A happy 2026 to all our members!

On 13 November 2025 we enjoyed a talk on the 19th floor of Westminster City Hall, presented by Linda Hantrais, Alan Kraven and Nigel Israel, about the Westminster Tobacco Box (“the world’s largest”) and other items of silver which are looked after by the Past Overseers’ Society, and about how Monck Street in SW1 came to be named after Henry Monck. The event was hosted by the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Paul Dimoldenburg.

Linda has kindly worked with us to share the slides from the event, incorporating additional research, and readings by James Knudsen. You can either play the video in the embedded video player below, or you can view it in a standalone browser tab (or the YouTube app, if you have it installed) here.

Please note that there is no audio until about 2:10, at which point there are readings by James Knudsen, through till about 9:40.

We have included an amount of time per slide which feels reasonable for reading the slide contents, but of course if it’s too quick you can use the Pause function.

Many thanks to Linda for her support and research!