PAST SCAPES
LANDSCAPE HISTORY PRESENTATIONS
AND GUIDED TOURS OF NORWICH
THE PAST SCAPES PORTFOLIO
ABOUT THE PRESENTATIONS
The collection of presentations offered is the product of five years of Access Course, Graduate Diploma and Masters research in the School of Landscape History at the University of East Anglia, the UK's most highly-respected faculty devoted to the study of how human activity has impacted on peoples' immediate or wider surroundings.
Essays, dissertations and projects completed during those years of study form the basis of each presentation, enhanced by additional research and the inclusion of audio and visual media to bring a graphically and textually improved interpretation to our audiences.
I also offer two very popular presentations about my Polish heritage.
UEA Essays, Projects and Dissertations
ABOUT ADRIAN O'DELL
I’m the son of a Polish Air Force officer and a nurse from Lancashire. I was raised in Norwich and was educated at the City of Norwich School.
In the late 1960’s the lure of the nascent oil and gas industry in Great Yarmouth attracted me to fly off to Houston, Texas where I trained as a “mud engineer” and was then sent to work in Nigeria for five years during the Biafran War.
My wife accompanied me and we were subsequently posted to Aberdeen, Scotland (3 years), Indonesia (4 years), with a further period of 6 years in Aberdeen when I ran the North Sea operations for my US-based company. I ended my oil industry career with four years in London with operational responsibility for francophone countries in Africa and others in the Middle East.
Following that our family moved back to Scotland for 20 years where I established and ran my own business in computer printers before we returned to our Norfolk roots in 2010. My wife Jane and I have two children and three grandchildren.
Now “retired” I have devoted myself to the study of Norfolk and Norwich’s history and heritage. I’m a freelance city tour guide and was also a trustee of the Norfolk & Norwich Heritage Trust (Dragon Hall) before it was passed on to the National Centre for Writing.
During recent years I worked for a post-graduate diploma in Landscape History at UEA followed by a Master's degree in the same subject. I’m also Chair of the Norfolk Polish Heritage Group which researches and archives stories of Polish immigration into Norfolk since World War II.