Building on the History of Parliament’s ‘Politics and patronage: a tercentenary colloquium for Frederick, Prince of Wales’ conference in 2007, Oliver Cox (University of Oxford) and Jennifer Scammell (Newcastle University) are organising an interdisciplinary one-day conference on the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. The conference seeks to bring together both established and early career scholars from different faculties and professional backgrounds to debate the dynamic, yet amorphous, cultural and political group – the Patriot Opposition – who formed in opposition to the men and measures of the first ‘Prime Minister’, Walpole.

The aim is to widen the focus of the original conference and, with the twentieth anniversary of Christine Gerrard’s influential monograph fast approaching, showcase new research on the subject.

The organisers will welcome proposals for individual twenty-minute papers from literary scholars; historians; art, architectural and landscape historians, with the aim of replicating in the diversity of conference papers the many different mediums used by Prince Frederick and the Patriots. The History of Parliament’s Robin Eagles will be one of the keynote speakers.

The conference will be held in conjunction with Historic Royal Palaces at Hampton Court Palace on Friday 7 June and include a tour of the new Secrets of the Royal Bedchamber exhibition.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words and a CV must be submitted to the conference organisers Oliver Cox (oliver.cox@history.ox.ac.uk) and Jennifer Scammell (j.scammell@newcastle.ac.uk) by 24 March.