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Reading Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts in Alfriston

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For this, our fourth year of offering Salon studies in Alfriston, Karina and I have chosen Between the Acts  as the basis of our second four-day long weekend spent in the East Sussex countryside – near Woolf’s beloved Monk’s House and Vanessa Bell’s Charleston – which offers the luxury of full immersion in a complex and lush book with a dynamic group of fellow explorers.

In this book, Virginia Woolf’s lyric prose and gorgeous vision combine to consider the sense of exhaustion that punctuated the Modernist period leading up to the Second World War. Edward Mendelson describes the book: “Everything comes to an end in Between the Acts, and then, as the book itself comes to an end, something unknowable begins.” The book includes a pageant composed of imaginary episodes from 1000 years of English history, and a close examination of the intricacies of village life in pre-war England. As always, it is Woolf’s penetrating consideration of intimate relationships and the places where language fails—but something else transcends—that lift this work from “the doom of sudden death hanging over us” as one of her characters describes.

Our sessions are conducted in the Lodge at the Wingrove House Hotel, a beautiful space in which to delve into the intricacies of language and ideas, with Alfriston Green in the background beckoning us outside. Might we create our own Pageant using Miss La Trobe’s script? We might! And we have on hand the brilliant Janet Minichiello as our creative project coordinator; Janet is working on a Book Art Project with local bookshop Much Ado Books that will give participants an opportunity to create a material response to the text.

In addition to exploring Woolf’s writing, there are opportunities for early morning dips in the sea at Eastbourne, walking to the beautiful Berwick Church (which features Vanessa’s murals), and a trip to either Monk’s House or Charleston. Wingrove House offers stylish and comfortable accommodation with a grand breakfast spread that prepares us for each day of discussions, reading, discoveries and adventures. There are a few places remaining for this study, do join us! 

N.B. Our first Alfriston study focuses on Flush, one of Woolf’s more playful creations that voices the relationship between a spaniel and his owner, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Combined with a reading of Woolf’s satirical play Freshwater, this four-day weekend (9-12 April) will also include a creative project and local adventures, as well as an invigorated discussion about the dynamic between animals and humans. We have a place reserved for the resident London Literary Salon spaniel (pictured above), who also plans to be present for the study.

Click on the links below for full information on the studies in Alfriston:

Flush & Freshwater (9-12 April)

Between the Acts (16-19 April)

Campaign to protect views immortalised in Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’

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Within the Salon community we count many devotees of the writing of Virginia Woolf and every year we offer a number of studies focusing on her work, some online and others based in some of the places she loved. This autumn we will run the seventh in our series of Virginia Woolf travel studies in the Cornish seaside town and fishing port of St Ives, where we will read two of her most celebrated novels: To the Lighthouse and The Waves.

Although these books are fiction, each one – as well as a third novel, Jacob’s Room – features vivid descriptions of the gorgeous views across St Ives Bay from Talland House, the childhood summer home for Woolf (then Virginia Stephen) and her family, looking out to Godrevy Lighthouse. The house was of enormous importance to Woolf, acknowledged worldwide as one of the foremost writers of the twentieth century, who wrote about it repeatedly in her memoirs, diaries and novels. According to her biographer, Hermione Lee, “Happiness is always measured for her against the memory of being a child in that house.”

Now the views of the sweeping seascape from the privately owned Grade II listed Talland House are under threat from construction of a block of twelve flats on a site below its grounds. Planning permission for the development was granted in 2009, but building works have only begun in recent weeks and the developers are now seeking permission from Cornwall Council to increase the height of the building, claiming that the overall scale and mass will remain “broadly the same”. As the council considers the application they face fierce opposition from Woolf enthusiasts – readers, writers and cultural historians – locally, nationally and internationally, many of whom have left passionate objections on Cornwall’s planning portal.

Opposition to the development is spearheaded by locally based heritage horticulturalist Polly Carter, who many Salon participants will know from her generous and knowledgeable contributions to our studies in Cornwall. Polly, who is developing the gardens at Talland House with plantings referenced in Woolf’s writings, is working alongside the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain to mobilise Woolf fans worldwide, including prominent scholars, authors and artists, to join local residents in campaigning to reject the developer’s current proposal and revoke the original planning permission.

Talland House and its history, together with Tate St Ives and the Hepworth Sculpture Garden form a significant part of Cornwall’s cultural heritage, attracting visitors from around the world. Best-selling local author Patrick Gale described the development as a “preposterous piece of cultural vandalism”, while our own Toby Brothers observes “the site for this proposed development is not only a national treasure; it is a global one. Thousands of people visit Talland House and its surroundings every year to experience the place where Virginia Woolf spent her youth and which inspired one of the most classical works of the twentieth century. This project would destroy an important part of British – and world – heritage. A building project of this nature benefits only a few – namely the owners – and disadvantages all who are drawn to it from near and far.”

According to the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain “The association of Woolf with Talland House is one of the UK’s major literary/house associations, akin to Charles Dickens with Doughty Street and similarly visited by hundreds of tourists. It would be cultural vandalism to destroy the view of Godrevy Lighthouse from Talland House.”

Find out more about this story on the BBC News website.

You can view comments about the development proposals and, if you feel strongly about this, add your own comment on the Cornwall Council Planning Portal (you will need to give a UK postcode).

If you wish to comment from outside the UK you can click on the same Cornwall Council Planning Portal link and use the postcode for Talland House: TR26 2EH

In appreciation of Wendy Steavenson (19 February 1941 – 30 December 2025)

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I am very sad to announce that Wendy Steavenson — valued Salonista and graceful hostess of some memorable Salon gatherings — died peacefully in her sleep just after Christmas. Those who knew Wendy, or who did studies with her, will remember her as a strong voice of wit, intelligence and humour. She was also incredibly generous — with her words, her appreciation, her offerings to the Salon community — and her passion for art was reflected in her work in the Salon. 

Last year, Wendy joined The Sound and Fury Salon facilitated by myself and John Allemand. She threw herself into the challenging text, in spite of her struggles with both the narrative experimentation and Faulkner’s purpose.  In one of her emphatic emails she asked me: ‘Why would he choose to write about such terrible people?’  I pushed back, trying to explain the importance of understanding the evil nature of the human spirit as well as the good, arguing for Faulkner’s deep compassion for all people in the face of the tragedy of American Southern culture. I think Wendy’s question speaks to her desire always to see the best in people, and her resistance to the ugly things that humans can do to each other.

I will miss her. I will miss her courage to speak up when she did not understand or accept a premise we were floating. I will miss her advocacy for others, and her energy in bringing everyone along to the beautiful things in the world.

Appreciation from fellow Salonistas:

‘I made a brilliant friend at a stage in life when we don’t usually make them. Pure happenstance, which is a wonderful part of the Salon. Yes, Wendy was demanding and outspoken, but she was incredibly generous and a great hostess with enormous style. We were from different worlds but had many things in common — chicken soup being one of them! Wendy was a superlative cook.  Everything was joyous and perfect. She made a party for the Proust group and gave everyone gift-wrapped madeleines. Only Wendy would have come up with that! She was so courageous over serious illness and surgery a couple of years ago. Always up for lunch with me and Diana, always beautifully dressed “Armani, decades old” she said once! Edwin got on so well with Wendy and he too is very sad to think we won’t see her again.

Wendy spoke her mind. Not always agreeably, but we admired her consistency and occasional delicious gossip. Last year our older son was incredibly ill. Wendy phoned constantly to see how he was doing (miraculously, twelve months on he is fabulous again, but it was a very tough and long battle).  We will miss her style, wit, intelligence and irrepressible get up and go when it came to celebrating and having fun. She was absolutely unique and I feel it was a privilege to know her. She was also so proud of her brilliant daughter Wendell, a prize-winning journalist and writer to whom we feel close and who will continue to help us remember her extraordinary mother.’

Sue Fox

‘Wendy and I sang Gershwin songs together and enjoyed happy lunches for more than twenty years.

We supported and comforted each other throughout the last months of the lives of our dear husbands: David and Peter.

I am happy she knew you, darling Toby and got to know Proust because of you.

She endured the most dreadful illness without complaint and with huge courage.

I will miss her massively.’

Annie Frankel

Hamlet & Antonio’s Revenge: Mirrors of Moral Chaos

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Shakespeare’s Hamlet so dominates the English Renaissance revenge tragedy tradition that most modern audiences struggle even to name another revenge drama, especially by a different playwright of the same era. Yet, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge also form crucial parts of the same tradition, showing how playwrights of the late Elizabethan period wrestled with questions of justice and morality as they expanded the genre’s conventions. All three also engage in delightful metatheatrical banter, sometimes with each other and sometimes with a possibly lost play now called the Ur-Hamlet, which scholars would give much to unearth.

At the London Literary Salon, we have frequently offered studies of Hamlet, and last year we also offered a study of The Spanish Tragedy. In January 2026, we are offering John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, which I like to call ‘Hamlet on hallucinogens and performed by children’ (in this case, a theatrical troupe called The Children of Paul’s). I have also described it as ‘Hamlet like you have never seen it before’, and comparing Hamlet with Antonio’s Revenge reveals strong resonances in structure and theme, but also key differences in tone and philosophical depth. These differences illuminate both Shakespeare’s and Marston’s distinct styles, while also showcasing their shared anxieties of the theatrical world.

As revenge tragedies, Hamlet and Antonio’s Revenge have striking similarities. For instance, each begins with the death of a father and a son’s obligation to avenge that death. In both plays, the ghost of the murdered man returns to demand vengeance: Hamlet’s father’s ghost calls upon him to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,” just as the ghost of Andrugio in Marston’s play commands Antonio to “revenge thy father.”  

But the differences between the plays are more fascinating than their likenesses. Antonio is a muscular revenger, one who is profoundly physical and unapologetically outraged at his father’s fate. Action drives this play from the outset. It opens on the grotesque and sensational, and it stays there. Antonio’s path is marked by theatrical excess, and disguises, madmen, poisoned swords and grisly murders abound. Where Hamlet is haunted by doubt, Antonio is consumed by fury. His vengeance is brutal and unrestrained, leaving little room for reflection.

The similarities and differences in language are equally fascinating. Shakespeare’s verse is psychologically rich, moving between the colloquial and the poetic to reveal subtle layers of emotion. Marston’s language is darker, harsher, and more ornate, brimming with cynicism. His characters seem to speak in and represent moral absolutes, while Shakespeare’s figures inhabit complexities and nuance. Marston’s world is a nightmare of vice and corruption; Shakespeare’s Denmark is a decaying court that still contains the possibility of meaning.

Reading plays by his contemporaries allows us to see Shakespeare not as a solitary genius but as part of a lively, competitive and collaborative theatrical culture. His plays contribute to a vibrant ecosystem of dramatists – Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Marston, Webster, and so on – all interrogating the same fascinating impulses of a golden age.

Julie Sutherland‘s six-week study Antonio’s Revenge by John Marston: Hamlet Like You’ve Never Seen It Before begins on 7 January 2026.

Proust & the Art of the Belle Epoque – The Salon in Paris in September 2025

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As we climbed the grand staircase in the Opera Garnier, Melanie turned to me and said, “Can’t you just see the ball gowns and hear silk gliding over marble?” Yes — for a moment we were swept back to Proust’s Belle Epoque . . .

L’escalier de l’opera Garnier, painting by Louis Béroud, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; photograph by
Benh LIEU SONG, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; photograph of ceiling by Melanie Simons

“When good Americans die they go to Paris,” Oscar Wilde quipped. I guess I’ve been good, because I just enjoyed a week in Paris with a convivial group of salonistas: a week of absorbing beauty, of learning and discovery, of good company and delicious food. Whether it was standing in front of Baudelaire’s grave while Olivier recited “Correspondences”  or relaxing in the actual bed where Proust wrote À la recherche du temps perdu (Okay, I couldn’t get onto the bed, but I was less than five feet away), it felt like a journey back to another era.

Proust and 19th-Century French art — this study affirmed the London Literary Salon’s tradition of literary travel and took us in a new direction: museum visits and discussions of painting and sculpture. 

As we gathered around four versions of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral and reflected on the colours, sense of focus, and contrast between light and shade, we began to enter (just a little way) into the artistic process, and found parallels to Proust’s writing. 

Similarly, we looked at three paintings of ballet dancers by Degas — one early, one middle, and one late in his career — enabling us to follow his artistic path and see changes in his use of line, colour, and composition.

Degas paintings of ballet dancers from the Musée d’Orsay collection: left to right 1874, 1886, 1890

And finally, in the Rodin Museum we compared the powerful sculptures of Rodin and Claudel, each with a unique and expressive vision. 

The beautiful art we saw in Paris, the variety of styles and artistic visions we experienced in the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay are illuminated by Proust when he writes:

“for style for the writer no less than colour for the painter is a question not of technique but of vision . . . Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.” 

Ahead of the study I produced Padlet presentations of the art of Paris and the period to share with participants and, once we were there, I asked everyone to pick a favourite artwork we had seen. I then showed the paintings on a digital projector in our hotel as each person shared with the group what they found inspiring. It was a joy for me to see moments of discovery, to see people connect with art emotionally and intellectually. A wonderful aspect of the Salon community is how people bring their ideas and life experiences to the table to share with the group. As an example, David gave a presentation on Schopenhauer’s philosophy and how it connects with Proust’s writing that added extra depth to our discussions. 

In addition to the inspiring art, there was tasty food and good company: we had memorable meals and conversations, and the beginnings of new friendships. Gargouille and Brigitte restaurants were highlights for me. At Gargouille we had our own private room, where we were served multiple courses of small plates. I’d describe the food as modern Mediterranean, and I enjoyed the variety of spices and herbs. Toby reunited with a few of the original members of the Paris Salon, who shared with us their memories of literary discussions and told us what it was like to live in Paris full time. Brigitte is a traditional French bistro with a lovely old wooden bar and wood-panelled walls; the quality of food and service was high, and we enjoyed their catch of the day and more than a few glasses of wine. Our museum lunches were also memorable, from the cafe beneath the enormous clock in the Orsay, to Rodin’s garden, to the Louvre’s Café Mollien. Although, to be honest, after wandering endless corridors in the Louvre, any refreshment would have been welcome.  

We were mostly fortunate with weather and strolled through Paris’s green spaces enjoying their sculptures and flowers. We visited Parc Monceau, the Tuileries, and walked along the Seine to the restored Notre Dame Cathedral and Shakespeare and Co bookstore. I return to Wilde’s observation: Paris is a bit like heaven, at least for an American like me.

Sean Forester and Salonista Denise Heebink in the restaurant at the Musée d’Orsay

Why read W.G. Sebald?

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When W. G. Sebald died in 2001 his status as the pre-eminent European author of his generation was at its height. For Susan Sontag, he represented rare proof that ‘literary greatness is still possible’, and he was widely tipped for the Nobel Prize. Part of his appeal was that, appearing at the end of the 20th century, his prose fictions memorialised the victims of that century and helped us to understand the impact of its horrors and vicissitudes.

A quarter of a century on, why read – or re-read – Sebald today? There has been an increasing othering of people in the current political and social climate around refugees and asylum seekers. As Rowan Williams wrote in a recent Guardian piece, ‘To speak as though these people are anything other than ordinary is to reinforce the violence they have already experienced, the refusal to see them humanly.’  Sebald can help us find the antidote to this lack of understanding and humanity. In a different context, but one with universal applications, Sebald sought an empathic connection with the victims of 20th century history, the displaced and the deracinated. His unique literary project found new ways to establish a personal connection – through his listening narrator-figure, his ‘bricolage’-like combination of multiple sources, his haunting use of photographs, and his determination to let people speak for themselves. As a member of the generation of Germans who grew up in the shadow of World War II, Sebald’s key insight came when he came face to face with his first Jewish victim of the Holocaust in the 1960s, which he later expressed as Truth can only really be grasped through the encounter with real individual persons. Sebald found ways to stage this encounter in literature of profound beauty and insight.

Join us in a reading of The Emigrants (1993) this autumn to explore Sebald’s achievement in depth.

Reading James Joyce with the LitSalon

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Portrait of James Joyce by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1934, National Gallery of Ireland, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

At the Salon we are huge admirers of James Joyce. For a long time we have featured at least one study of Ulysses every year, as well as – at various times – explorations of the arguably more accessible Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, as well as the often bafflingly inventive Finnegan’s Wake. In all of these works Joyce shows us why he is so widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and influential writers of the twentieth (or any) century.

In January 2026 Toby will again lead a group of keen readers through the twenty-one meetings that follow Leopold Bloom’s Odyssean progress through Joyce’s native city of Dublin towards its concluding episode: Molly Bloom’s erotic and heartfelt soliloquy that touches on love, sex, marriage, desire, loss and so much more . . . Tackling Ulysses alone can seem like hard work, many stumble and fall in the early pages, but reading it as part of an engaged and curious group makes it so much easier and, believe it or not, great fun (Joyce IS a funny writer). As one Salonista explains: “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 . . . 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.“

This autumn, as a prelude to reading Ulysses, we are offering a study focusing on the brilliantly illuminating short stories in Dubliners. The fifteen stories in the collection, first published in 1914, remain fresh and vivid more than a hundred years later. They serve as a seductive gateway for readers new to Joyce’s writing: some of the characters and much of the atmosphere portrayed reappear in Ulysses, albeit realised in a completely different and innovative literary style. As the title implies, the stories are particular to a time and place, yet in our very different twenty-first century world the characters – their emotions, the experiences hopes and disappointments that shape them – are universally recognisable as human, evoked by a humane and clear-eyed writer of genius.

Our next Dubliners study will be led by Karina Jakubowicz, who many Salon regulars will know best for her expertise on Virginia Woolf (she is, amongst other things, creator of both The Virginia Woolf Podcast for Literature Cambridge and the Woolf in the World Substack). As a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a particular interest in modernism and modernist representations of space and place, Karina is ideally placed to introduce this extraordinary work.

Dubliners, with eight weekly two-hour sessions, runs from 16 September – 4 November 2025.

Ulysses, twenty-one two-hour meetings, will run from 13 January – 16 June 2026.

The enduring legacy of Japanese art

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Plum Garden in Kameido, woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Pheasant with Chrysanthemums, woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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).  

Why it’s time to read Pessoa!

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Photograph of monument to Fernando Pessoa in front of cafe “A Brasileira” in Lisbon by Nol Aders, via Wikimedia Commons

If you are Pessoa curious, now is the time to read him. Let me explain why.

The name Pessoa means person. It is related to ‘persona’ which has an etymological connection to ‘mask.’ One of the things that Pessoa’s work does for us is to put pressure on our understanding and to make us think about the nature of the self and identity. His work seems to show that the self is not necessarily a unity, but can be multiple.

Pessoa is not just one, but several unique voices in European modernist literature. Contemporaneous with Joyce and Proust, Pessoa’s unique literary universe is simultaneously intriguing and exciting, illuminating, humorous and unsettling. In our upcoming introductory study we will meet Álvaro de Campos, futurist Whitmanesque poet, Ricardo Reis the stoical neo-pagan classicist, Pessoa the experimental modernist, and Alberto Caeiro, their master, the almost anti-poet (for whom metaphor itself is an anathema), along with Bernardo Soares, the Lisbon book keeper and author of The Book of Disquiet. All these identities resided within one individual.

So, what can we get from reading Pessoa in 2025?

Pessoa’s work is above all a deep exploration of identity – indeed, it is in many ways a shattering of it, of the idea of the single, stable self. Pessoa fascinates because of the method of self replication, represented by his heteronymous writing.

With Pessoa there is a lot to take in. In a group study we can grapple together with the meanings and implications of this unusual group of authors: is this an elaborate literary hoax? What does it mean that one of the heteronyms denied that Pessoa exists? What does it mean that another of the heteronyms, Bernardo Soares, gave to Pessoa, one evening in a restaurant where the two regularly dined, a bundle of papers, journals and aphorisms, philosophical musings and thoughts and dreams, which was to become The Book of Disquiet?

Pessoa lived through a time of incredible political turmoil to which he both did and did not remain immune. To read Pessoa’s many personas – his heteronyms – is to come to terms with a complex coexistence of different philosophies, world views and aesthetic sensibilities. Pessoa was an experimenter and an innovator, perhaps a revolutionary. As such he produced some of the most astonishing and unique writing of his age that continues to speak to our lives today.

Our six week Introduction to Fernando Pessoa begins on Tuesday 13 May (12.00 noon – 2.00 pm BST). If you are interested but uncertain about joining the study please email us and we will arrange for you to try the first session without charge!

Return to The Odyssey

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In interesting news for lovers of The Odyssey, cinema seems to have caught the Homeric bug, with not one but two major films on the way.

In May, Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche will star in The Return. Director Umberto Pasolini tells the story of the final books set in Ithaca, thereby eliminating the need for special effects, monsters and turning his actors into pigs. Given that the glorious stop-motion visual effects produced by Ray Harryhausen for the 1963 epic Jason and the Argonauts made that the definitive visual version for so many, it may be wise to tell the story on screen as a purely human struggle (there is no Athena in the cast list, so there won’t even be an appearance by the goddess).

Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan is also working on a film version of The Odyssey with a release date in 2026. Cast members are being announced as I write, and it will be interesting to see how the director of The Dark Knight, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer tackles the challenges of bringing this foundational epic story to life. 

The idea that there is no one way to experience or connect with The Odyssey is again in my mind as Toby, Jane  and I start to prepare for our fifth trip to the small island of Agistri. Even though this will be our fourth time tackling The Odyssey in this unique setting, I don’t have the feeling of returning to a familiar groove. Each morning on Agistri I walk out to a headland to watch the sunrise, and I have never had the same walk twice: every day there is something new or different that catches my notice. Similarly, our subject may be the same but, as no two groups are alike, the discussion will always be as individual as the colours of the sunrise or the number of alpine swifts that swoop to catch insects as the heat warms the cliffs. 

From ancient times, Homer has been praised for his vividness. As readers we can see, hear and feel every corner of his world. So we have not just the sweep of the narrative and the big themes of honour, hospitality and homecoming, but the texture and details of life – and it’s those details, impossible to absorb all at once, that for me make repeated readings so satisfying.

In the past, some participants have come to the study via the novel Ulysses, seeking a deeper understanding of the origins of James Joyce’s masterpiece. And this idea of The Odyssey as a deep well that has nourished and inspired writers since its beginning is central to our work with the text. I bring with me to the island a series of Odyssey poems written over time, by poets from Sappho to Terrance Hayes who, like other readers of The Odyssey, have found many ways to dip into the source and find something that they can make their own. Sharing these poems with the group opens up the text, bringing it into focus in our daily lives.   

Our study space on Agistri is open to the calm waters of the Saronic Gulf and part of the rhythm of the day is watching the boats arrive and leave from Skala port, every type of vessel from car ferries to sailboats chartered for a day trip to the island. To me they are all beautiful – at least as we watch from a distance – and it’s Tennyson that I recite most often to myself as one of them leaves the dock and glides silently away from us:

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: 

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, 

Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me— 

That ever with a frolic welcome took 

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed 

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; 

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; 

Death closes all: but something ere the end, 

Some work of noble note, may yet be done, 

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: 

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep 

Moans round with many voices.

I am looking forward to sharing these experiences and more with another group of enthusiastic readers in the warm embrace of Agistri and the Greek sunshine.

Our 2025 Odyssey study on Agistri runs from 28 April to 5 May, there are still places available if you are interested in joining us.

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