We are currently planning our fifth visit to the enchanting island of Agistri on the Saronic Gulf to read the classical literature of Greece and Rome. In 2026 we will study Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, reading these extraordinary and enduring works in the midst of a land and seascape that can only enhance the experience. Check out our ‘Gallery’ page to see photos from our 2025 studies on the island.

As with the Odyssey, the Oresteia and Euripides’ Trojan Women, the story of the Aeneid starts with the fall of Troy and its aftermath. However, unlike these earlier works, the Aeneid – written between 30 and 19 BC – belongs to a different language and to the Roman Empire.  Escaping the burning city, Aeneas travels across the Mediterranean and ultimately to Italy, where his descendants will go on to found the city of Rome. In continuing the story of Aeneas, Virgil created a foundational myth so profound and enduring that when Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, he chose the poet to be his first guide to the afterlife.

The opening books of the poem contain the full story that Homer did not give us: the clanging of the Greek warriors inside the wooden horse, the anger of the decimated Trojans turned against Helen as the city collapses around them, the vision of Aeneus – son of Venus – leading his own son by the hand and carrying his father on his back as he flees.

In the figure of Aeneas, we find both the survivor of a city lost to war and the leader of a colonising force, prompting us to ask questions about identity and nationhood that continue to resonate in our own time.  How do we justify the indifference of power? How can we guarantee that force is used responsibly? Virgil shows us how fine is the line between mastery and brutality. The Aeneid is a masterpiece of epic poetry, full of beautiful language that transports us to the world of the Aegean and beyond.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven-day study of Virgil’s Aeneid on the island of Agistri: 30 April – 7 May 2026
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Caroline Hammond and Jane Wymark
• Cost: £880 for the Salon study, to include a preparatory meeting in April (on 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 The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, ISBN: 9780143105138.
• Payment: we ask for an initial (non-returnable) deposit of £50 on registration to secure your place using the booking form below. The balance of £830 will be payable by bank transfer (we will supply bank details), due by 31 January 2026.
• 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.
• Waiting list: if the study sells out early we will maintain a waiting list as we sometimes find that people have to withdraw for reasons beyond their control.

BOOKING & ENQUIRIES

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Agistri 2026 – Odyssey’ as the subject line.

ADDITIONAL COSTS TO BUDGET FOR

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 on booking. 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 – are estimated below on the basis of figures available in July 2025 but may be subect to change:

• Single – €80 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per day
• Double – €90 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 – €100 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 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.

We are currently planning our fifth visit to the enchanting island of Agistri on the Saronic Gulf to read the classical literature of Greece and Rome. We will study Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, reading these extraordinary and enduring works in the midst of a land and seascape that can only enhance the experience. Check out our ‘Gallery’ page to see photos from our 2025 studies on the island.

In May 2026, we’ll be returning to our Greek home-from-home for the fifth year running, to study Homer’s Odyssey for one week. The Odyssey is a meditation on identity, homecoming and finding your place in the world. Full of complex relationships and people – including a wealth of female characters – the work considers the guest-host relationship and how we interact with difference. The story is also a collection of thrilling adventures featuring our ‘hero’ pitted against fantastical monsters, seductive sorcerers and the forces of nature. 

This year sees the publication of an extraordinary new translation of The Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn. This work is notable for the precision and care that Mendelsohn brings to his word choice and meter when translating the original Greek in order to maintain the subtlety, richness and nuance of the original.

Homer’s works form the foundation of Western civilisation, and their influence is still current in the modern world so, even on a first read, the characters, themes and events can feel familiar. While both works stand alone, if you’ve read the Iliad, you’ll find references to its themes and characters and endings for the stories of many of the key players. On the island, we’ll be reading Homer in the land where it was written and performed, and where the setting reflects and illuminates the beauty of the language and themes. Each year we find that studying as part of a residential group creates new, rich understandings and connections with both the work and each other. 

This will be the third time we embark on reading the vivid and gripping Odyssey on Agistri. Our 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.Facilitators for the study are Salon Director, Toby Brothers, together with Alison Cable and Susanna Taggart. Susanna, who combines her love of Ancient Greek literature with professional life as a clinical psychologist, will bring to the discussion thoughts about the psychological challenges of post-combat living for returning soldiers, their loved ones and communities. 

As a complement to the textual study, writer and facilitator Alison Cable will lead creative writing and off-loom weaving sessions inspired by Penelope, who weaves both as duty and as an act of quiet resistance. Participants will be invited to engage with The Odyssey in a layered, playful way—through hands-on, intuitive making with fibre, found materials and words. Writing will be sparked by poetry responding to The Odyssey and by Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad, which gives Penelope her own voice—not just as the faithful wife, but as a subtle subversive, spinning her version of events. Between the textual study, the weaving, the poetry and the retelling, we’ll have rich material to draw from when we put pen to paper ourselves.

The venue we have chosen for our stay on the beautiful and quiet island of Agistri is a small family-run hotel that is easily accessible (just one hour by ferry from Athens). It provides the perfect setting for our study, offering a relaxing atmosphere, excellent food and opportunities for additional cultural and recreational activities. As one former participant said: “The beauty and pleasure of the surroundings soothed my soul, leaving me feeling refreshed and connected to the literature and the group in ways I couldn’t have experienced at home.” Do come and join us!

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven-day study of Homer’s Odyssey on the island of Agistri: 9-16 May 2026
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Alison Cable and Susanna Taggart
• Cost: £880 for the Salon study, to include a preparatory meeting in April (on 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 Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of The Odyssey (Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780241733585). Ian McKellen’s audio reading of Robert Fagles’ translation is also a great way to experience The Odyssey that we recommend as preparation for the study.
• Payment: we ask for an initial (non-returnable) deposit of £50 on registration to secure your place using the booking form below. The balance of £830 will be payable by bank transfer (we will supply bank details), due by 31 January 2026.
• 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.
• Waiting list: if the study sells out early we will maintain a waiting list as we sometimes find that people have to withdraw for reasons beyond their control.

BOOKING & ENQUIRIES

To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Agistri 2026 – Odyssey’ as the subject line.

ADDITIONAL COSTS TO BUDGET FOR

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 on booking. 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 – are estimated below on the basis of figures available in July 2025 but may be subect to change:

• Single – €80 per night plus half board (breakfast and dinner) estimated at €55 per day
• Double – €90 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 – €100 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 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.

Greek tragedy has a timeless quality. As Virginia Woolf writes in her essay On Not Knowing Greek, ‘the stable, the permanent, the original human being is to be found there. . . . In the Electra or the Antigone we are impressed . . . by heroism itself, by fidelity itself.’

Revenge, betrayal, lust, murder— but also courage, compassion, honour: Sophocles shows the heights and depths of human emotion. We are moved today by the tension between reason and emotion, fate and free will, law and individual conscience, just as people were in classical Athens.

This LitSalon study will go deep into the world of Sophocles as we read Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus.  And we will explore the philosophy of tragedy with Aristotle’s Poetics and A. C. Bradley’s essay Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven meeting live online study led by Sean Forester
• Sundays, 17 May – 28 June 2026, 4.00-6.00 pm (UK time)

  • 17  May –   Oedipus Rex
  • 24  May –   Oedipus, Aristotle’s Poetics
  • 31  May –   Antigone   
  • 7  June. –   Antigone, Hegel on Tragedy   
  • 14 June –   Philoctetes 
  • 21 June –   Oedipus at Colonus
  • 28 June –   Oedipus at Colonus, Tragic Painting and Sculpture

• £245 for seven meeting study on Zoom

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REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

“Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so many roundabout ways
To wander, driven off course, after sacking Troy’s hallowed keep; 
Many the peoples whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned,
Many the toils he suffered at sea, anguish in his heart 
As he struggled to safeguard his life and the homecoming of his companions.”

The opening lines of Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey

“This may be the best translation of The Odyssey yet.”
Edith Hall, The Telegraph

Following their twelve-week study of The Iliad, facilitators Susanna Taggart and Caroline Hammond will tackle The Odyssey in the same format, covering two books per session, allowing time to look at the text from many angles: its historical context, the debates surrounding its authorship, its literary and psychological subtexts and its enduring influence on modern culture in the English-speaking world and beyond. We will combine a close reading of the text and a wider focus, including poems and art inspired by the epic, consideration of the psychology of war and return, and images of museum exhibits.

Published in 2025, the celebrated author, critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn’s acclaimed translation has brought The Odyssey to new life. Readers have praised this line-for-line translation for capturing the epic’s formal qualities – meter, enjambment, alliteration and assonance to produce a work full of the beauty and music of the original as well as its archaic grandeur.

“The plot of The Odyssey is not long in the telling. A man has been away from home for many years. Poseidon is always on the watch for him; he is all alone. As for the situation at home, his goods are being laid waste by the Suitors, who plot against his son. After a storm-tossed journey, he returns home, where he reveals himself, destroys his enemies, and is saved.”

Aristotle, Poetics, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

Writers from Dante to James Joyce to Margaret Atwood have been inspired by the story of Odysseus and his quest to return home after ten years of war. In Homer’s telling, the world of Odysseus is both vast and intimate with the smallest details – from flowers growing outside Kalypso’s cave to the performance of everyday household tasks – rendered in vivid detail. It is a story that asks questions about what it means to be human, particularly when Odysseus has been stripped of the context that has previously defined him: he is a warrior whose war is long over, a leader who has lost all of his men, a father who has missed his son growing up and a husband lost to his wife. Join us to explore the complexity and difficulty of this central character and why the poem remains at the heart of our shared literary culture today.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Twelve two-hour meetings live on Zoom, led by Caroline Hammond and Susanna Taggart
• Tuesdays, 5.00 -7.00 pm (BST), 19 May – 4 August 2026
• Optional one-hour session for final reflections on Tuesday 11 August
• Recommended edition: The Odyssey: A New Translation by Daniel Mendelsohn, ISBN: 9780241733585. Please note, the paperback edition will be released on 23 April 2026.
•  £420 for twelve meetings with two facilitators, to include opening notes and resources.