Nicky Mayhew

On 17 July Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film of The Odyssey finally reaches cinema screens, and on 19 July The London Literary Salon is doing something a little different!

Where Nolan has Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, our own tribute to The Odyssey features Toby Brothers and Jane Wymark with special guests from the Salon community. No cast of thousands and no CGI, but together we will perform key passages from Homer’s epic in The Odyssey Live! spoken aloud, as Homer intended.

“We’re excited to see what Christopher Nolan has done with this 3,000-year-old tale, but we’re celebrating the origins of The Odyssey as part of an oral tradition, to be spoken live to an audience. That’s what we’re setting out to recreate!”

Toby Brothers

Most Salonistas already know that Homer’s epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are at the core of our collective cultural heritage. These are the original models for how we make sense of our lives through narrative. Even if you have not read the works themselves, if you have seen Star Wars or read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, if you have watched Ridley Scott’s Gladiator or immersed yourself in the world of Harry Potter, you have glimpsed them in the background.

The story of how we define ourselves against our enemies (who turn out to be not so different from ourselves). The story of the struggle to return home (both literally and metaphorically). These are stories that don’t just shape other narratives, but also how we understand ourselves. Three thousand years after creating these works, Homer’s vision still inspires us and clarifies the essence of what it means to be human. 

The Odyssey Live! at Theatro Technis will hark back to these origins, offering the experience of seeing and hearing the words spoken aloud, just as the Greeks of Homer’s time would have done. Whether or not you already know the poetry, we aim to bring to life the beauty of the language and highlight themes that are as relevant today as they were in the 8th century BCE.

We will touch on the guest-host relationship, the struggle to reach home, the challenge of the soldier’s return, the difference between the inner and outer self, the shape of leadership, how we learn from encountering cultures different from our own, the press of the gods against human agency . . . all live issues in 2026!

Join us for our one and only performance of The Odyssey Live! at Camden’s Theatro Technis (Crowndale Road, London NW1 1TT). Tickets are available from the theatre box office with an earlybird booking discount until 30 June!

Inspired by the British Museum’s exhibition Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, Sean Forester – San Francisco-based artist and lecturer – has devised for us Hiroshige & Japanese Art, a study exploring the unique art and aesthetics of Japan and how a direct line can be drawn between the work on display and that of the French Impressionists. Born in 1797, as Japan was just beginning to emerge from the long isolation of the Edo period (1603-1868), Utagawa Hiroshige was an artist whose enormous body of work captured the people, life, landscape and nature of the country in vivid and compelling detail.

Over five meetings Sean will examine the hugely influential art and culture of Japan from the Heinan period to the Edo, looking not just at the work of master artists and printmakers, but also considering the significance of Zen temples and gardens, ceramics, tea ceremonies, haiku poetry, calligraphy, woodblock prints, and dress (kimonos and netsuke).

” . . . one cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming merrier and happier, and we should turn back to nature in spite of our education and our work in a conventional world . . .

“I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity of everything in their work. It is never dull and it never seems to be done in too much of a hurry. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as easy as doing up your waistcoat.”

Vincent van Gogh, writing to Theo van Gogh, September 1888

“If you absolutely must … find an affiliation for me, put me with the Japanese of old: the refinement of their taste has always appealed to me, and I approve of the suggestions of their aesthetic, which evokes the presence by the shadow, the whole by the fragment.”

Claude Monet, 1909

The British Museum exhibition continues until 7 September (although it is currently closed until 4 July as they refresh the display). If you have not already visited then this Guardian review – “I could look forever at these passing moments in cosmic colours” – may tempt you, and there is more to read about the Japanese influence on Impressionism in this article in The Collector magazine.

Participants in the study can join Sean on an informal visit to the exhibition on Thursday 4 September. Buy your own ticket and meet inside the British Museum at the entrance to the Hiroshige exhibition at 12.00 noon (please email to let us know you are coming).