Londoners can hear from one of marine archaeology's most respected professionals, when Alex Hildred gives a presentation on 14 March at the South Bank's Queen Elizabeth Hall.

She will talk about maritime heritage and some of the notable projects she has worked on, to illustrate the importance of shipwrecks in understanding our past.

Alex has worked on many wrecks as an independent consultant. But her name is synonymous with the Tudor warship Mary Rose, displayed with many of its artefacts in Portsmouth.

As official licensee of the Rose's protected Solent site, Alex has overseen survey, excavation and preservation of finds for many years. Currently the Mary Rose Trust's Curator of Ordinance, she hopes to be back in the water this summer to raise a 10m stem timber, found last year.

Alex sits on the Government's Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites, for her expertise in marine archaeological project management.

Her presentation is one of five organised by the National Trust for SeaBritain 2005, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The NT also marks 40 years of its Neptune Coastline Campaign, under which it tends 704 miles of coast in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Alex's 14 March presentation, Wrecked: Our Underwater Heritage, takes place at 6pm in the Queen Elizabeth Hall's Purcell Lecture Theatre.

Tickets cost £8, from the next-door Royal Festival Hall's box office (tel. 08703 800400, 9.30am-9pm), or by booking online at www.rfh.org.uk

Related links
Divers finish new Mary Rose search this week
Mary Rose Trust

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