Tuesday 18 October 2022

Kindly hosted by: The Poppy Factory, 20 Petersham Road, Richmond, TW10 6UR

In person and online

As part of a series of events to accompany the exhibition, ‘Richmond Remembers: 100 Years of The Poppy Factory’, the historian Patrick Baty gave us a fascinating insight into the history of the Artists Rifles – perhaps the most curious regiment in the British Army. Baty served in the Artists Rifles for ten years and is the regimental archivist. 

The regiment’s members included William Morris, Frederic Leighton and even the poet Algernon Swinburne. It was natural choice for young men of an artistic persuasion in 1914 and after WWII the regiment took an unusual transformation, where many of its early traditions were maintained, in spite of very different times.