British Georgian Society

BGS Inaugural Georgia Day at Pembroke College Cambridge

On Friday June 21st from 2pm - 6.30pm, there will be a special BGS Georgian event in the Old Library, Pembroke College Cambridge . The first half of the afternoon will be a high level political seminar entitled Georgia - Political Challenges and Constitutional Solutions with a keynote address by the Chairman of the Georgian Parliament Speaker David Usupashvili, one of the leading and most influential politicians in Georgia today. Mr Usupashvhili will then join a panel discussion with Sir Tony Brenton (UK Ambassador to Russia 2004-2008), Judith Gough (UK Ambassador to Georgia 2010 - 2013), David Howarth (MP for Cambridge 2005-2010) and Roy Reeve (former head of OSCE mission in Tbilisi 2004 - 2007). The event will be chaired by Sir Richard Dearlove, Master of Pembroke College Cambridge. This is a unique opportunity to understand how Georgia is developing a few months after the unexpected election victory for Georgia's Dream Coalition and before the presidential elections in October. 

The second session of the afternoon will focus on Georgian literature in two contrasting important historical eras - Queen Tamar and the twenty years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Professor Charles Melville (Professor of Persian History, Fellow of Pembroke College) and Dr Firuza Melville (Academic Associate, Head of Shahnama Centre, Pembroke College) will talk about Visramiani - the Georgian Perception of a Persian Love Story. Followed by Professor Donald Rayfield (Author, Historian and Professor of Russian and Georgian, Queen Mary, University of London) on A Decade of Chaos and a Decade of Change - as Georgian Writers have Perceived them. The session will be introduced and chaired by Cambridge Historian Dr Hubertus Jahn (Fellow of Clare College Cambridge, lecturer in Russian and East European history). The afternoon will end with a reception with Georgian wine and songs from Chela, the Cambridge Georgian choir. 

This event has been convened by Firuza Melville of Pembroke College and Jason Osborn and Craig Oliphant of British Georgian Society. Admission is free but to reserve a place please register by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Download pdf flyer How to get to Pembroke see here 

"Georgia - Political Challenges and Constitutional Solutions" address by Speaker David Usupashvili, Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia

This keynote address by Speaker David Usupashvili, Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, on Friday June 21st 2013, 2.00pm, in the Old Library, Pembroke College Cambridge, is the opening event at the BGS inaugural Georgian day at Pembroke. Joining Mr Usupashvili for a panel discussion will be Sir Tony Brenton (UK Ambassador to Russia 2004-2008), Judith Gough (UK Ambassador to Georgia 2010 - 2013), David Howarth (MP for Cambridge 2005-2010) and Roy Reeve (former head of OSCE mission in Tbilisi 2004 - 2007). The event will be chaired by Sir Richard Dearlove, Master of Pembroke College Cambridge. 

This promises to be a fascinating occasion just 4 months before the next Georgian Presidential election and 8 months since the election of the Georgian Dream coalition, and the unpredicted democratic change in Georgian politics.  

Admission is free but to register for the event please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

Download pdf flyer How to get to Pembroke see here

"Georgia - Halfway Through Cohabitation" a talk by the UK Ambassador to Tbilisi 20 May 2013

BGS is delighted to be holding a talk by the British Ambassador to Tbilisi on Monday 20th May 2013, at 6.30pm, in the UCL Bedford Way building. 

Ambassador David Moran arrived as Charge d'Affaires to Georgia in January 2013. His previous Ambassadorial appointments have included Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as postings to Nairobi, Moscow and Paris.  

The talk will take place in Room 305 on the third floor of the UCL Building, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0DS, which is on the South-West corner of Tavistock Square.

Georgian wine will be served after the talk. 

RSVP (essential) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Banner Of The Passing Clouds by Anthea Nicholson 25 April 2013

BGS is pleased to host the London book launch of Anthea Nicholson’s debut novel ‘BGS is pleased to host the book launch of Anthea Nicholson’s debut novel ‘The Banner of the Passing Clouds’ on Thursday, April 25 at 7.00pm, at the Georgian Embassy, 4 Russell Gardens, London, W14 8EZ, just two weeks after its official publication by Granta. 

The publisher, Philip Gwyn Jones, will give a short introduction, after which Anthea Nicholson will be reading extracts from her book. Good home-made Georgian wine and Georgian snacks will be provided afterwards. 

Anthea Nicholson is a writer and visual artist who lives between England and Tbilisi in Georgia.  

RSVP to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Anthea Nicholson’s The Banner of the Passing Clouds gives an extraordinary insight into living under communism in Georgia before independence and vividly describes life in Tbilisi. Its narrator, who is born on the day Stalin dies, is given Stalin's name by hospital nurses – Iosif Dzhugashvili. When Iosif learns of his strange link to the 'man of steel', he becomes convinced that Stalin has found a new dwelling place within his chest, a burden he both welcomes and fears.  In Iosif, Nicholson has created a unique and compelling narrator: a victim of the regime, which dictates all aspects of his and his family's life, who is also complicit in its ideology and practises. As an unquestioning citizen of communism, he is disconcertingly meddlesome, yet he remains a curiously pathetic and moving figure. It is only when Iosif unwittingly destroys his family's happiness that some kind of redemption for him is possible.

‘The Banner of the Passing Clouds is marked by an almost uncanny insight into its historical time and place. All is rendered with poignant clarity. There is a deep and hard-won compassion at work in this book, a compassion that is a kind of wisdom’ Anne Michaels, author, Fugitive Pieces

‘Nicholson is a writer of extraordinary lyrical gifts. The Banner of the Passing Clouds is gripping and profoundly moving’ Gerard Woodward

‘A tale that suggests how naked we are when the mighty ideologies around us fall... manages to be at once epic and claustrophobic, and, above all, entrancing’ Samantha Harvey, author, Wilderness

Safavid Iran and Georgia: How the Dominated Came to Dominate 12 March 2013

BGS is delighted to welcome Professor Rudi Matthee from the University of Delaware for our first annual BGS Rustaveli Lecture at the Royal Asiatic Society, 14 St Stephenson Way, NW1 2HD, at 7pm.

Free admission for members of BGS or RAS. Non members will be charged £5 (including Georgian wine and canapes). This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

One of the most established Georgian restaurants in London, Mimino off High St Kensington, will sponsor food. 

In the course of the sixteenth century the rulers of Safavid Iran incorporated much of the southern Caucasus, including the lowlands of Georgia, into their realm. This conquest had momentous repercussions for Georgia as well as for Iran. 

Read more: Safavid Iran and Georgia: How the Dominated Came to Dominate 12 March 2013

Giorgi Levashov-Tumanishvili and David Rose 23rd January Georgian Embassy

The next BGS film screening at the Georgian Embassy, 4 Russell Gardens, W14 8EZ, is on Wednesday 23rd January, 6.45pm for 7pm start.  Wanted: Marjory and Oliver directed by Giorgi Levashov-Tumanishvili is a British and Georgian co-production made in 1989 (95 minutes).  The film was first screened on Channel 4 and is in Georgian (with English subtitles) and English. Actress Alex Kingston visits Georgia searching for Marjory and Oliver Wardrop, who at the turn of the 20th century became heroes of Georgia. For a fuller description of the Wardrops please see the BGCC website.

As the BGS has historic links with the Wardrops, and as we have just celebrated 100 years since the first publication of ‘The Knight in the Panther Skin’ in the UK (1912), this seems a particularly appropriate screening. 

We are very pleased that director Giorgi Levashov-Tumanishvili will be present to introduce the film and the distinguished Channel 4 Commissioning Editor and producer David Rose will also be present. As one of the most influential film producers in British Television and having collaborated with Levashov-Tumanishvili on various projects, Rose will recall filming in Georgia in the 1990s. This was the first project that they collaborated on and was followed by a feature film Lucky Village (1993). 

They are also in the process of finishing another film Ready to Live which we hope to show in the next BGS film festival in September 2013. 

BGS Christmas Event at the Georgian Embassy 8 January 2013

       We are pleased to announce the BGS Georgian Christmas event on
Tuesday January 8th 2013, 6.30pm, at the GEORGIAN EMBASSY, 4 Russell
Gardens, London W14 8EZ

        Professor DONALD RAYFIELD will be talking about the great Georgian
writer OTAR CHILADZE, who died in 2009.

        Donald has recently finished the translation of 'A MAN WAS GOING DOWN
THE ROAD' to be published in December 2012, and 'AVELUM' to be
published in April 2013. Hardback copies of 'A Man Was
Going Down the Road' will be available at a 25% discount to members (i.e. £12
instead of £16).

        His talk will be followed by a short presentation about regional
differences in the celebration of Georgian Christmas with Georgian
wine and special seasonal snacks.

       There will be a small charge of £7 per person for this event to cover the cost of the seasonal fare. RSVP This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Logic In Georgia 11 December 2012

BGS member Dr Nick Bezhanishvili, who was at Imperial College London and is now at the University of Utrecht, will give a talk on the historical development of mathematical logic in Georgia. At the Georgian Embassy, 4 Russell Gardens, London W14 8EZ, Tuesday 11th December, 6.30pm.

This fascinating illustrated talk is now available to downlaod as a pdf.

Epic Poetry East and West: Rustaveli & His Contemporaries 30 November 2012

As the final event  of our celebration of 100 years of Rustaveli in English, David Gigauri and Anna Chelidze have organised the following event at the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, Friday 30th November, from 5.30pm to 9pm.

Epic Poetry East and West: Rustaveli & His Contemporaries

Welcome by Janet Zmroczek (Head of European Studies, BL) and HE Giorgi Badridze (Georgian Ambassador)
Paper 1 'The Epic Traditions in Medieval France and Spain' Dr Geoff West (Head Hispanic Collections, British Library)
Paper 2 'Shahnameh & Persian Epic Poetry' Prof Charles Melville (Professor of Persian History, University of Cambridge)
Paper 3 'Rustaveli the Poet and Medieval Georgia' Aka Morchiladze (Georgian writer and literary historian)
Followed by a discussion and reception with Georgian wine and songs from the Maspindzeli Choir

Download pdf for more information. Tickets at £7.50 available from the British Library box office

Sponsored by Ukrainian International Airways who have also made some exclusive offers on flights to BGS members. For more information email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

British Georgian Society AGM 27 November 2012

The 2012 AGM will take place on Tuesday 27th November at 6.30pm. The Georgian Embassy, 4 Russell Gardens, London W14 8EZ, has again kindly agreed to host us. After the AGM there will be a break for networking over a glass of Georgian wine, courtesy of the Embassy.
Then there will be some short talks to members:-
a) A review of the past year by HE Giorgi Badridze
b) A talk on portage in Georgia by Dr Sean Cameron
c) Talks by two Georgian students in London, Elene Melikishvili (KCL) and Ana Lomtadze (UCL).
It promises to be an interesting evening.

This event is for members only who should already have received the notice, report and accounts.