About the lecturers
Saskia van Kampen-Prein is curator of modern and contemporary art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and specialises in Surrealism. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including Mad About Surrealism (2017) and This is Surrealism! (2020). Her recent publications include A Dream Collection: Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2017) and Creative Coincidence: Surrealist Art and Literature from the Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong Collection (2021).
Ami Bouhassane is co-director of Farleys House & Gallery Ltd. This organisation manages the Lee Miller Archives and Farleys House, the former home of Bouhassane’s grandparents, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. She is the author of several books, including Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends and Recipes (2017) and Grim Glory: Lee Miller’s Britain at War (2020) and is the editor of a volume of correspondence between Miller and Penrose, Love Letters Bound in Gold Handcuffs (2023)
Amber Butchart is a curator, writer and broadcaster who specialises in the cultural and political history of textiles, dress and design. She researches and presents documentaries for television and radio, and she is the history consultant and regular on-screen historian for BBC One's Great British Sewing Bee. She is a regular public lecturer, and is an external adviser for the National Crime Agency as a Forensic Garment Analyst, working on cases that require investigation of clothing and textiles. Her books include The Fashion of Film, Nautical Chic, and a history of British fashion illustration for the British Library. She is currently a CHASE-funded PhD researcher in curating political textiles, and her exhibition, 'The Fabric of Democracy: Propaganda Textiles from the French Revolution to Brexit’ is open until 3rd March at the Fashion & Textile Museum in London.
Julie Summers has written fourteen works of non-fiction, including the best-selling book Jambusters that inspired the ITV drama series Home Fires, which ran for two seasons in 2015-16 and had a regular television audience of over six million. She was listed in the Sunday Times as one of only four women in the top fifty historians in Britain.
Dressed for War, published by Simon & Schuster in 2020, is the biography of the wartime editor of British Vogue, Audrey Withers. She is currently working on British Vogue: The biography of an Icon to be published by Weidenfeld, London, in October 2024.
Antony Penrose is co-director of Farleys House and Gallery Ltd which manages the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection. He is the son of the American photographer Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, surrealist artist and biographer of Picasso, Miró, Man Ray and Tàpies. Antony has written numerous books, articles and two plays on the subject of his parents and their associates. The movie LEE to be released in 2024 starring Kate Winslet as Lee Miller is based on his biography The Lives of Lee Miller. He lectures widely and is a curator of photography, an artist and film maker in his own right.
