Last Wednesday (June 10) I attended the 150th Celebration Lecture of the Penarth Docks given by Professor Tony Atkins at the Penarth Pavilion. It was a well-attended event.

There was a charge for attendance (£5) so I thought it would be a professional presentation and that I would learn something new about this aspect of Penarth's history.

However, I can only say I was much disappointed and in terms of the quality of images, was one of the worst I have seen for a long time.

Apart from drawing on some personal reminiscences he did not appear to know the actual history i.e. the earlier proposals for the dock or the dock that was actually constructed, let alone the personalities involved, the engineers etc.

The impression was that the Professor obviously hadn't done his homework, which appeared to be limited to his wider research and a number of comments were out of date.

His call for some blue plaques to be put up was one of those comments as there are at least two historical plaques within the area of the old dock.

As mentioned, his slides were poor, we could hardly see the images many of which were faded, out of focus or simply too small on the screen.

He also didn't go into detail when stating factual evidence preferring to say "and so on" and "so forth".

I have spent some time thinking over what I experienced and am I being too critical? What do other readers think?

Name and address withheld.