Fireside Meeting - February 2026

The Hillside Club Fireside meetings are held on the first Monday of most months (January, February, March, April, June, October, and November).

They are open to the public and admission is free to members, with a suggested donation for non-members. No one is turned away for lack of funds. The meetings begin with social time for members, a brief Club business meeting, followed by a featured speaker.

Monday, February 2nd will feature:

6:30pm Member Social Time

7:00pm Club Business Meeting

7:30pm A talk with historian Nick Friend

The Berkeley Hillside Club is pleased to host a special Fireside meeting on Monday, Feb. 2 with Club member and by English cultural historian Nicholas Friend titled, “Bad Kings: Their Art, Their Architecture, and Their Decadence.”

Friend notes that the White House is remarkable in the relatively long span of western architectural history for not being architecturally remarkable. Its current renovation, with its gilded Oval Office and imminent decadent ballroom, can be seen as a desecration not only of a building whose modesty is of huge symbolic importance, but of the memories of great American presidents, who have relied not on empty gestures of grandeur but on restraint, to underline that the President of the United States is the servant of the American people and the White House the People’s House. This short illustrated talk explores relationships between questionable rulers and the art and architecture on which they - from Ivan the Terrible to Charles I, Leopold II and beyond - have relied to bolster their fragile egos, if not obfuscate their savage cruelty.

Nick Friend

Club member Nicholas Friend holds MA degrees from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He is a cultural historian who sets art and architecture in their social and political context. For 25 years Founder-Director of the Art History Summer School of Cambridge University in the UK, he is currently co-Founder-Director of Friend&Friend Ltd, which offers online participatory lecture courses and in-person study days. In a 40-year career he has given numerous lectures and taken cultural study small group and custom tours for families and organisations all over Europe, the Americas and the UK.

Members come early for social time at 6:30 p.m. and the membership meeting at 7 p.m., followed by the public Fireside conversation at 7:30 p.m. for what promises to be an engaging and insightful event about meditation, music and creativity.

After the presentation, refreshments and wine will be served.

Fireside meetings are for civic engagement, a good way to see the club and get to know the members. Club members, our neighbors, and the general public are encouraged to attend.

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