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

Kazuo Ishiguro and the narrative of emotion

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Kazuo Ishiguro in the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the Swedish Academy’s press conference on December 6, 2017, photocredit: Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his ‘novels of great emotional force, [which have] uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world’ (in the words of the Nobel Committee).

As ever, the enigmatic Swedish judges failed to elaborate in any meaningful way on this statement. How exactly does Ishiguro achieve ‘great emotional force’ in such cool, dry, almost formal prose? What or where is this ‘abyss’?

One answer might lie in the way Ishiguro typically foregrounds the influence of the more ‘minor’ emotions on our lives. Literature has always explored the big emotions: love, hate, anger, jealousy, shame, sadness, pride. But what about our more ‘petty’, everyday feelings: the small embarrassments, boredoms, inconsequential anxieties, irrational resentments, uneasinesses and mood swings that, if we are honest, fill more of our inner lives than those grand, noble, more ‘consequential’ forces?

It is these that Ishiguro shows guiding the trajectories of his quietly suffering characters, whose lives follow paths unseen to them but gradually unveiled to us as readers. Think of the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day, shutting Miss Kenton out of their evening chats in a fit of pique over a misunderstanding, permanently losing the momentum of their growing intimacy and denying both of them a chance of happiness. Haven’t we all over-reacted and then found it impossible to reverse the consequences?   

And in his more experimental novels, Ishiguro allows such feelings to direct the narrative beyond realism and into what at first seem like dreams or surreal landscapes, but which could also be interpreted as the waking inner life of his characters. Consider the long sequence towards the end of When We Were Orphans, which sees the detective Christopher Banks working his way through an increasingly surreal war-torn city landscape, apparently accompanied by his long-lost childhood friend Akira. Has this incredible coincidence really occurred? Or is the endlessly multiplying series of barriers Ishiguro’s way of representing the labyrinths of Banks’ mind, where a childhood trauma has never been resolved – to the extent that the past is more real to him than the present?  Banks thinks continually of his parents (as does Ryder in The Unconsoled) in a way that is more childlike than adult: an irrational refusal to accept the possibility of their ageing and death. Does this perhaps persist in all of our minds, however much we think we’ve left the illusions of childhood behind?

The novel in which Ishiguro has most fully explored the potential of emotions to direct the narrative is The Unconsoled (which you can read with the LitSalon from this February). What we may uncover in our reading of this ‘difficult’ novel is that its impossible movements of time, place and relationship are directed not by the ‘plot’ but by the passing thoughts and feelings of its irritable, sleep-deprived, somewhat pompous musician-narrator. Yet these seemingly trivial, even tiresome interludes are gradually revealed to show something terribly sad, even tragic about this man’s fate (and indeed that of all the other men and women in the novel) in life: they are doomed (like all of us?) by their patterns of thought and emotion to remain forever unconsoled.

Lewis Ward will lead an eight-week study of The Unconsoled from 2 February – 23 March 2026.

Great literature – pain or pleasure?

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“I will run the risk of asserting, that where the reading of novels prevails as a habit, it occasions in time the entire destruction of the powers of the mind.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1856

“I snicker at the neologism [“graphic novel”] first for its insecure pretension — the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a ‘sanitation engineer.’ ” 

Daniel Raeburn (author and critic), 2010

Must great literature, by definition, be a slog? Difficult? Dense? Exclusive? Productive (of a more moral, dutiful, obedient citizenry)? And must literature that we readily absorb — that delights, entertains, challenges, changes or affirms us — be considered trash?

Coleridge railed against the novel in 1856, and he certainly wasn’t alone in his views at the time. (Though seriously, sir, if you think that this is the effect on your brain of Jane Eyre, what on earth do you think your opium habit is doing to your mind?) It’s no coincidence that Coleridge lost his cool the same year that Flaubert’s Madame Bovary emerged to great fanfare and an even greater outcry from the ‘Protectors of Morality & Art’. 

Why all this panic? What was the novel’s primary flaw in the eyes of its many detractors amongst clergy, social critics and traditional writers? What was the true source of alarm behind all their dark muttering about the decline of reason — and with it, Civilization with a capital “C”?

It was this: by the 19th century a variety of innovations and systemic shifts meant that everyday folks, including women and the burgeoning middle class, were reading for pleasure. 

Surely this cheapened Great Literature, which had previously been the exclusive purview of those sufficiently wealthy, privileged and educated to own and read poetry in Latin and Greek.  Surely pleasure challenged the social order by leading to the atrophy of moral character, intellectual rigour and the capacity for sustained thought? Surely the novel was a wicked thing because it stirred the imagination and made readers yearn for lives and circumstances different than their God-given lot (not to mention for more novels). 

What was the world coming to?

Now let’s consider the disdain Raeburn heaps on graphic novels in 2010, especially as I prepare to lead a study that opens with Alison Bechdel’s 2006 New York Times bestseller, Fun Home, a book which recalled Helen Vendler, the great poetry critic, telling our class at Boston University that “Every time a poet writes about a new place or topic, or brings a new identity to life, it’s like lighting up a part of the map.”

Could it be that Raeburn missed Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus? Serialized from 1980-91, it brought the atrocity of the Holocaust to life to an expanded readership and a new generation, long after most of the world had settled for blaming it all on one country, then turning its back. Maus also centred the topics of scapegoating, complicity and individual and collective responsibility for one another during a decade when then-United States President Reagan refused to speak the name of the virus that escalated dramatically on his watch, ultimately killing nearly 100,000 people, most of them men who had sex with men and injection drug users.

I guess I should mention that in my childhood the only two books my mother ever banned were comic books. First, the Fantastic Four because, she said, The Hulk’s grammar was so bad. And then, an underground comic called Wet Satin that featured women artists writing and drawing about sex. That one I never understood, given that I’d scooped up everything from the diaries of Anaïs Nin to Portnoy’s Complaint from the pile by her bedside.

But perhaps I absorbed some of my mother’s disdain for words with pictures. Because when I visited Alison Bechdel at home in Vermont while she was writing and drawing Fun Home (due to her connection to my then-wife, who was one of the early out lesbian cartoonists and an editor at DC Comics), I was surprised by her fastidiousness — and that of every other person I met during that time who was in some way involved in the comics industry. 

It was the beginning of my realising that graphic novelists aren’t just drawing stuff on the backs of napkins. They aren’t illiterate or careless, or just not smart enough to read without pictures. They are creating a new art form that strikes the central nervous system with the immediacy, depth and intimacy of the forms that preceded it. Photos of hands covered the wall of Alison’s study next to where she was drawing one sequence. Pictures of 60s-era clothing; painstaking attention to every historical detail. And novels everywhere!

Discover more about the power of graphic literature and contemporary memoir in Growing Up, Nancy Goldstein’s live online study exploring the 21st Century Bildungsroman, starting on 18 January 2026.

Lee Miller at the Tate: why it’s selling out fast!

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Tate Britain must be delighted by the popularity of their current Lee Miller photography exhibition (2 October-15 February). They also appear to have been caught off guard by it. 

At least, that’s my impression. By the time I first visited, just three weeks into the exhibition’s five-month run, all framed editions of the official poster were gone. Ditto for the members’ night exclusive intro. Tickets had sold out within hours of every Miller-related tour and lecture advertised.

Miller (1907-1977), who was accustomed to being underestimated, probably would have shrugged. Smart, gorgeous, intrepid and born half a century before a woman could even have a bank account in her own name, she seized her opportunities and persevered, learning early on to make use of the way people fixated on her beauty while underestimating her talent, ambition, and grit.

When photographer Edward Steichen, who helped launch her modelling career, then inadvertently killed it by selling images of her to an advertising agency that used them to promote Kotex sanitary towels, Miller left for Paris with a letter from Steichen introducing her to Man Ray. It was the beginning of her switching positions from being the object of the camera’s gaze to being the person behind the lens.

Miller became Man Ray’s apprentice, model and lover, learning all she could from him about photography while eagerly taking on the assignments he found too quotidian. Along the way she co-created a number of Surrealist works attributed to Man Ray, made the first artistic use of ‘solarisation’ (until now credited solely to Man Ray), and was an early booster of the then-unknown Joseph Cornell. She knew everyone, taking some portraits for herself and others for Vogue of celebrities including Picasso, Colette, Charlie Chaplin, Dora Carrington, Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Joan Miró, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Fred Astaire and Marlene Dietrich.

When Miller became one of only four women officially accredited to cover the major events of World War II, she combined fearsome forensic and aesthetic skills with exquisite darkroom technique. First as a war correspondent for the Associated Press, and then for Vogue, Miller shared her front-row view of the Blitz while documenting the vast new contributions of women to the war effort.

When Miller was sent to cover the alleged liberation of Saint-Malo, only to find the city still under heavy siege, she defied the prohibition against women correspondents in combat zones and spent nearly a week alone, documenting the violent fighting, the civilian suffering and the first recorded use of napalm (on the city’s citadel). She developed her pictures in a deserted half-destroyed pharmacy. Later, while under house arrest for defying the terms of her accreditation, she assembled the photos and wrote the text for the article she then sold to Vogue.

When the German surrender came, days later, Miller was staying in the apartment Hitler and Eva Braun had fled. There she and her Jewish colleague, David Scherman, took turns taking pictures of themselves in Hitler’s bathtub. Behind a closed area of the Tate, you can find her pictures of suicided soldiers, piles of bones and bodies, and emaciated people she and Scherman found at the liberation of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Famous as an artist, innovator, Surrealist, model, photojournalist and war correspondent in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, Miller appears to have done what so many people exposed to World War II’s atrocities did when they returned to civilian life. In an era long before anyone understood what trauma was or how to treat it, she clammed up, stuck her memories in the attic (literally, trunks and trunks full of photos, footage and notes), had a family, switched interests (becoming a world-class gourmet chef) and set to work drinking herself to death, though she is officially recorded as dying of lung cancer.

With any luck, the popularity of this retrospective at the Tate — the largest exhibition of her work in the UK to date — will return Lee Miller to her rightful place as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. At this time, when truth tellers are coming back into vogue and there’s a new thirst for reliable narrators of world events, that would be a fitting conclusion.

She was there.

You can still join Nancy Goldstein’s online study considering Lee Miller’s life, work and the Tate exhibition on Sunday 30 November (3.30-5.30pm GMT), followed by an optional in-person visit to Tate Britain on Friday 5 December 2025.

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.

Reasons to be cheerful at the turn of the year!

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My favorite end-of-year ritual is listing all the great, unexpected things that have happened over the past twelve months. It began on a Brooklyn subway one New Year’s Day morning over a decade ago, and after a particularly garbage year, with me jotting stuff down on the back of a manilla folder.

I’ve done it ever since as a reminder that while my perceptions are valid, and often right, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen. Each year has had its share of unanticipated good stuff.

We’re still two months off the end of the year, but key items for my 2025 list so far?

  • Getting lost on the way to the BBC Proms, meeting a kind stranger who got me to the Royal Albert Hall, and her turning out to be Marina (Salonista extraordinaire), who introduced me to Toby, Nicky, and all of you.
  • Also, falling in love with Ernest Hemingway’s first short story collection: In Our Time (1925), written before he turned twenty-five. NOT on my Bingo card. But it happened. First, because I heard Margaret Atwood, the iconic feminist novelist who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, describe In Our Time as “one of the game-changing story collections of the 20th-century” during an NPR interview last year (you can listen to it for yourself here). Published 101 years ago, by the author I now refer to as ‘the Artist as a Very Different Young Man’, the stories of In Our Time still move with the weight, heft and athleticism of an Olympian.
  • When I decided to include two of those early Hemingway stories as ‘Tasters‘ this fall, both sessions sold out and the discussions were brilliant. Folks asked for more, so I decided to offer Hemingway’s entire In Our Time as a six meeting study starting Thursday evening, 13 November, from 6.30-8.30 pm GMT, running until 18 December. These are very short stories (each week’s set of 2-3 will take less than thirty minutes to read) and we all have super busy lives, so all six sessions can be booked individually, BUT those who sign up for the entire sequence get a substantial discount: six sessions for the price of five.
  • And then my study, Education and its Discontents: the 21st-Century Bildungsroman, reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Tara Westover’s Educated will begin soon.

We know that for many this is a very busy time of year, so if we find that either of these studies recruit fewer participants than expected we may have to postpone until 2026, so if you are interested in joining please book or let us know as soon as possible!

Finally, two more opportunities coming soon:

  • I’m going to be in London in person this November and December and will facilitate a study looking at the work of war photographer Lee Miller, whose blockbuster exhibition is currently running at Tate Britain. This will involve one online meeting on Sunday 30 November from 3.30-5.30 pm (GMT) and an informal in-person visit to the show on Friday 5 December at 10.00 am. Proceeds will be used to fund support for Salon participants who are unable to afford full fees. Read more about this here.
  • Also in London, on Sunday 28 December from 3.00-5.00 pm, we’re offering a two hour post-Christmas/Hanukkah in-person exploration of Alison Bechdel’s extraordinary graphic novel Fun Home (which, alongside Tara Westover’s Educated, is one of the two memoirs we’ll be reading in the six-week online 21st-Century Bildungsroman study). Please email for more information.

I’m excited to be part of the Salon, I hope you’ll come join me in one or more of these adventures!

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

Join me to explore the 21st Century Bildungsroman – here’s why!

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I’m Professor Nancy Goldstein, the latest facilitator to join the Salon team, starting with a study I’ve called Education and its Discontents: the 21st-Century Bildungsroman, running from 9 November to 14 December (Sunday evenings, 3.30 – 5.30 pm GMT).

We will be discussing a pair of brilliant, articulate, tragic and surprisingly funny memoirs that read like thrillers: the 2006 graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by cartoonist (and McArthur Genius Award winner) Alison Bechdel, and Tara Westover’s Educated (2018). As background, the Broadway production of Fun Home won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Musical, and Educated debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was named one of the NYT 10 Best Books of 2018.

As a way of introducing myself to the Salon, I’m offering three bite-sized ‘taster’ studies during October for the price of a pay-what-you-want donation to José Andres’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds hungry people in war and emergency zones all over the world, from Gaza and Ukraine to Pakistan. It’s entirely up to you to decide where, or whether, or how much to give: perhaps the price of your last flat white or pint?

Joining one (or all) of these ‘tasters’ before deciding to enrol in a six-session study is easy:

  • All readings for ‘tasters’ can be finished in under an hour and texts are available free online.
  • Each live online session runs for just 90 minutes.
  • We’ve carefully scheduled sessions on different days and times in the hope that everyone who wants to attend can find at least one that fits their schedule!

To register please click on one of the links in the session titles below so we can send you the Zoom link to join the discussion plus any additional online materials.

Taster #1: Portrait of the Artist as a Very Different Young Man – Two Selections from Ernest Hemingway’s First Short Story Collection: In Our Time (1929) – Thursday, 9 October, 6.00 -7:30 pm (UK)

It was novelist Margaret Atwood, best known for her dystopian feminist classic The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), who convinced me to give Hemingway a serious try. During an interview with Rachel Martin on National Public Radio in 2024 (you can listen here), Atwood explained:

Margaret Atwood: “There’s a Hemingway story in which a young man is having a campout with his girlfriend, and she realizes that things aren’t the same and she says, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he says, ‘It’s not fun anymore.’ So I think there are points in your life — for everybody’s life — when they think, ‘It’s not fun anymore.’ It’s a pretty crushing thing to say.”

Rachel Martin, NPR: “I guess, but like, I don’t know. Ernest Hemingway I don’t want to hold up as my romantic role model.”

Margaret Atwood: “It’s not a question of romantic role model: it’s a question of good story writer. And no matter what you may think of Hemingway’s private life, which I know too much about, In Our Time is one of the game-changing story collections of the 20th-century. He was a nightmare as a husband and romantic partner, but that’s . . . a different thing.”

So I read In Our Time, and . . . Atwood really had a point. I found the incisive younger Hemingway, with his modernist sensibility and his consciousness about whiteness, womanhood, class, sex, love, race and privilege a fascinating, welcome surprise. I think he will be to many other participants too.

Taster #2: Poets in Recovery – Monday 13 October, 2.30 – 4.00 pm (UK)

Raymond Carver, who was born into an impoverished family towards the end of the Depression (1938), is widely considered to be one of the greatest 20th-Century American short story writers. He was also one of its most notorious drunks, with multiple hospitalizations for his alcoholism, plus a doctor’s warning that he wouldn’t live past 40 if he didn’t stop. Carver finally got sober in 1977.

For this study, we will be comparing Carver’s criminally neglected poem Yesterday, Snow (from sometime in the early 80s and available only as a PDF that will be sent to all registrants) with Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober (2016) by Kaveh Akbar.

The young Iranian American poet’s debut novel, Martyr! – which also addresses addiction, grief and art – made waves last year as a National Book Award Finalist for Fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and The New Yorker. 

Taster #3: Portrait of the Artist as a Very Different Young Man – Two Selections from Ernest Hemingway’s First Short Story Collection: In Our Time (1929) – Tuesday 21 October, 1.00-2.30 pm (UK).

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