting the organiser of this small company.

There will be no alternative club event on this date. Already purchased tickets can be refunded.

Annual General Meeting
Annual General Meeting and Advent Tea

All are welcome at the brief AGM (voting by members only), then:-

(at 17:00h) Photographs of Armenia by Ulrike Reeckers-Vasghanian who gave us the talk about Armenia last January as we could not show the photos then.

Club meeting
“The dead are holy, even they that were base …

… and wicked while alive. Baseness and wickedness was not they, was but the heavy and unmanageable environment that lay round them.” (Thomas Carlyle)

A visit to some burial places in Britain (and elsewhere) – what they may, and may not, give away about the people laid to rest there. A talk with documentation, given by Rolf Pentzlin in memory of Professor Albert-Reiner Glaap OBE (1929-2023). Don't worry, this will not be a sombre talk!

Restaurant meal
Restaurant meal – Alex Düsseldorf
at Graf-Adolf-Platz 48

Please book via 0211-3179322 by Wednesday, 12th February at the latest!

Club meeting
Cycling Alaska and Yukon for my 60th birthday

You are never too old for an adventure. Bikepacker Andy Ganner surprises himself by doing an epic tour in a land with more bears, wolves and eagles than it has people! Come along for this slideshow presentation and be prepared for something really wild.

Club meeting
The BT Global Challenge – the world's toughest yacht race

10 months, 2 Southern Ocean crossings, a near fatal accident and “love” on the high seas. Come and listen to the thrills and spills of adventure of a lifetime with Tina P. Sparkle.

Theatre evening
The importance of being earnest
by Oscar Wilde, performed by the Phoenix Theatre company

Regarded as one of the wittiest comedies ever written in English, Wilde's masterpiece about Ernest Jack Worthing, the man found as a baby in a handbag at London's Victoria Station, remains one of the contemporary theatre's most popular plays.

Club meeting
It's never been easier to buy counterfeit goods

says Pat Hastings, with experience in retail – be it designer handbags, sportswear, jewellery. What's seen as a soft crime and treated as such is actually funding organised crime, terrorism and slave labour. This is the crime that interests very few and still kills thousands.

Club meeting
Women as readers, writers and judges

The controversy about the Orange Prize for Fiction. This is an annual prize for the best full-length novel written in English by a woman of any nationality. Britta Zangen tells us that ever since the first unsuccessful attempt to launch it in 1994 there has been a public controversy about the need for an all-women prize.

Club meeting
Contemporary topics

Discussion evening in round-table groups.