Podcasts

The Book Club Review podcast, February 2022

Toby joins hosts Kate Slotover and Laura Potter with podcast regular Phil Chaffee to discuss ‘Long Reads’, the pleasures and perils that come with a book that takes weeks, even months, to read.

BBC Radio 4 – Start the Week, 10 January 2022

Finding consolation and community in reading

Michael Ignatieff, Christopher Prendergast and Toby Brothers discuss the consolation of reading with Tom Sutcliffe.

The Book Club Review podcast, January 2019

Listen to Toby in conversation with Kate Slotover, giving a brief overview on the history of the Salon and reflections on its purpose. She also describes some of the strategies offered to book clubs to support their studies.

Current Month

December 2024

sun01dec12:00 amtue31(dec 31)12:00 pmGift Vouchers12:00 am - 12:00 pm (31)(GMT+00:00) View in my timeType of studyGift Voucher

sun01dec4:00 pmsun6:00 pmThe Waste Land by T.S. Eliot4:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized BySean ForesterType of studyPoetryDurationFive meetingsVIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM

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*Il Sole,* *Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*

“In Eliot the very images and the sound of the words—even when we do not know precisely why he has chosen them—are charged with a strange poignancy . . . . And sometimes we feel that he is speaking not only for a personal distress, but for the starvation of a whole civilization.”

Edmund Wilson

This is how Edmund Wilson describes T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land, one of the most significant poems of the 20th century. The LitSalon has recently studied the Divine Comedy, a poem of psychological depth and crystalline order. Dante was one of T. S. Eliot’s poetic heroes, and Eliot’s poems also contain philosophical and psychological complexity, but crystalline order? No: rather a kaleidoscope of imagery and allusions, a tapestry of mythology, history, and literature, that speaks to a broken modern world.

Yes – Eliot’s poetry is difficult, but that is what makes him an excellent author for a LitSalon study. His poems contain vivid images and memorable language; they challenge us to wrestle with questions that still matter today.

JOINING DETAILS:

Five meeting study (on Zoom) led by Sean Forester

Sundays, 4.00-6.00 pm (UK), 3, 10, 17, 24 November & 1 December

£150 for five meetings, including opening notes and resources

Participants are welcome to use any edition of the poem as long as it has line numbers for reference.

Organizer

Sean Forester

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Time

1 December 2024 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon02dec6:00 pmmon8:00 pmVirginia Woolf's Short Stories6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByKarina JakubowiczType of studyLiteratureDurationSix weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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*Portrait of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry*

Virginia Woolf is deservedly classed as one of the best novelists of the early twentieth century, but what of her short stories? This study is designed to give these shorter texts the time and attention they merit. Participants will discover that they yield the same expansive meanings and levels of complexity as her longer works, and are arguably even more mysterious and engaging.

Far from being mere experiments, these texts serve as expertly and precisely crafted philosophical and aesthetic explorations. Each piece is captivatingly jewel-like, showing off Woolf’s expert handling of imagery and style.

We don’t often offer lectures in the Salon, but this particular study will begin with an introductory lecture by Dr Karina Jakubowicz on Woolf and the short story form. She will provide some background to Woolf as a short story writer before diving into some of the complexities (and controversies) behind her best known shorter works. Participants will then read and discuss one short story per week, covering such seminal texts as Kew Gardens, Mrs Dalloway on Bond St and the fictionalised essay, Street Haunting.

Follow this link to book to join the lecture alone without the following study sessions on individual stories.

Introductory lecture by Karina Jakubowicz (on Zoom)

The Mark on the Wall

Kew Gardens

Mrs Dalloway on Bond St

Solid Objects

Street Haunting

JOINING DETAILS:

Six-week study of Virginia Woolf’s short stories led by Karina Jakubowicz on Zoom

Mondays 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time), 28 October, 4, 11, 18 & 25 November, 2 December

Introductory lecture Karina Jakubowicz followed by five study meetings devoted to individual stories (as listed above)

£200 for six week study including lecture or £30 for the two-hour lecture alone

Please email litsalon@gmail.com for options to add ongoing assessment and certification and/or to access a recording of the lecture.

Organizer

Karina Jakubowicz

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Time

2 December 2024 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon02dec6:00 pmmon8:00 pmThe Wind in the WillowsA Christmas Special Salon in aid of The Woodland Trust6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByJane Wymark & Caroline HammondType of studyLiteratureDurationThree weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

When Mole decides to venture out of his burrow and explore the riverbank he discovers a new world of friendship and adventure. As we share his discoveries we’re reminded of the beauty of the natural world, the importance of witnessing the changing seasons and the power of friendship. And of course, there’s Mr Toad.

This year, in the run up to Christmas, facilitators Jane Wymark and Caroline Hammond will be exploring The Wind In The Willows to raise money for the Woodland Trust. Join us over three sessions with lots of chances to read aloud as we enjoy this enduring classic.

In order to make the study accessible for all we’re not setting a fixed price, but we ask you to be as generous as possible with your donation (as a guideline our courses usually cost £25-£30.00 for each two-hour session and this study comprises three sessions). Please note that neither Jane, Caroline nor the Salon will take any payment and all proceeds will be donated to the Woodland Trust.

JOINING DETAILS:

A Christmas Special Study in aid of The Woodland Trust, facilitated by Jane Wymark and Caroline Hammond.

Monday evenings, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK/GMT) 2, 9 and 16 December 2024.

The proceeds from this study will be donated to The Woodland Trust so we ask participants to please be as generous as possible in deciding what to pay. Please use the booking form below.

Please use any edition of the book you have available.

Organizer

Jane Wymark & Caroline Hammond

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2 December 2024 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue03dec2:30 pmtue4:30 pmULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE - The Slow Read (section 8, Cyclops . . .)THE 'SLOW READ' PART 82:30 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationEleven meetingsVIRTUAL

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“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

William Faulkner

First published on 2 February 1922 – James Joyce’s 40th birthday – UIysses was immediately controversial, described by one Irish critic as “The most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature”.

The ‘Slow Read’ is an opportunity to read and relish of one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. The ‘Slow’ approach has proved popular within the Salon as our approach is not driven by completion of the text within a defined timescale, rather we focus on full enjoyment of the material.

In a typical session we might discuss – inter alia – the immaculate conception (who does or does not have a navel?), language as a tool of colonialism (and how to subvert it), space between thought and speech, amor matris, cubist paintings, Thoth (Egyptian bird-headed god), changing understandings of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s sex life, the occult, cypher jugglers, Norse mythology, the dialectic within Stephen’s head, the Daedalus-Icarus myth . . . We are all here for the tangents!

Every time I run a study of Ulysses, there is SO much we do not get to consider: I know we may still not get to everything, but this will be an opportunity to go deeper and wider in this amazing work than ever before in Salon studies. Our run rate is about 5-8 pages a week, with frequent check- ins to see if, as a group, we want to slow down, speed up or just wallow.

The ‘Slow Read’ is served in tranches of two-hour sessions – usually between six and ten in number. As long as there is continued interest, I will keep offering this study until we reach the final notes on the text.

If you are interested in this study but have not previously read Ulysses, please contact us to discuss using the enquiry form below.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.”

Ulysses Salon participant

I offer many resources for reading around, but the richness of our work comes from the contributions and independent research from participants. This study is particularly opportune given the abundance of new resources available thanks to the 2022 Ulysses centenary, including the offerings of the recently published Cambridge Centenary Ulysses, the brainchild of Catherine Flynn.

Toby Brothers, Director, London Literary Salon

JOINING DETAILS:

This is the eighth section of the ‘Slow Read’ Ulysses study led by Toby Brothers and occasional guest facilitators from within the group, 11 two-hour sessions, Tuesdays from 2.30-4.30 pm (UK), starting on 17 September and ending on 3 December 2024 (no meeting on 1 October, see full dates below).

If you are interested in joining this study but have not participated in the first seven sections please email the facilitator toby@litsalon.co.uk.

The total cost for this section with all notes and resources is £300.00, we expect to read an average of 8 pages per week.

Please have available these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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3 December 2024 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed04dec6:00 pmwed8:00 pmThe IliadHomer's Iliad, translated by Emily Wilson6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized BySusanna Taggart & Caroline HammondType of studyClassical,LiteratureDurationTwelve meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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The Iliad is one of the first written works in Western literature, and undoubtedly one of the greatest. Although the story of its composition and recording remains a subject of scholarly debate, we can tentatively date it to the late 8^th or early 7^th Century BCE. It is impossible to overestimate its importance which extends beyond literature to influence art, culture, society and morals – Alexander the Great carried the copy given to him by Aristotle on his campaigns, and John Keats was inspired to write one of his most perfect sonnets after a night of reading.

The Iliad is a thrilling and heart-wrenching poem about war, human mortality and loss. But it is also about friendship, families, the natural world, love and redemption. One of the joys of the work, and perhaps why re-reading is so rewarding, is the richness and relatability of Homer’s world. Richness takes many forms, including a huge cast of characters, vivid language and similes, and how invested we become in this epic story. Homer invites us into a world that is both familiar and strange. The society is patriarchal, slave-holding, monarchical and polytheistic. The text is more than two and a half thousand years old, yet the characters speak directly to our own experience. Who hasn’t feared for a loved one? Or been mad at their boss (hopefully not mad enough to draw a sword against them)? Or wondered at the beauty of the sunrise?

Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad was published to critical acclaim in 2023:

“Wilson’s approachable storytelling tone invites us in, only to startle us with eruptions of beauty… Wilson’s transformation of such a familiar and foundational work is astonishing.”

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, The Atlantic

Using iambic pentameter – the rhythm of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton – Wilson’s translation has the lyrical quality the Ancient Greeks would have experienced as the work is so closely linked to performance. Her writing is brisk and readable and brings a fresh perspective to an ancient tale. It offers additional resources – including maps, footnotes and introduction – which support our reading and engagement with the text.

“Wilson’s translation, in iambic pentameter, runs as swift as a bloody river, teems with the clattering sounds of war, bursts with the warriors’ hunger for battle, and almost every line pulses with endless, terrible loss and mourning: death after death after death.”

Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian

We will combine a close reading of the text with bonus features: poems and art inspired by the epic, consideration of the psychology of war and images of museum exhibits.

The study is divided into two sections: the first six sessions will cover books 1-12, followed by a two-week break and then six further sessions for the final 12 books.

JOINING DETAILS:

Twelve meeting study on Zoom facilitated by Caroline Hammond and Susanna Taggart

Wednesdays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK), six meetings from 18 September to 23 October (books 1-12), NO meetings on 30 October and 6 November, six further meetings from 13 November to 18 December (books 13-24).

We’ll use Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad by Homer (ISBN-10: 1324076143 ; ISBN-13: 978-1324076148)

£420 for 12 meetings with two facilitators, to include opening notes and resources. It may be possible to book the two sections separately, please email litsalon@gmail.com if you would prefer this option.

Organizer

Susanna Taggart & Caroline Hammond

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Time

4 December 2024 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed04dec6:30 pmwed8:30 pmMarcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time Volume 6: FINDING TIME AGAINTHE FINAL VOLUME OF PROUST'S IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME - 11 MEETINGS6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationEleven meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

Marcel Proust

With this final volume of In Search of Lost Time we reach the end of the journey for the groups that have been studying Proust for the past two years, and I complete my seventh tour through this mountain of modernism. Each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments.

If you are interested in reading Proust from the beginning, please watch our website for the next Proust cycle that will commence early in 2025 and make sure you are signed up for our newsletter in which we announce new studies.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: ”This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

JOINING DETAILS:

Facilitated by Toby Brothers

Wednesdays 6.30-8.30 pm

Eleven meeting virtual study (on Zoom) from 18 September – 11 December 2024 (N.B. no meetings on 2 and 30 October)

Recommended edition: Penguin Classics Finding Time Again (Patterson/Prendergast) ISBN: 9780141180366 (the Vintage Classics edition: Time Regained ISBN: 978009936271 5 is also acceptable)

£330 for 11 meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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4 December 2024 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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thu05dec5:00 pmthu7:00 pmPlato's Symposium5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByKeith FosbrookType of studyClassical,Classics & PhilosophyDurationFour weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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It has often been said that Plato’s Symposium is the greatest prose work to survive from the Ancient Greek world. It portrays a group of intellectual men at a dinner party talking about sexual desire and the mysteries of love. Almost all of the men clearly have experience of same-sex relationships and are candid about what this means to them. As a result, the text has sometimes been thought of as a dangerous work, because, to use E M Forster’s ironic phrase, it is frank about the ‘unspeakable vice of the Greeks’. Nowadays, it is easier for us to appreciate the subtlety of Plato’s analysis of gender roles.

A major aspect of Plato’s perspective relates to his view of love as a kind of mystical force which is connected to our sense of beauty and plays an important role in moral education. This vision was very attractive to the Renaissance humanists, and has influenced Christian apologists over the thousands of years in which the book has been read.

For readers who are not particularly interested in philosophy, the text has appeal because Plato, unlike most philosophers, was a gifted writer. He offers us a variety of characters, all doing their best to account for the role of love in our lives. The modern world can boast many self-appointed experts here – including artists, philosophers, doctors, the therapeutic community, gurus, agony aunts and charismatic influencers to name but a few – and Plato presents us with a very similar kind of range, skilfully satirising them all. He finally presents a startling conclusion, when the person who is portrayed as having the deepest understanding turns out to be a woman . . .

There’s a great deal to ponder here, much of it very Greek (whatever that means), but much also that speaks to us with stunning directness across the millennia, and which may even lead you to question what philosophy is.

One final point: the text is riddled with irony, which is not always easy to spot if you are reading silently to yourself. There is much to be gained from reading The Symposium together as a group.

JOINING DETAILS:

Four-week study led by Keith Fosbrook

Thursdays, 5.00-7.00 pm, 21 & 28 November, 5 & 12 December

Please note that it is important we all use the same translation: The Symposium by Plato, Penguin Classics, translated by Christopher Gill, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780140449273

£120 for four meetings, to include introductory notes and resources

Organizer

Keith Fosbrook

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Time

5 December 2024 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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sun08dec3:00 pmsun6:00 pmThe Art of Film #2: The Graduate3:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByJulie Sutherland & John AllemandType of studyThe Art of FilmDurationThree hoursVIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM

Event Details

The Graduate was a massive critical and commercial success on release in 1967, becoming the highest grossing film of that year in North America, winning the Best Director Oscar for Mike Nichols and receiving six other Academy Award nominations. Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, it is a coming of age story with a twist that is full of both comic and tragic possibilities.

A young Dustin Hoffman plays newly graduated Benjamin Braddock – naive, awkward, uncertain what to do next and deeply embarrassed by his proud and conventional family – as he navigates the challenges of adult life that unexpectedly include seduction by the bored and worldly Mrs Robinson, wife of his father’s business partner. Complications ensue when Benjamin falls for the one woman that Mrs Robinson will do anything to keep him away from, her daughter Elaine. The ensuing conflicts lead to a memorable conclusion when Benjamin finally takes action and goes all out to capture Elaine’s heart on the very day she marries another man . . .

We want to consider this film as it was at the time – described by renowned critic Roger Ebert as “the funniest American comedy of the year” – and returning to it (or viewing for the first time) more than half a century later. Has it aged well?

Just some of the questions we will discuss in our review of the film as a whole and the selected clips we will watch together:

What can we learn about the social mores of middle-class North America in the 1960s? How much have things changed? Does the scandal of an extramarital affair resonate with us differently in the 2020s?

How do we perceive Mrs Robinson – cheating wife, sexual predator, unfulfilled domestic prisoner – and how differently would we respond if the seducer were an older male and the graduate female? Incidentally, Anne Bancroft was just 35 to Dustin Hoffman’s 30 when the film was made!

How do the life challenges facing a twenty-one-year-old in 2024’s digital world compare to those of 1968 (when the Vietnam War was ongoing and young men in the US were still liable to be drafted into the armed services)?

JOINING DETAILS:

A three-hour LitSalon Study on the Art of Film.

Sunday 8 December 2024, 3.00-6.00pm (UK/BST) on Zoom.

Discussion led by Julie Sutherland and John Allemand.

£65 for three hour study, including background notes and resources (N.B. participants in this study will be limited to a maximum of 14).

The Graduate is widely available on DVD/video and to download from Amazon and other platforms.

Organizer

Julie Sutherland & John Allemand

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8 December 2024 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue10dec6:00 pmtue8:00 pmDylan Thomas, Fern Hill6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByCaroline HammondType of studyPoetryDurationTwo hoursVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

tue10dec6:30 pmtue8:30 pmPortals to Past Women's VoicesA British Library Workshop6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByThe British Library & London Literary SalonType of studyLiteratureDurationTwo hoursThe British Library, London NW1 2DB

January 2025

wed08jan5:00 pmwed7:00 pmThe Best of The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByJulie SutherlandType of studyDramaDurationSix meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Awash in murder, madness and revenge, Hamlet has spoken to the ‘beast’ in humankind for over four centuries. Written around the turn of the 17^th century, Hamlet – in its fullest version – runs for over four hours. Even then, good productions of the sensational play can hold audiences in thrall. But, despite its preoccupation with violence and vengeance, Hamlet is also deeply philosophical, and bloodlust often takes a back seat to considerations of ethics and the moral course of action. It is the tension between these two aspects of humankind – part base, part noble – that has made this protagonist and the host of characters who come into his sphere so magnetic.

In this six-session study participants will engage in reading and discussing key scenes in Hamlet, including all seven of his soliloquies. As we undertake a close analysis of the play, we will examine the elements that make it a great revenge tragedy, but we will also consider ways in which Shakespeare makes it about so much more than revenge alone.

This study launches a series on English Renaissance revenge tragedy. Each study will be completely self-contained, but participants are welcome (and encouraged!) to consider taking part in the entire series. Next up will be Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy beginning on 19 February.

JOINING DETAILS:

Six session study on Zoom led by Julie Sutherland

Wednesday, 8 January-12 February 2025, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK/GMT)

£180 for six two-hour meetings, to include opening notes and resources

Recommended text: we strongly encourage participants to acquire the Arden Shakespeare Hamlet, revised edition, editors Ann Thompson & Neil Taylor: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/hamlet-9781472518385/. Variations between texts can be significant, having the same version will facilitate reading and discussion. N.B. Contrary to what Amazon says in its description, this edition presents an authoritative, modernised text based on the Second Quarto text (1604/5), which was printed from a manuscript believed to be Shakespeare’s ‘foul papers’ (his rough drafts).

Organizer

Julie Sutherland

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Time

8 January 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

15January 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm22January 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm29January 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm5February 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm12February 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm

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sun12jan4:00 pmsun6:00 pmThe Canterbury Tales: General Prologue4:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized BySean ForesterType of studyLiteratureDurationFive meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

Join the LitSalon on a literary pilgrimage with The Canterbury Tales. Imagine it is spring, the rain and mud behind us, nature bursts with new life. It is the season of love and pilgrimage. We are gathered around rustic wooden tables at the Tabard Inn, near London. Tomorrow we begin our walk (or ride if we can afford it) to St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. Our host suggests that each of us tell a story on the road.

What an astonishing variety of characters Chaucer gives us! We see the full range of medieval society, from the noble Knight to the bawdy Miller, the vitality of the Wife of Bath to the hypocrisy of the Prioress. The Canterbury Tales offers a masterful sense of irony throughout. For example, Chaucer presents himself as a character in the poem and the master poet tells a tale that is pure doggerel. Finally, the Host can bear it no longer: “Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee.” Poor Chaucer protests to no avail.

To truly appreciate Chaucer’s poetry, one needs to delve into the Middle English. We will do that by first reading the General Prologue in the original. Following this initial five meeting study we will offer two further studies reading some of the most compelling tales in modern English (although those wishing to continue in Middle English are encouraged to do so) as set out below (to be listed on this website at a later date).

Part I: Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale (16, 23 February & 2, 9 March)
Part II: Wife of Bath’s Tale, Shipman’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale (16, 23, 30 March)

If you have studied Joyce, Dante or Shakespeare with the LitSalon, why not challenge yourself with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the greatest works in English literature?

JOINING DETAILS:

Five meeting study of the Prologue led by Sean Forester

Sundays, 4.00 – 6.00 pm (UK)

12, 19, 26 January & 2, 9 February 2025

Recommended text: Penguin Middle English edition, ISBN: 9780140422344 (Everyman and Riverside Chaucer are fine too). You may also find the interlinear translation of The Canterbury Tales on the Harvard University Chaucer website useful.

£150 for five meetings, including notes and resources.

Organizer

Sean Forester

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Time

12 January 2025 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

19January 20254:00 pm - 6:00 pm26January 20254:00 pm - 6:00 pm2February 20254:00 pm - 6:00 pm9February 20254:00 pm - 6:00 pm

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mon13jan6:00 pmmon8:00 pmShakespeare's The Winter's Tale6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByJane WymarkType of studyDramaDurationEight weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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“tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.”

Thus, in Act 2 of Hamlet, Polonius excitedly describes the varied possible delights on offer from the approaching players. The Winter’s Tale, cited as the penultimate solo work in Shakespeare’s canon, goes a long way to covering all the forms of drama that Polonius enumerates.

The descriptive term that might arguably cover the entire list is ‘romance’, although in Shakespeare’s day the word did not apply to drama but to euphuistic prose works such as Pandosto by Robert Greene (which is the source material for this play), so Polonius can’t be blamed for the longer-winded ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’. It was not until the 19th century that this play – along with the other three plays written at the end of Shakespeare’s career: Cymbeline, Pericles and The Tempest – were described as the Late Romances.

The compilers of the First Folio would not have classified The Winter’s Tale as a history play, but the power of monarchs and questions of succession are certainly among its themes. The action moves between the formal court of Sicilia and the bucolic rural setting of Bohemia, where shepherds (the word ‘pastoral’ derives from the latin pastor meaning shepherd) are very much present. The play contains tragedy in its first half and a good deal of comedy in its second.

“I would love to see a rep company do The Winter’s Tale and King Lear together, same actors same costumes, because I think Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale to answer King Lear’s tragedy with hope”

Jane Smiley

The first half of the play moves towards an expectation of full blown tragedy, which is then altered by what is probably Shakespeare’s most famous Stage Direction: ‘Exit pursued by a bear’. As Professor Emma Smith explains, ‘the stage direction itself enacts the shock of the theatrical moment. Wait…there’s a bear? Where did that come from? But the real significance of this stage direction is the work it does as part of a cluster of dramaturgical, linguistic and structural effects in the middle of The Winter’s Tale. These effects have one concerted purpose: to wrest the play from the path of tragedy and to pluck a comedy from its darkest reaches.’

Ultimately, as one of the characters in the play, Paulina, exhorts:

“It is required,
You do awake your faith”.

The Winter’s Tale is a romance, a fairy story, a thing of hope . . .

JOINING DETAILS:

Eight week study on Zoom led by Jane Wymark

Monday 13 January – 3 March 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK)

Recommended edition: The Arden Shakespeare, edited by John Pitcher, ISBN
9781903436356

£240 for eight meetings, including notes and background resources

Organizer

Jane Wymark

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Time

13 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon13jan7:00 pmmon9:00 pmThings Fall Apart . . .Two reading workshops & optional reflective writing workshop7:00 pm - 9:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByAlison CableType of studyLiterature,Reading & Writing for WellbeingDurationTwo meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart offers an intimate and sweeping view of Igbo life in Nigeria during the late colonial period, capturing the complexities of family, tradition, and the forces that shape communities. Through the story of Okonkwo and his village, Achebe creates a world that is at once specific and universal, exploring how personal and cultural identities are built and challenged.

In this study, we’ll journey through Achebe’s rich narrative, discussing his powerful storytelling, his nuanced view of colonialism, and the ways he invites us to see both the beauty and fragility of human experience. Together, we’ll delve into the themes of tradition, resilience, language, and the complex encounter between cultures, reflecting on how these themes resonate with us today.

The workshop offers a space for all readers—whether you’re discovering Achebe for the first time or returning to his work—to come together in curiosity, empathy and open dialogue.

JOINING DETAILS:

Monday 13 and 20 January 2025, 7.00–9.00 pm GMT

Led by by Alison Cable, two meeting workshop on Zoom + optional additional reflective writing session* on 27 January (also on Zoom, 7.00-9.00 pm GMT)

£60 for two meetings + FREE optional meeting*

Recommended edition: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN: 9780141023380

*In this optional reflective writing session, we will be inspired by the novel to deepen the reading experience through a variety of guided writing prompts.

Organizer

Alison Cable

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Time

13 January 2025 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue14jan2:30 pmtue4:30 pmULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE - The Slow Read (section 9, Nausicaa and onwards . . .)THE 'SLOW READ' PART 92:30 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationEleven meetingsVIRTUAL

Event Details

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

William Faulkner

If you are interested in this study but have not previously read Ulysses, please contact us to discuss using the enquiry form below.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.”

Ulysses Salon participant

Toby Brothers, Director, London Literary Salon

JOINING DETAILS:

This is the ninth section of the ‘Slow Read’ Ulysses study led by Toby Brothers and occasional guest facilitators from within the group, 13 two-hour sessions, Tuesdays from 2.30-4.30 pm (UK), starting on 14 January and ending on 22 April 2025.

If you are interested in joining this study but have not participated in the first seven sections please email the facilitator toby@litsalon.co.uk.

The total cost for this section with all notes and resources is £390.00, we expect to read an average of 8 pages per week.

Please have available these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

14 January 2025 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue14jan6:00 pmtue8:00 pmMatthew Arnold, Dover Beach6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByCaroline HammondType of studyPoetryDurationTwo hoursVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet, social critic and inspector of schools. Traditionally believed to have been written on his honeymoon in 1851, Dover Beach is one of his best loved and most frequently quoted poems.

Dover Beach is a poem set on the edge of changes still too unformed to be fully understood and its rich descriptions have been interpreted in many ways. Through reading and discussion, we’ll be able to consider the poem’s influence and meaning and hear its beautiful cadences come to life.

SALON DETAILS:

Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond

Tuesday 14 January 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm GMT

£30 (includes background materials and opening notes)

Organizer

Caroline Hammond

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Time

14 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed15jan7:00 pmwed9:00 pmMadame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert7:00 pm - 9:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByRalph KleinmanType of studyLiteratureDurationSeven weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“La Bovary, c’est moi.“

Gustave Flaubert

“Quand Mme Bovary parut, il y eut toute une révolution littéraire… Le code de l’art nouveau se trouvait écrit.“

“When Mme Bovary appeared, there was a whole literary revolution . . . the code of a new art was written.”

Emile Zola

Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880) is often referred to the first modern novelist and the inventor of literary realism. Madame Bovary arrived on the scene (trailing generally negative reviews and a lawsuit for offence against public morals and religion, of which Flaubert was acquitted) misunderstood and undervalued, but Flaubert knew that he had written a masterpiece. Time proved him correct.

Flaubert wrote precise fiction in reaction to idealism and romanticism. His goal was to present the world as it really was; there are no heroes in Madame Bovary. He used clear and concise language (he wanted to remove all poetry from his writing), a meticulous attention to detail, a crystalline structure, and brilliant psychological insights into his characters. Flaubert rejected the idea of artistic inspiration, and laboured like a mole for fifty-three months, testing every word for its aptness, and reading and rereading each sentence. But he wasn’t interested in merely creating the perfect form. He entered the emotional life of his characters, feeling his way through the novel. It was written in the early days of France’s industrial age, and Flaubert wanted literature to aid in the understanding of human nature, just as the natural sciences and social sciences did.

Although Madame Bovary is completely embedded in its time and place, I believe it has much to say about how we live now, and this is something we will explore in this study. There are many young girls today who are living completely in the world of internet influencers, lost in a dream disconnected from any reality. Will they emulate Emma Bovary in our own age as they attempt to navigate the world as it really is?

JOINING DETAILS:

Seven-meeting study led by Ralph Kleinman

Wednesdays, 7.00-9.00 pm UK (BST)

15 January to 26 February 2025

Recommended edition: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Classics, ISBN-13: 9780143106494 (to avoid confusion we ask that all participants use the same translation during study meetings)

£210 for seven meetings, to include opening notes and resources

Organizer

Ralph Kleinman

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Time

15 January 2025 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue21jan11:30 amtue1:30 pmULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE -January 2025 (early)2025 EARLY STUDY11:30 am - 1:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationTwenty-one meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

*Aerial photograph of Dublin and the ‘Forty Foot’ by Paul Costello on Unsplash*

We offer an opportunity to read one of the greatest novels of all time in the company of others. Our work with this book will widen your perspective and deepen your experience of the power of language.

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text – book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying – but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the best way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing – even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man – thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

We are offering this study early in the day, from 11.30-1.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday afternoon meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.

The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500

Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

21 January 2025 11:30 am - 1:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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28January 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm4February 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm11February 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm18February 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm23February 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm25February 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm11March 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm18March 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm25March 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm30March 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm1April 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm8April 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm15April 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm22April 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm18May 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm20May 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm27May 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm8June 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm17June 202511:30 am - 1:30 pm

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tue21jan12:00 pmtue2:00 pmWistawa Szymborska: Poems for our Time12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByDesma LawrenceType of studyPoetryVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

*Photo of Wistawa Szymborska by Mariusz Kubik, via Wikimedia Commons*

“My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.“

Wistawa Szymborska, Under One Small Star

Awarding Wistawa Szymborska the Literature Prize in 1996, the Nobel Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

We are living through a fraught political era in which ecological succour and the possibility of peace may seem elusive. Can poetry offer a way to read the world that helps us be both engaged in and also derive some relief from the world and its troubles?

This single session study takes up that question, looking at two poems by Wistawa Szymborska, reading them together as a way of thinking about and through the times in which we find ourselves.

Szymborska’s poetry, written in response to the political upheavals of the twentieth century, perhaps provides a reflective space in which to dwell a little on the difficulties we face and also offer a unique way to be human within a world that is sometimes ill at ease.

In The Century’s Decline she asks “how should we live?” and in Under One Small Star she hones her sharp yet warm irony on all the recognisable shortcomings and monumental efforts of human life and endeavour and experience. She gives us permission to feel joy and to be inadequate to the problems of the world while still holding space with all these weighty things.

It is my hope that we can derive some succour from Szymborska’s words.

JOINING DETAILS:

Single two-hour study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence

Tuesday 21 January, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)

We will read and discuss two poems by Wistawa Symborska: The Century’s Decline and Under One Small Star

£30 for one meeting, including notes and texts

Organizer

Desma Lawrence

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Time

21 January 2025 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue21jan5:30 pmtue7:30 pmULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE -January 2025 (later)2025 LATER STUDY5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationTwenty-one meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament:
with faith.”

—William Faulkner

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader – a broader thinker – even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

Here are comments from two Ulysses participants:

“I am thoroughly enjoying this journey. I feel wide open, exposed and receptive to new ways of thinking. What could be better than that? I enjoy the links with the classics and their current counterparts such as the agony of Sisyphus and the trials of thoughtful, surely sad, Martin Cunningham. And then Bloom with his many pockets reminded me in an amusing way of the Artful Dodger.

“The classes I have taken with the Literary Salon have been extraordinary.“

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“

JOINING DETAILS:

We are offering this evening study from 5.30-7.30pm (UK time), comprising 21 meetings starting on Tuesday 21 January and finishing on Tuesday 17 June 2025, with four Sunday meetings (4.30-6.30pm on 23 February, 30 March, 18 May and 8 June) and NO meetings on 4 March, 29 April, 6 and 13 May.

The total cost for the 21 meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £500

Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition, Penguin Modern Classics 2011, ISBN: 9780141197418. There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

21 January 2025 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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28January 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm4February 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm11February 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm18February 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm23February 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm25February 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm11March 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm18March 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm25March 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm30March 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm1April 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm8April 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm15April 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm22April 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm18May 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm20May 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm27May 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm8June 20254:30 pm - 6:30 pm17June 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm

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mon27jan1:00 pmmon3:00 pmMarcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume IV: 'Sodom and Gomorrah' (early afternoon)1:00 pm - 3:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationThirteen meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.“

Marcel Proust

After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you anything about the world you live in, but you will be surprised. The group that has made it through the first three volumes in the last six months is lively and welcoming and we may have room for two or three more participants. If you have not read the first three volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.

Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories. In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position. He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men. this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’ This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

Facilitated by Toby Brothers

Mondays, 1.00-3.00 pm (UK)

Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)

Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517

£390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

27 January 2025 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon27jan3:30 pmmon5:30 pmMarcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume IV: 'Sodom and Gomorrah' (for Second Timers)3:30 pm - 5:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationThirteen meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.“

Marcel Proust

This ‘second time around’ study is designed specifically for people who, having completed their journey through Proust’s monumental creation at least once, have the urge to do it again.

Facilitator Toby Brothers writes:

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the mountains of Modernism. This is my seventh tour through the Search and each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments. This fourth volume considers closely the draw of the social dance and the realm of social power: you might not think the anxious aristocracy of the Belle Epoque will teach you something about the world you live in, but you will be surprised.

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive, that moulds our consciousness.

I’d like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories. In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position. He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men. this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’ This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

Facilitated by Toby Brothers

Mondays, 3.30-5.30 pm (UK)

Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)

Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517

£390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

27 January 2025 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon27jan6:00 pmmon8:00 pmVirginia Woolf's Orlando in eight objects6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByKarina JakubowiczType of studyLiteratureDurationEight meetings

Event Details

This study offers a rare opportunity to read Virginia Woolf’s famed mock-biography, Orlando, with Karina Jakubowicz, Woolf scholar and creator of The Virginia Woolf Podcast. Readers will be guided through the text step-by-step, explaining the desires, jealousies and rivalries behind what has been called ‘the longest love letter in the English language.’ There will be opportunities to discuss Woolf’s inspiration, Vita Sackville West, and to consider Woolf’s treatment of history, gender and the genre of biography.

To guide our readings, each week will feature one object drawn from the archives at Knole House or Sissinghurst Castle, or from Virginia Woolf’s own collections. Orlando is a story that spans 400 years, so each object will relate to the time period that we are looking at in the text itself. These pieces may simply serve as bookmarks to help readers navigate the text, or they may develop into talking points that furnish our understanding of the history that Woolf describes.

The eight-session study will begin with a lecture on the background to the text that can be booked as a standalone event or as part of the whole. The following seven sessions will be discussion-based and split according to the timetable below.

Session 1: Lecture

Session 2: Preface and first half of Chapter 1, up to the beginning of The Great Frost (p. 22)

Session 3: Read until the end of Chapter 1

Session 4: Chapter 2.

Session 5: Chapter 3

Session 6: Chapter 4

Session 7: Chapter 5

Session 8: Chapter 6

N.B. If you are interested in developing your critical or written skills, this can be done via a weekly written task with feedback at additional cost. For more information on this, please email us using the subject line ‘Orlando feedback’.

JOINING DETAILS:

Eight meeting study on Zoom led by Karina Jakubowicz

27 January to 17 March 2025

Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm

£30 for the lecture alone, £240 for the whole course

Recommended edition: Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Michael H. Whitworth, ISBN: 9780199650736 (but any decent edition will work).

Organizer

Karina Jakubowicz

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Time

27 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon27jan6:00 pmmon8:00 pmVirginia Woolf's Orlando in eight objects - Introductory Lecture6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByKarina JakubowiczType of studyLiteratureDurationTwo hours

Event Details

This lecture is available to book as a standalone event or as an introduction to a complete eight-week study giving participants a rare opportunity to read Virginia Woolf’s famed mock-biography, Orlando, with Karina Jakubowicz, Woolf scholar and creator of The Virginia Woolf Podcast. Readers will be guided through the text step-by-step, explaining the desires, jealousies and rivalries behind what has been called ‘the longest love letter in the English language.’ There will be opportunities to discuss Woolf’s inspiration, Vita Sackville West, and to consider Woolf’s treatment of history, gender and the genre of biography..

The complete study consists of eight sessions which will be discussion-based and split according to the timetable below and may be booked here.

Session 1: Lecture

Session 2: Preface and first half of Chapter 1, up to the beginning of The Great Frost (p. 22)

Session 3: Read until the end of Chapter 1

Session 4: Chapter 2.

Session 5: Chapter 3

Session 6: Chapter 4

Session 7: Chapter 5

Session 8: Chapter 6

JOINING DETAILS:

Introductory lecture by Karina Jakubowicz on Zoom

Monday 27 January 2025, 6.00-8.00 pm

£30 for the lecture alone (£240 for lecture and seven further meetings)

Recommended edition: Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Michael H. Whitworth, ISBN: 9780199650736 (but any decent edition will work).

Organizer

Karina Jakubowicz

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Time

27 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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mon27jan6:00 pmmon8:00 pmMarcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume IV: 'Sodom and Gomorrah' (evening)6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & Ralph KleinmanType of studyLiteratureDurationThirteen meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.“

Marcel Proust

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships, together with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

I’d like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:

“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories. In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.

On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position. He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men. this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’ This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.

Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time – and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.”

JOINING DETAILS:

Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Ralph Kleinman

Mondays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)

Thirteen-meeting study on Zoom starting on 27 January 2025 (N.B. no meetings on 3 March, 14 & 28 April, 5 & 12 May)

Recommended editions: Penguin, ISBN 9780141180342, Christopher Prendergast (Editor), John Sturrock (Translator) OR Vintage Classics, ISBN 9780099362517

£390 for thirteen meetings (includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes)

Organizer

Toby Brothers & Ralph Kleinman

Salon Director

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27 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue28jan6:00 pmtue8:00 pmSylvia Plath, Wintering6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByCaroline HammondType of studyPoetryDurationTwo hoursVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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” . . .Today, guess what, we became beekeepers! We went to the local meeting last week (attended by the rector, the midwife, and assorted beekeeping people from neighboring villages) to watch a Mr Pollard make three hives out of one (by transferring his queen cells) under the supervision of the official Government bee-man. We all wore masks and it was thrilling. It is expensive to start beekeeping (over $50 outlay), but Mr Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing, which we painted white and green, and today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them. We placed the hive in a sheltered out-of-the-way spot in the orchard the bees were furious from being in a box. Ted had only put a handkerchief over his head where the hat should go in the bee-mask, and the bees crawled into his hair, and he flew off with half-a-dozen stings. I didn’t get stung at all, and when I went back to the hive later, I was delighted to see bees entering with pollen sacs full and leaving with them empty at least I think that’s what they were doing. I feel very ignorant but shall try to read up and learn all I can. If we’re lucky, we’ll have our own honey, too!“

From Letters Home, 15 June 1962

When Sylvia Plath died on 11^th February 1963 she left a black spring binder on her desk containing a manuscript of forty poems with the title Ariel.* The final five poems are a sequence about bees: The Bee-Meeting, The Arrival of the Bee-Box, Stings, Swarm and Wintering. In this powerful sequence Plath purposefully changes her poetic tone as she uses the natural metaphor of bees to explore issues of female self-assertion, rites of death and rebirth, creativity and survival. She also writes with loving precision about the details of beekeeping and the bees themselves. The final poem, Wintering, is a tour de force evoking cold and despair but, ultimately, hope for the coming spring.

Over the course of two hours we will study Wintering in depth, look at its form and construction and, through repeated readings, unlock the secrets of this acclaimed poem.

*This is not the version of Ariel published in 1965, which has four of the bee poems in the middle of the book, but Faber did publish Ariel the Restored Edition in 2004, with a foreword by Frieda Hughes.

JOINING DETAILS:

Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond

Tuesday 28 January 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (GMT)

£30 (includes background materials and opening notes)

Organizer

Caroline Hammond

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Time

28 January 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed29jan5:00 pmwed7:00 pmTHE SOUND AND THE FURY BY WILLIAM FAULKNER5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & John AllemandType of studyLiteratureDurationFive weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.”

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

In William Faulkner’s first truly modernist work, he attempts to break through the confines of time and sequence to get at the essence of human nature. As Malcolm Bradbury explains, “Faulkner’s preoccupation with time has to do with the endless interlocking of personal and public histories and with the relation of the past to the lost, chaotic present.” The Sound and the Fury exposes a crumbling world through inference and allusion rather than through direct social critique. In the modernist method, Faulkner employs stream of consciousness and symbolism as connecting fibres against individual interior realities that must compete for authority.

This study will draw upon participants’ questions and ideas to shed light on this complex text. The book is richer when discussed, enabling the first time reader access to Faulkner’s vision, while those re-reading will find greater depth and resonance. Upon a first reading, the narratives appear jumbled and opaque; but as the pieces start to fit together, the complex and careful planning that Faulkner employs becomes apparent. Does the work expose the depths and hidden realms of the human spirit? This is what we must grapple with in our study.

JOINING DETAILS:

Led by Toby Brothers & John Allemand on Zoom

Wednesday evenings 5.00 – 7.00 pm (UK)

Five-meeting study 29 January – 26 February 2025

Recommended edition: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Norton Critical Edition (edited by Michael Gorra); ISBN-13: 978-0393912692

£200 for five sessions

Organizer

Toby Brothers & John Allemand

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29 January 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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thu30jan5:00 pmthu7:00 pmBreakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & Deborah LawunmiType of studyLiteratureDurationTwo meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

‘Give me an example,’ I said quietly. ‘Of something that means something. In your opinion.’
‘Wuthering Heights‘ she said without hesitation . . .
‘But that’s unreasonable. You’re talking about a work of genius.’
‘It was, wasn’t it? My sweet wild Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times.’
I said ‘Oh’ with recognizable relief, ‘oh’ with a shameful, rising inflection, ‘the movie.’

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Ironically, this exchange between the unnamed narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and its unlikely heroine, Holly Golightly, prefigures the eclipse of Truman Capote’s original 1958 novella by the 1961 film. Whether you love or loathe the iconic movie starring Audrey Hepburn, the book is different – romantic but devoid of sentimentality – painting a complex, funny and poignant portrait of a 1940’s New York demi-monde.

Credited as the inventor of the ‘non-fiction novel’, Capote’s prose style in Breakfast at Tiffany’s prompted Norman Mailer to describe him as “the most perfect writer of my generation”. In our two-meeting study we will consider whether and why this judgement was justified, as we discuss how the author evokes character – most notably the unique and irrepressible Holly Golightly – and, in less than a hundred pages, immerses the reader in his plot.

Please note, the book contains some language and cultural tropes that are true to the period described but which some readers may find offensive today.

JOINING DETAILS:

Two-meeting study on Zoom led by Toby Brothers and Deborah Lawunmi

Thursday 30 January & 6 February, 5.00-7.00 pm UK (GMT)

Recommended edition: Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN: 9780141182797

£70 for two meetings to include opening notes and resources

Organizer

Toby Brothers & Deborah Lawunmi

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Time

30 January 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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February 2025

tue04feb12:00 pmtue2:00 pmPoems on Death 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByDesma LawrenceType of studyPoetryDurationFour meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“Don’t bargain.
Just grab the swishing tail
of your nerve’s latest adventure
and go with the inevitable tide.“

Dorothy Porter The Sea Hare

Blaise Pascal wrote that what makes humans distinct is that we know we are attached to a dying animal, and that the universe knows nothing of this. Our knowledge of death, our awareness of our mortality is so fundamental to our human experience.

This study looks at the ways poets have written about death, taking up different responses to the theme in a variety of poems, reading works that face – unstintingly at times, but also tenderly and deeply – the universal yet oft avoided fact of our mortality.

My idea for this salon is that we come to it with an open curiosity about the ways that poets have thought poetically about death.

Starting with Milton’s pastoral elegy Lycidas we go on a journey to the underworld with Rilke’s Orpheus, and through the surreal musings of Neruda and deep existential fear explored in Larkin’s Aubade. Studying eleven poems over four meetings we will finish with poems that contemplate our own mortality, in Dorothy Porter ‘s The Sea Hare and in a selection of haiku known as death poems, written by Japanese poets as their last words of goodbye.

Meeting One
Lycidas, John Milton
The Funeral of Sarpedon, Constantine Cavafy
Sylvia’s Death, Anne Sexton

Meeting Two
Orpheus, Euridice and Hermes, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lenox Hill, Agaha Shahid Ali

Meeting Three
Aubade, Philip Larkin
Nothing but Death, Pablo Neruda
To Whoever is Reading Me, Jorge Luis Borges

Meeting Four
The Sea Hare, Dorothy Porter
Japanese Death Poems
In Praise of Dreams, Wistawa Szymborska

JOINING DETAILS:

Four week study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence

Tuesdays, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)

4, 11, 18 and 25 February 2025

£120 for four meetings, including notes and texts

Organizer

Desma Lawrence

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Time

4 February 2025 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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tue04feb6:00 pmtue8:00 pmWilliam Blake, The Tyger6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByCaroline HammondType of studyPoetryVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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*William Blake, The Tyger, Creative Commons*

The Tyger, first published in 1794, is the product of a revolutionary age. Societal transformations in Europe and North America were radically altering industry, statehood, philosophy, law and religion. In the vanguard of the Romantic movement that was to produce a generation of poets including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Clare, Blake was a master of the lyric form, finding connections between the natural world and the introspective workings of the heart and mind.

For many readers The Tyger is also woven into their earliest childhoods, one of the first poems they were introduced to, heard before it was read. Whether The Tyger is part of your personal canon or completely new, as we explore the lyricism, images and Blake’s unique voice we will uncover new and unexpected meanings through reading and discussing the poem.

JOINING DETAILS:

Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond

Tuesday 4 February 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm GMT

£30 (includes background materials and opening notes)

Organizer

Caroline Hammond

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4 February 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed12feb12:00 pmwed2:00 pmTodtnauberg: An EncounterA one-off Salon on Paul Celan's poem Todtnaurberg12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByDesma Lawrence & Emilia SteuermanType of studyPhilosophy & Literature,PoetryDurationTwo hoursVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

*Photo of Paul Celan, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*

Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
star-die on top,

in the
Hütte,

Thus begins Paul Celan’s poem Todtnauberg, setting the scene for his meeting with the philosopher Martin Heidegger.

This short poem is Celan’s record of his meeting at the philosopher’s Black Forest retreat in Todtnauberg in 1967. The two men were admirers of each other’s work, though on Celan’s side the admiration was fraught. Celan was a survivor of the European Shoah, carried out by the Third Reich, that claimed the life of both his parents. Living most of his life in France, Celan composed his poetry in German (his mother tongue and the language of his beloved mother), utilising the language that was also infused with the Reich, and which he called “the deathbringing speech” to work through the individual and collective trauma of the Shoah.

Heidegger, one of the monumental figures in European continental philosophy of the twentieth century, had a well known affiliation with the Nazi party which he never denied, redressed, or ever spoke about publicly. Their meeting, not surprisingly, attracted much scrutiny.

The poem, a chronicle of that meeting, closely follows the inscription that Celan left in Heidegger’s visitor’s book: “In the Hütte, with the view from the star in the well, with the hope of a coming word in the heart” (“Ins Hüttenbuch, mit dem Blick auf den Brunnenstern, mit einer Hoffnung auf eines kommendes Wort im Herzen”).

There are many ways to read, interpret and translate the poem, a poem about silence and the hope for words. We will read the poem together, many times, hoping ourselves to come to an understanding and interpretation of this very moving and concise work.

JOINING DETAILS:

Single meeting study led by Desma Lawrence and Emilia Steuerman

Wednesday 12 February 2025, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)

£40 for single meeting with two facilitators

We will provide the German text with English Translation(s) and background notes on both Celan and Heidegger.

Organizer

Desma Lawrence & Emilia Steuerman

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12 February 2025 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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thu13feb6:30 pmthu8:30 pmTime through texts and objects: exploring poetry from the past6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByVivien KogutType of studyPoetry,The Renaissance through texts and objectsDurationFour meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“This literature – which to us can sometimes seem difficult, exotic, highbrow, remote – is the product of a certain sensibility and a particular context. The idea of these sessions is to find little doors through which to step into that world and find ways to relate to it through the poetry and human artefacts as representations of that time.”

Vivien Kogut

The eighth century English monk Bede wrote a famous parable in which man’s life is compared to the flight of a sparrow crossing a warm hall on a dark, wet night: the sparrow comes “from winter into winter again”, his time in light and warmth lasting but the “blink of an eye”. Eight hundred years later, English poets believed they could trick all-devouring time through the power of words.

And today, another five centuries later, what does poetry tell us about time? And what different ‘times’ do we find in poetry? Can Medieval and Renaissance literature speak to our own perception of time? And what can objects tell us about our relationship with words across time?

This study invites readers to dive into poems and objects from the past in search of dialogues around time and literature. Focusing on the experience of reading poetry from the 10^th to the 17^th century we will try to rethink our notions of brevity and eternity, of rush and delay, of beginnings and endings.

Each of four sessions will focus on a different genre of poetry expressing ‘time’:

1. Old English elegies

“Thus this middle-earth droops and decays every single day;
and so a man cannot become wise, before he has weathered
his share of winters in this world”

Anonymous, The Wanderer

2. Old English riddles

“It was swift in its going:
Faster than birds it flew through the sky”

Anonymous, Riddle 51

3. Medieval ballads

“O’er his white bones, when they are bare,
The wind shall blow for evermore.“

Anonymous, The Two Corbies

4. Elizabethan poems

“Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.“

Edward Spenser, Amoretti: LXXV

JOINING DETAILS:

Four meeting study on Zoom led by Vivien Kogut

Thursdays, 6.30 – 8.30 pm (UK)

13, 20, 27 February and 6 March

£120 for four meetings, including notes and resources

Organizer

Vivien Kogut

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13 February 2025 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

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thu20feb5:00 pmthu7:00 pmInvisible Man5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & Deborah LawunmiType of studyLiteratureDurationSeven meetingsVIRTUAL - VIA ZOOM

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“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

This is what Nobel laureate Saul Bellow had to say about this extraordinary book:

“It is commonly felt that there is no strength to match the strength of those powers which attack and cripple modern mankind. And this feeling is, for the reader of modern fiction, all too often confirmed when he approaches a new book. He is prepared, skeptically, to find what he has found before, namely, that family and class, university, fashion, the giants of publicity and manufacture, have had a larger share in the creation of someone called a writer than truth or imagination … From this harassment and threatened dissolution by details, a writer tries to rescue what is important. Even when he is most bitter, he makes by his tone a declaration of values and he says, in effect: There is something nevertheless that a man may hope to be. This tone, in the best pages of Invisible Man, those pages, for instance, in which an incestuous Negro farmer tells his tale to a white New England philanthropist, comes through very powerfully; it is tragi-comic, poetic, the tone of the very strongest sort of creative intelligence. In a time of specialized intelligences, modern imaginative writers make the effort to maintain themselves as unspecialists, and their quest is for a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. What language is it that we can all speak, and what is it that we can all recognize, burn at, weep over, what is the stature we can without exaggeration claim for ourselves; what is the main address of consciousness?

“I was keenly aware, as I read this book, of a very significant kind of independence in the writing. For there is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone.”

As co-facilitators with different cultural backgrounds and experiences, we both consider this to be one of the greatest and most influential works of American literature. The unnamed protagonist’s search for identity in a world that will not see him gives us as readers an opportunity to try to understand the psychological devastation of racism in its subtle as well as its violent forms, and to consider how each of us participates in the fate of all humanity. Ellison weaves in themes and images from Virgil, Dante, Emerson and TS Eliot while also using the structure and transcendence of jazz to create a work that haunts and stirs to the core of our experience.

Why read this book? Toby explains in more detail here:

Includes extracts from the recording of the spiritual ‘No More Auction Block‘ performed by Martha Redbone, accompanied by Aaron Whitby on piano, in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House on 21 March 2017. Based on the work of Howard Zinn (1922–2010), directed by Anthony Arnove In association with Voices of a People’s History of the United States (peopleshistory.us), co-presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Onassis Cultural Center New York Part of Onassis Programs at BAM. View the whole performance here.

JOINING DETAILS:

Virtual study (via Zoom) facilitated by Toby Brothers and Deborah Lawunmi

Thursdays, 5.00 – 7.00 pm (UK time)

Seven meetings starting 20 February 2025

Recommended edition: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Penguin Modern Classics (August 2001) ISBN-13: 978-0141184425

£245 for seven-meeting study with two facilitators

Organizer

Toby Brothers & Deborah Lawunmi

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20 February 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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wed26feb5:00 pmwed7:00 pmThomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByJulie SutherlandType of studyDramaDurationSeven meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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During the late reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an English writer penned a revenge tragedy for the public theatre, which unfolded like this:

Spurred on by the murder of a kinsman, a bereaved man, brought to the brink of madness by grief, seeks revenge on a royal. The information he receives urging him to exact vengeance is potentially legitimate, yet he is filled with doubt and is compelled to put it to the test. The grief-stricken man is then confronted by a terrifying vision about his delay. Growing more self-assured, he publicizes the nature of the crime through a play-within-a-play. The tragedy closes with the bloody and violent deaths of numerous characters.

Not Hamlet, this is Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.

Kyd’s immense influence on English Renaissance drama cannot be overstated. To the playwrights already writing in the revenge tradition of the Roman Seneca (1^st century CE), Kyd added a flair and formula that was all his own and brought into sharp relief questions about life, death and justice that were pertinent to the age in which he wrote.

A box office blockbuster, The Spanish Tragedy was the third most performed play in 1590s London (after The Jew of Malta and the now-lost The Wise Men of West Chester). Its publication history was equally phenomenal. Going into at least 11 editions between 1592 and 1633, the revenge tragedy’s life in print outstripped any of Shakespeare’s plays.

In this 7-session study, participants will engage in an exhaustive reading of an edition based on the play’s earliest quarto (not dated). Pre-session resources will include the additions Ben Jonson was commissioned to write, which appeared in the 1602 edition of the play, and were a testament to The Spanish Tragedy’s ongoing popularity. Kyd himself did not live to see its astounding success.

As we examine this play together, we will consider a question central to the period’s revenge tragedies: How far must we go, what options do we have, when we must take the law into our own hands?

English Revenge Tragedy Series

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”

Francis Bacon

The Spanish Tragedy is the second in a series of studies on English Renaissance revenge tragedy led by Julie Sutherland, which begins with Hamlet (8 January to 12 February 2025). Each study is completely self-contained, but participants are welcome (and encouraged!) to consider taking part in the entire series.

JOINING DETAILS:

Seven week study led by Julie Sutherland

Wednesdays, 5.00 -7.00 pm UK time

26 February-9 April 2025

£210 for seven meetings

Recommended edition: Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Antonio’s Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780141192277

Organizer

Julie Sutherland

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Time

26 February 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

5March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm12March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm19March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm26March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm2April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm9April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm

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March 2025

wed12mar5:00 pmwed7:00 pmWilliam Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & John AllemandType of studyLiteratureDurationSeven meetingsVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Absalom, Absalom! is arguably Faulkner’s most difficult, but also his most brilliant work. It presents the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.”

Described as ‘hard-core Faulkner’, one review says: “The words and writing are critically acclaimed since your parents were in school. The examples of how a war can raze an entire culture’s edifice of identity are compelling, each person’s doom and curse being common among her kin and her countrymen: ghosts and sex and violence and cruelty, gut wrenching drama to challenge any soap opera or miniseries or movie. There are themes and studies aplenty within the nightmare realm of Faulkner’s masterpiece.”

Some feedback from participants in a previous study of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury:

“I am so happy to have had this opportunity to immerse myself in The Sound and the Fury in such a structured way and with such expert guidance! . . . While I probably would have found my way there eventually, the Salon gave me a container, a holding space and chorus of passionate and challenging voices with which to engage the difficult psychological, emotional, and artistic questions it raises.”

“You can get guidance elsewhere – with a discussion group you get more of a creative interaction and that’s what to me is important and exciting . . . you’re really involved in the reading so much more actively.”

“I always finish these sessions with insights I would never have reached on my own.”

“The support to read these difficult books is one of the things I come here for.”

JOINING DETAILS:

Seven-week study led by Toby Brothers & John Allemand on Zoom

Wednesdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK)

12 March – 23 April 2025

£280 for seven-week study

Recommended edition: Absalom, Absalom!, Vintage Classics, ISBN: 9780099475118

Organizer

Toby Brothers & John Allemand

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Time

12 March 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

19March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm26March 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm2April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm9April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm16April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm23April 20255:00 pm - 7:00 pm

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tue18mar12:00 pmtue2:00 pmFernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByDesma LawrenceType of studyLiteratureDurationEight weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

“In these random impressions, with no desire to be anything other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history, and if in them I say nothing, its because I have nothing to say.”

The Book of Disquiet, the prose masterpiece by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, is unique among modernist literary texts.

Even to categorise this work, authored by Pessoa under the name of Bernardo Soares, is difficult. Not quite fiction, not quite memoir, it is an aphoristic, fragmented exploration of life through philosophical and metaphorical modes of thought. The fragments of text, themselves individual texts, ponder – sometimes deeply and artfully and sometimes despondently and abstrusely, but always imaginatively – with equal weight, the profound mysteries and the boring everydayness of life.

“It’s raining, raining, raining…

It’s raining constantly, plaintively…

My body sets my soul shivering with cold, not the cold that exists in space, but the cold of me being that space…”

These are the musings of a Lisbon bookkeeper who is preoccupied with the nature of existence and who regards the world as by turns fictive, profound, pointless, symbolic, sad, written as a sort of journal. Not composed as an organised text, never completed or arranged by Pessoa (who was the progenitor of numerous literary heteronyms) this book is ‘a fiction of itself’. This makes for one of the most unusual of Europe’s great modernist literary masterpieces. A mesmerising, fascinating text, The Book of Disquiet reflects on the enigmas of self.

“I’m a navigator engaged in unknowing myself… And behind all this, O sky my sky, I secretly constellate and have my infinity.”

JOINING DETAILS:

Eight week study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence

Tuesdays, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)

18 March – 6 May 2025

Recommended edition: Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780241200131

£240 for eight meetings, including notes and resources

Organizer

Desma Lawrence

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Time

18 March 2025 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

25March 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm1April 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm8April 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm15April 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm22April 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm29April 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm6May 202512:00 pm - 2:00 pm

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thu27mar6:00 pmthu7:00 pmWhy Read Proust in 2025?A lecture & discussion led by Toby Brothers6:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationOne hourVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Why is this seven volume French novel: A la recherche du temps perdu – in English Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time – regarded as such an iconic work? First published in French between 1913 and 1927, and in English translation between 1922 and 1931, why is it still so admired and respected? What does it offer to the twenty-first century reader in a world that has changed so much?

Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted, or wondered what could possibly take any writer more than three thousand pages and six or seven volumes to say? In January 2025 I will start leading the ninth group of readers with whom I have explored this work. For myself, I have to report that I always find something new when reading Proust and that my time in his writing has transformed the way I understand the interplay of memory, imagination, intellect and sensory experience.

In this lecture I will explain why I believe that reading Proust is genuinely life-changing and an unmissable rite of passage. Curious readers are welcome to join me!

A comment from a previous Proust participant:

” . . . brilliant, frustrating, revealing, engrossing and I am part of what has become a special community of equally frustrated and hugely encouraging students of different ages and backgrounds. Guided by Toby we are full of insights and laughter. We read aloud and discuss the week’s reading. Time flies, brains feel rejuvenated and the weeks go by much more speedily with the Salon to look forward to. Encouragement is key, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinions. In fact the best thing about the Salon is that we all feel valued. What’s not to love!”

JOINING DETAILS:

One-off lecture and discussion on Zoom led by Toby Brothers

6.00 -7.00 pm, 27 March 2025

£15.00 (redeemable against the cost of joining our study of Volume 1: The Way by Swann’s starting in September 2025)

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

27 March 2025 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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April 2025

thu03apr(apr 3)4:00 pmsun06(apr 6)12:00 pmVirginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - celebrate the centenary with us in Alfriston! #24:00 pm - 12:00 pm (6)(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & Karina JakubowiczType of studyLiterature,TravelDurationSix meetings over four daysWingrove House, High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TD

Event Details

In response to demand for our previously announced third Virginia Woolf study in Alfriston, devised to celebrate the passing of 100 years since the first publication of Mrs Dalloway in 1925, we are offering a second event in Woolf’s beloved Sussex countryside. Where better to mark the centenary of this ground-breaking book than in the county that in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home?

The centenary of the publication of Mrs Dalloway affords a perfect opportunity for us to approach the text with an invigorated exploration. This study will be enriching for those who have read and re-read this multi-layered text (including those who have previously studied it with the Salon) and readers who are new to the book. Karina and Toby will open up the many issues this subversive work considers, including sanity and madness, the treatment of mental illness and the limitations of medical techniques, tensions between social classes, queer relationships in a homophobic society, the sanctity of and threats to the private self . . . We will delve into the rich language and images that Woolf uses to unpack these and consider how this work speaks to us today.

We are planning a number of events to celebrate one hundred years of this book which opened up narrative form in an entirely new way and remains profoundly influential today. A viewing of The Hours in a London cinema followed by an audience discussion is one of the projects in the works, keep checking our newsletter for more announcements.

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but she and her husband Leonard had an abiding love for the South Downs. Together they purchased Monk’s House near Rodmell in 1919 and used it as their writer’s retreat. Virginia wrote some of her major works there and the Sussex landscape was integral to her writing as she tried to capture what she saw as its unsurpassable beauty. There are a number of other Bloomsbury outposts in the area: in 1916 Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, moved to Charleston Farmhouse with the painter Duncan Grant, while John Maynard Keynes and his wife Lydia Lopokova also settled locally.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

Virginia Woolf’s writing hits emotion first — ‘what happens’ takes second place to ‘what feels’. The language is packed with subtlety, nuance and evocative images as Woolf probes the depths of intimate relationships. Come join us for this exploration of a warm June day in London: madness, aesthetics, the nature of love and intimacy, war, relationships across and between genders, Imperialism — all are prodded in this delicate and lyric work.

Mrs Dalloway makes an ideal study: her writing is challenging to read on one’s own, rich as it is in images, references and details that deliver a powerful emotional and intellectual impact. The study format encourages exploration by reading with a group of diverse and enquiring minds. Together we will work to understand Woolf’s incisive study of human personality — and use some of her contemporaries (Freud, Henri Bergson, Roger Fry) to help make sense of this new writing she creates. Here is Julia Briggs from her biographical study of Woolf through her works:

“Mrs. Dalloway is the story of a day in the lives of a man and woman who never meet — a society hostess who gives a party, and a shell-shocked soldier . . . What they have in common or why their stories are told in parallel, the reader must decide, for this is a modernist text, an open text, with no neat climax or final explanation, and what happens seems to shift as we read and reread. Woolf intended her experiment to bring the reader closer to everyday life, in all its confusion, mystery and uncertainly, rejecting the artificial structures and categories of Victorian fiction.”

JOINING DETAILS:

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Mrs Dalloway 2025 #2’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £20. Full payment may be made later by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details which will be different from any you may have used on previous occasions).

Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz

Thursday 3 – Sunday 6 April 2025, Alfriston, East Sussex

This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Mrs Dalloway and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We are in the process of investigating particular outings in the area based on what exhibits will be available at the time of our visit, these will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.

We are also in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf and Mrs Dalloway during our stay there.

£480 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs (please see details below)

We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £182.50 per room (charges vary across a wide range) rising to a maximum of £257.50, but please check this with the hotel when booking, mentioning the London Literary Salon to receive a special 10% discount.

Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own accommodation and any insurance required.

Recommended edition: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Oxford World’s Classics edition; ISBN-13: 978-0199536009

Organizer

Toby Brothers & Karina Jakubowicz

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Time

3 April 2025 4:00 pm - 6 April 2025 12:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

Wingrove House

High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TD

Other Events

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Mrs Dalloway, 4 meetings, May-June 2022

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thu10apr(apr 10)4:00 pmsun13(apr 13)12:00 pmVirginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - celebrate the centenary with us in Alfriston!4:00 pm - 12:00 pm (13)(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers & Karina JakubowiczType of studyLiterature,TravelDurationSix meetings over four daysWingrove House, High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TD

Event Details

This will be our third Virginia Woolf study in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home. What better way to celebrate the passing of 100 years since the first publication of Mrs Dalloway in 1925 than an in-depth study in her beloved Sussex countryside?

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

JOINING DETAILS:

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Mrs Dalloway 2025’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £20. Full payment may be made later by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details which will be different from any you may have used on previous occasions).

Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz

Thursday 10 – Sunday 13 April 2025, Alfriston, East Sussex

This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Mrs Dalloway and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We are in the process of investigating particular outings in the area based on what exhibits will be available at the time of our visit, these will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.

We are also in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf and Mrs Dalloway during our stay there.

£480 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs (please see details below)

We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £182.50 per room (charges vary across a wide range) rising to a maximum of £257.50, but please check this with the hotel when booking, mentioning the London Literary Salon to receive a special 10% discount.

Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own accommodation and any insurance required.

Recommended edition: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Oxford World’s Classics edition; ISBN-13: 978-0199536009

Organizer

Toby Brothers & Karina Jakubowicz

Learn More

Time

10 April 2025 4:00 pm - 13 April 2025 12:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

View in my time

Location

Wingrove House

High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TD

Other Events

Book this Salon

Mrs Dalloway, 4 meetings, May-June 2022

All places are booked

mon28apr(apr 28)5:00 pmmon05may(may 5)12:00 pmAgistri 2025: Homer's Odyssey on the Greek island of Agistri(April 28) 5:00 pm - (May 5) 12:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers, Caroline Hammond & Jane WymarkType of studyClassical,TravelDurationSeven daysAgistri, Greece

Event Details

In 2025 we will return for our fifth visit to the enchanting island of Agistri on the Saronic Gulf. This year we will study Homer’s Odyssey and Euripides’ Trojan Women in a location that evokes the landscape and environment in which these extraordinary and enduring works were written. Join us if you can!

“Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy.
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered on the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home.”

The opening lines of Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey

In 2019 the London Literary Salon travelled to Agistri to read The Odyssey and in 2024 we completed the Homeric cycle by reading The Iliad on the island, using Emily Wilson’s powerful contemporary translations for both studies. In 2025 we will return to Agistri to revisit The Odyssey in all its vivid and gripping glory.

Our Odyssey study will use Homer’s epic poem to consider closely the guest-host relationship, the defining struggle of humans against overwhelming nature, the struggle to know ourselves in foreign spaces, our understanding of the heroic and the role of myth and epic in lived experience.

Actor Jane Wymark and poet Caroline Hammond will join Salon Director Toby Brothers in leading this week-long study, sharing their insights into the spoken word, metre and translation and how to read out loud to greater effect. In an era where the epic poem is in eclipse (the novel and film having taken over as the preferred vehicles for complex narratives) we will explore aspects of the Odyssey as a work in the oral tradition.

Our chosen venue is a small family-run hotel that is easily accessible (just one hour by ferry from Athens) on the beautiful and quiet island of Agistri. It provides the perfect setting for our study, offering a relaxing atmosphere, excellent food and opportunities for additional cultural and recreational activities.

STUDY DETAILS:

Seven-day study of Homer’s Odyssey on the island of Agistri: 28 April – 5 May 2025.

Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Jane Wymark and Caroline Hammond.

Cost: £700 for the Salon study, to include preparatory meeting in April (via Zoom, date to be confirmed), background materials and opening notes. Opening notes will be sent after registration.

The study programme will run for four to five hours per day for five days, with one day left open and travel at each end. There will be time for other optional activities including kayaking adventures, a trip to the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina, or pure relaxation.

Before you arrive on Agistri we will ask you to read Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey (WW Norton & Co, ISBN-10: 0393356256; ISBN-13: 978-0393356250). Ian McKellen’s audio reading of Robert Fagles’ translation is also a great way to experience The Odyssey.

Payment: we understand that you may not want to pay the entire charge at once, so we ask for an initial (non-returnable) deposit of £20 on registration followed by £180 within 28 days and the balance of £500 by 31 January 2025.

Refunds: please note that any refunds will be entirely at the discretion of the London Literary Salon, dependent on our ability to fill the place, and will be subject to a charge to cover our administration costs.

BOOKING

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Agistri 2025 – Odyssey’ as the subject line. Payment will be by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details). If the study sells out early we will maintain a waiting list as we do sometimes find that people have to withdraw for reasons beyond their control.

ADDITIONAL COSTS

Room and half board (breakfast and dinner each day) will be arranged by each participant with the hotel and paid for directly to them. A deposit to cover two nights accommodation will be required by the hotel. We will send you full contact details for payment on registration. We have set out the anticipated charges below, but these may be subject to change at the time of booking at the discretion of the hotel.

Accommodation prices per night at the hotel – Rosy’s Little Village – estimated on the basis of figures available in October 2024:

Single – €77 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per day

Double – €87 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Triple – €77 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Family room for two people – €97 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Family room for three people – €107 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Please consider sharing accommodation with another participant as this helps us to ensure everyone can stay on site; double and triple rooms offer split levels and so allow sharers a significant degree of privacy.

Flights to Athens: when booking please make sure you can arrive in Piraeus by 15.00 local time on the first day of your study to catch the ferry. We will not be meeting formally on the final day of each study, so you have choices about your return (ferries are frequent and the travel time to Piraeus is one hour).

Ferry to Agistri: normally around €14 each way, but may be €30 for arrival if the group chooses to use a private water taxi.

Incidental expenses: drinks, lunches, extra trips etc.

Insurance: we hope this will be entirely redundant, but we do ask you to arrange your own travel and health insurance to protect you in case of anything untoward happening. We will ask you for details of the insurance provider and reference number, as well as your mobile phone number and details of next of kin to add to our (confidential) records for use during the study.

Organizer

Toby Brothers, Caroline Hammond & Jane Wymark

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Time

28 April 2025 5:00 pm - 5 May 2025 12:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

Agistri, Greece

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May 2025

wed07may(may 7)5:00 pmwed14(may 14)12:00 pmAgistri 2025: Euripides' Trojan Women on the Greek island of Agistri5:00 pm - 12:00 pm (14)(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby Brothers, Caroline Hammond & Jane WymarkType of studyClassical,TravelDurationSeven daysAgistri, Greece

Event Details

“The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.”

Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue

When, in 458 BC, The Oresteia of Aeschylus – a trilogy in which the climax of the third play, The Eumenides, upheld the Athenian traditions of liberality and the rule of law – triumphed at the Dionysia, it must have been exhilarating for the audience to witness the exaltation of their own city. Much had changed just forty-three years later when Euripides’ Trojan Women was performed and won the second prize in the contest.

For the last ten of those years Athens had waged the hugely destructive Peloponnesian War against Sparta and several Greek cities had suffered a fate not unlike that of Troy. Although a truce with Sparta was just about holding, the Athenians were still trying to expand their martial capability through colonisation. In the summer of 416 BC, less than a year before Euripides’ play appeared, Athens laid siege to the small but wealthy island of Melos in the South Aegean (which had already donated much to the war effort but drew the line at being occupied and exploited) and, once the Melians were defeated, massacred its male population and enslaved the women and children.

The audience at the theatre of Dionysus in Athens would have included veterans of the Melian campaign, and it speaks for the Greek respect for theatre and artistic freedom that performance of the play was permitted at all. That openness is not always matched by our own society today: In 1980 A Short Sharp Shock! a play by Howard Brenton and Tony Howard satirising British politics of the time led to outrage, questions in the House of Commons and an attempt to close down the Royal Court Theatre. Four years after the UK’s 1982 Falklands War, a verse play by Steven Berkoff, Sink the Belgrano!, caused a similarly huge controversy.

During our 2023 visit to Agistri we considered the theatrical representation of the Trojan War and its aftermath in The Oresteia. In 2025 we will embark on the study of Trojan Women with Salon Director Toby Brothers, actor Jane Wymark and poet Caroline Donnelly bringing their considerable talents and energy to exploring the dramatic possibilities of the text and the poetry contained within this phenomenal work.

STUDY DETAILS:

Seven-day study of Euripides’ Trojan Women on the island of Agistri: 7 – 14 May 2025.

Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Jane Wymark and Caroline Hammond.

Cost: £700 for the Salon study, to include preparatory meeting in April (via Zoom, date to be confirmed), background materials and opening notes. Opening notes will be sent after registration.

The study programme will run for four to five hours per day for five days, with one day left open and travel at each end. There will be time for other optional activities including kayaking adventures, a trip to the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina, or pure relaxation.

We will ask you to read the recommended translation of Trojan Women by Emily Wilson contained in this volume: Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Modern Library Classics – Paperback, ISBN 978-0812983098) before arriving on Agistri.

Payment: we understand that you may not want to pay the entire charge at once, so we ask for an initial (non-returnable) deposit of £20 on registration followed by £180 within 28 days and the balance of £500 by 31 January 2025.

Refunds: please note that any refunds will be entirely at the discretion of the London Literary Salon, dependent on our ability to fill the place, and will be subject to a charge to cover our administration costs.

BOOKING

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Agistri 2025 – Trojan Women’ as the subject line. Payment will be by bank transfer (N.B. we will supply bank details). If the study sells out early we will maintain a waiting list as we do sometimes find that people have to withdraw for reasons beyond their control.

ADDITIONAL COSTS

Accommodation prices per night at the hotel – Rosy’s Little Village – estimated on the basis of figures available in October 2024:

Single – €77 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €50 per day

Double – €87 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Triple – €77 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Family room for two people – €97 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Family room for three people – €107 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Family room for four people – €120 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per person per day

Please consider sharing accommodation with another participant as this helps us to ensure everyone can stay on site; double and triple rooms offer split levels and so allow a significant degree of privacy to sharers.

Flights to Athens: when booking please make sure you can arrive in Piraeus by 15.00 local time on the first day of your study to catch the ferry. We will not be meeting formally on the final day of each study, so you will have choices about your return (ferries are frequent and the travel time to Piraeus is one hour).

Ferry to Agistri: normally around €14 each way, but may be €30 for arrival if the group chooses to use a private water taxi.

Incidental expenses: drinks, lunches, extra trips etc.

Organizer

Toby Brothers, Caroline Hammond & Jane Wymark

Learn More

Time

7 May 2025 5:00 pm - 14 May 2025 12:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

View in my time

Location

Agistri, Greece

Other Events

Book this Salon

Enquire before you buy

July 2025

sat05jul(jul 5)3:00 pmfri11(jul 11)9:00 amHerman Melville's Moby Dick afloat!3:00 pm - 9:00 am (11)(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiterature,TravelDurationSix daysMallaig, Scotland

Event Details

A not-to-be-missed opportunity to complete reading one of the greatest books ever written in English – an extraordinary story of obsession and maritime adventure – over the course of a six-day voyage aboard a traditional sailing ship. Four online meetings will introduce Moby Dick, followed by six study sessions at sea on the Eda Frandsen, a lovingly restored and maintained gaff cutter, originally built in Denmark in 1938. This unique study will allow readers to complement their appreciation of Herman Melville’s text with a practical understanding and experience of the reality of seafaring life under sail.

“I am half way in the work . . . It will be a strange sort of book, tho’, I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho’ you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;—and to cool the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.”

Herman Melville

First published in 1851, Moby Dick ranks on almost any list as one of the greatest works in the English language. Its three famous opening words ‘Call me Ishmael . . .’ together with the image of the one-legged Captain Ahab in mad pursuit of the great white whale, have become cultural icons. This grand—and occasionally grandiose—adventure tale unites the many voices of Herman Melville in a mongrel mix of epic poetry, Shakespearean tragedy, encyclopaedic cataloguing, biblical oratory, and not a small dose of comedy. Melville presents an insightful study of obsession, madness and charismatic leadership that anticipates many of our contemporary conversations about democracy, cosmopolitanism, capitalism and environmentalism.

In 2019, celebration of the 200th year since Herman Melville’s birth initiated a particularly auspicious moment to study this great work, generating rich responses and reconsiderations of a truly amazing book. Philip Hoare (mentioned below as one of the curators of the Moby Dick Big Read project) writes on the contemporary importance of this work in this article Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: Six reasons why Moby Dick is the novel for our times.

“The book features gay marriage, hits out at slavery and imperialism and predicts the climate crisis – 200 years after the birth of its author, Herman Melville, it has never been more important.”

Philip Hoare

Together, artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare convened and curated a unique whale symposium and exhibition at Peninsula Arts, the dedicated contemporary art space at Plymouth University. This grew into an extraordinary compilation of art and voices (Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry and more) – the Moby Dick Big Read – to illuminate each chapter, inspiring and inspired by this vast book.

SALON DETAILS:

Four two-hour meetings online, followed by six-day study with six nights on board the Eda Frandsen from 3.00pm on Saturday 5 July 2025 to 9.00am on Friday 11 July 2025

Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Salon Director

Recommended edition: Moby Dick (Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition 2018), by Herman Melville, edited by Herschel Parker; W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN-13: 978-0393285000

Cost for four online meetings and six-night voyage with study sessions, including opening notes will be £1,850 per person.

Participants will be responsible for arranging their own travel to and from our departure and end point, the port of Mallaig on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, as well as insurance to cover their trip.

We have just seven places available. If you are interested in joining, please email us using the subject line Moby Dick 2025 giving your name and a phone number on which we may contact you.

Please note that the voyage will involve sharing confined living and sleeping space while onboard. We do not require you to have nautical skills, but some time spent on sailing boats or camping would be useful so you know what to expect. We ask you to let us know in your email whether you have such experience and to confirm that you are in good physical health.

Even in summer it is possible that there may be rough seas and weather, so please consider carefully whether you are likely to be adversely affected by these conditions.

If we are able to offer you a place we will ask for an initial deposit of £100 per person, with the balance due by 31 December 2024.

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

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Time

5 July 2025 3:00 pm - 11 July 2025 9:00 am(GMT+00:00)

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Location

Mallaig, Scotland

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September 2025

wed17sep3:00 pmwed5:00 pmVolume 1 of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The Way by Swann's (afternoon)3:00 pm - 5:00 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationNine weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Marcel Proust

Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted, or wondered what could possibly take any writer more than three thousand pages and six or seven volumes to say?

In our study, we enter the Proustian universe through the first volume: this will give readers a glimpse of the breadth and purpose of this carefully constructed creation that Proust uses to reflect on the workings of the mind, memory, imagination and the role of art. Harold Bloom cites In Search of Lost Time as ‘the greatest literary work of comic jealousy’. Proust uses social critique, abundant detail, lyric descriptions and philosophical query to portray a sensitive young mind engaging with the world and human relationships. The narrator’s incredible vision and unique voice develop over the course of the volumes. By studying this first volume, you will acquire the tools needed to complete the epic on your own if you are inspired, or continue with the Salon study if this is working for you. We continue to ask, could there be a better moment in history to go in search of Lost Time?

This will be the ninth troop I have led through Proust’s massive work. Please be assured that registering for the first volume does NOT commit you to continuing, but even though completing the entire cycle with us involves two and a half years of reading together, most people do choose to stay the course (some might say become addicted) and find the work immensely satisfying.

For myself, I would say simply that my time in Proust has changed the way I understand my relationship to the world of art and experience. Here is how one salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”

SALON DETAILS

Nine week virtual study starting 17 September (N.B. no meetings on 1 and 8 October), for first time readers of In Search of Lost Time. Please note that we sometimes offer a ‘second time around’ study for those who have already completed their first encounter with Proust’s work, please email us if this is of interest.

Wednesdays 3.00 pm-5.00 pm (UK)

Facilitated by Salon Director, Toby Brothers

Cost £300 (includes notes and critical resources)

Recommended edition: In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 978-0141180311

A little background and encouragement:

Proust’s writing requires a wide-awake mind as the reader is drawn into dissecting the world as it is experienced and the way our minds decorate and create memories, values and paradigms of understanding. This sounds so dry, but the wonder is how deeply sensual Proust’s work is — he is most concerned with the experience of intimacy and how this dance between two beings is fractured and reimagined through the lens of perception.

Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although we may be tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.

A comment from a previous Proust participant:

” . . . brilliant, frustrating, revealing, engrossing and I am part of what has become a special community of equally frustrated and hugely encouraging students of different ages and backgrounds. Guided by Toby we are full of insights and laughter. We read aloud and discuss the week’s reading. Time flies, brains feel rejuvenated and the weeks go by much more speedily with the Salon to look forward to. Encouragement is key, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinions. In fact the best thing about the Salon is that we all feel valued. What’s not to love!”

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

Learn More

Time

17 September 2025 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm(GMT+00:00)

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Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

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Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

24September 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm15October 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm22October 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm29October 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm5November 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm12November 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm19November 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm26November 20253:00 pm - 5:00 pm

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wed17sep5:30 pmwed7:30 pmVolume 1 of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time: The Way by Swann's (evening)5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT+01:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyLiteratureDurationNine weeksVIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Event Details

Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Marcel Proust

Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted, or wondered what could possibly take any writer more than three thousand pages and six or seven volumes to say?

SALON DETAILS

Nine week virtual study starting 17 September (N.B. no meetings on 1 and 8 October) for first time readers of In Search of Lost Time. Please note that we sometimes offer a ‘second time around’ study for those who have already completed their first encounter with Proust’s work, please email us if this is of interest.

Wednesdays 5.30 pm-7.30 pm (UK)

Facilitated by Salon Director, Toby Brothers

Cost £300 (includes notes and critical resources)

Recommended edition: In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 978-0141180311

A little background and encouragement:

A comment from a previous Proust participant:

” . . . brilliant, frustrating, revealing, engrossing and I am part of what has become a special community of equally frustrated and hugely encouraging students of different ages and backgrounds. Guided by Toby we are full of insights and laughter. We read aloud and discuss the week’s reading. Time flies, brains feel rejuvenated and the weeks go by much more speedily with the Salon to look forward to. Encouragement is key, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ opinions. In fact the best thing about the Salon is that we all feel valued. What’s not to love!”

Organizer

Toby Brothers

Salon Director

Learn More

Time

17 September 2025 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT+00:00)

View in my time

Location

VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM

Other Events

Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series

24September 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm15October 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm22October 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm29October 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm5November 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm12November 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm19November 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm26November 20255:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Book this Salon

Enquire before you buy

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BBC Radio 4 – Start the Week, 10 January 2022 Finding consolation and community in reading

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BBC Radio 4 – Start the Week, 10 January 2022

Finding consolation and community in reading