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

If you are interested in reading Proust from the beginning, please watch our website for the next Proust cycle that will commence early in 2027 and make sure you are signed up for our newsletter in which we announce new studies.

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

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

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays 1.00-3.00 pm (UK)
• Eleven meeting virtual study (on Zoom) from 9 March – 15 June 2026 (N.B. no meetings on 13 April, 4 May, 11 May and 8 June 2026)
• Recommended edition: Penguin Classics Finding Time Again (Patterson/Prendergast) ISBN: 9780141180366 (the Vintage Classics edition: Time Regained ISBN: 978009936271 5  is also acceptable)
• £330 for 11 meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

With this final volume of In Search of Lost Time we reach the end of the journey for the group of second-time readers that has been studying Proust for the past two years, and I complete my eighth tour through this mountain of modernism. Each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments.

If you are interested in reading Proust from the beginning, please watch our website for the next Proust cycle that will commence early in 2027 and make sure you are signed up for our newsletter in which we announce new studies.

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

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

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers
• Mondays 3.30-5.30 pm (UK)
• Eleven meeting virtual study (on Zoom) from 9 March – 15 June 2026 (N.B. no meetings on 13 April, 4 May, 11 May and 8 June 2026)
• Recommended edition: Penguin Classics Finding Time Again (Patterson/Prendergast) ISBN: 9780141180366 (the Vintage Classics edition: Time Regained ISBN: 978009936271 5  is also acceptable)
• £330 for 11 meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

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

If you are interested in reading Proust from the beginning, please watch our website for the next Proust cycle that will commence early in 2027 and make sure you are signed up for our newsletter in which we announce new studies.

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

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

JOINING DETAILS:

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers & Ralph Kleinman
• Mondays 6.00-8.00 pm
• Eleven meeting virtual study (on Zoom) from 9 March – 15 June 2026 (N.B. no meetings on 13 April, 4 May, 11 May and 8 June 2026)
• Recommended edition: Penguin Classics Finding Time Again (Patterson/Prendergast) ISBN: 9780141180366 (the Vintage Classics edition: Time Regained ISBN: 978009936271 5  is also acceptable)
• £330 for 11 meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.

In this early Springtime study we will read T.S. Eliot’s groundbreaking modernist poem The Waste Land. Over the course of five weeks we will celebrate the poem’s complexity, dig into its intertextuality and – above all – observe how it resonates with us today.

Questions we might consider include: ‘How does this poem present modernity?’, ‘How does it explore the concepts of waste and the environment?’, ‘Is it a product of gritty realism or sublime mysticism?’ and, last but not least, ‘Why does it endure?’

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five-week study on Zoom led by Karina Jakubowicz
• 5 April -3 May, Sunday evenings 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
• £200 for five two-hour meetings

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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.

“But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do I must make the most direct and instant shots at my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink.”

Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary

An invitation to writers of all levels (beginners are as welcome as the more experienced) — to loosen the ligaments, put perfection aside, and write for the quiet joy of discovery; to share a space where words unfold boldly, imperfectly, and in response to curiosity.

Rooted in the ethos of the London Literary Salon — where close reading and conversation open pathways to deeper understanding — this writing series, facilitated by Alison Cable, extends the same spirit of inquiry into creative practice. An invitation to explore writing as a way of thinking, feeling, and knowing.

Each block of three months offers a gentle rhythm of practice: a facilitated Anchor Session followed later in the month by a companion Open Writing Session, where you can return to your work, deepen the ideas sparked in the workshop, and write alongside others in quiet company.

How it works

• Anchor Session (first Tuesday of each month, 5.00-7.00 pm, UK time):
  A guided workshop exploring a theme, text, or prompt through discussion, short exercises and optional sharing. These sessions provide inspiration and direction for your writing practice.
• Open Writing Session (third Tuesday of each month, 5:00–6:30 pm, UK time):
  A lightly held, communal writing space in which you can develop your ideas, try new forms, or simply write in the company of others. Optional check-in and sharing at the end.
• Block Pass: £105 for three months (includes three Anchor Sessions and three companion Open Writing Sessions). This block encourages continuity and engagement, with sessions scheduled monthly to help you build a routine.
• Single Sessions: please enquire.

Block 1: January – March 2026

1. Anchor: 6 January | 3 February | 3 March
2. Open: 20 January | 17 February | 17 March

Block 2: April – June 2026

• Anchor: 7 April | 5 May | 2 June
• Open: 28 April | 19 May | 23 June

Block 3: July – September 2026

• Anchor: 7 July | 4 August | 1 September
• Open: 21 July | 18 August | 15 September

Block 4: October – December 2026

• Open: 20 October | 17 November | 22 December
• Anchor: 6 October | 3 November | 1 December

This will be our fourth year offering opportunities to read Virginia Woolf in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home and where we can consider her work surrounded by some of the countryside she loved best. In 2026 we will have two long weekend studies in Alfriston, the first (9-12 April) focusing on her 1933 ‘biography’ of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel Flush, together with her only play, Freshwater (1935); the second (16-19 April) exploring her 1941 novel Between the Acts.

Woolf is often viewed as a London writer, but much of her time was spent at her countryside home in the depths of the South Downs. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this landscape to her writing. Freshwater was first performed at Vanessa Bell’s London studio in Fitzroy Square, but it built on the playacting tradition that began at Bell’s countryside home, Charleston in Sussex. Similarly, Flush owes itself to a hybrid of urban and rural experiences, containing some of Woolf’s best reflections on what it means to escape the horrors of city life. While London has greatly changed since the 1930s, Alfriston still looks much as it did in Woolf’s time. Being there makes it possible to imagine a world where Lytton Strachey could be spotted on the high street and Duncan Grant might appear at the pub. To help aid this imaginative process there will be opportunities to visit relevant heritage sites including Monk’s House (the house near Rodmell that the Woolfs purchased in 1919 and used as their rural retreat) and Charleston Farmhouse.

In 2026 we mark the centenary of the period when Woolf began to immerse herself in life writing. Having tested her new narrative form in Jacob’s Room (1922) and moved on to the more successful Mrs Dalloway (1925), she began to consider how her work might overlap with the genre of the elegy, a phase of experimentation that culminated in the fictionalisation of her parents in To the Lighthouse (1927). This was followed by the brisk and daring Orlando (1928) a work that deliberately ripped at the seams of the biographical form. Having explored the limits of the gendered, human life, she then progressed to Flush (1933), a sensitive portrayal of canine existence that roots itself in the non-human world. This humorous and occasionally dark portrayal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog inverts a hierarchy of importance where famous poets are purportedly more important than their pets.

Woolf continued in this irreverent vein by completing her only play, Freshwater, in 1935. This work was designed to be performed for and by her immediate family, and revels in satirising her maternal ancestors and all of their famous friends. Throughout the play, Woolf affectionately thumbs her nose at the previous generation while also exploring how attitudes towards creativity and artistic endeavour may have shifted in the intervening years.

Toby and Karina will guide attendees through these two works, moving through Flush first. There will also be opportunities to consider the life and work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a selection of her poems will be provided for this purpose. We will then have our own performance of Freshwater with time to discuss Woolf’s interest in family history and her preoccupation with plays and playwriting. Reading these texts side by side will encourage us to consider Woolf’s views of the 19^th century, her interest in the non-human and natural world, and her unique sense of humour. Woolf is not often regarded as a comedic writer, but these two works prove she had a wonderful eye for the bathetic and the absurd.

JOINING DETAILS:

• To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Flush & Freshwater 2026’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £50. Full payment may be made later by bank transfer.
• Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz
• Thursday 9 – Sunday 12 April 2026, Alfriston, East Sussex
• This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Between the Acts and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We will also research outings in the area based on exhibits that will be available at the time of our visit, these will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.
• As in previous years, we are in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf, Flush and Freshwater during our stay there.
• £500 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs (please see details below).
• Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own travel, accommodation and any insurance required.
• We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £206.00 per room, rising to a maximum of £244.50 (charges vary across a range of accommodation). These rates are discounted for London Literary Salon participants, so please reserve your room as soon as possible after registering your place on the study and mention the London Literary Salon when booking.
• Recommended editions: Flush by Virginia Woolf, Oxford World’s Classics ISBN-13: 978-0199539291; Freshwater: A Comedy, Houghton Mifflin ISBN-13: 978-0156335409

‘Clearly, this city was expecting of me something more than a simple recital. But when I tried to recall some basic details about the present visit, I had little success . . .’

Somewhere in Europe, celebrated pianist ‘Mr Ryder’ has arrived at his hotel, where he is greeted with a high pitch of expectation. During the next few days he encounters many demands on his time, both personal and professional, and is whisked around the city and surrounding countryside in a way that is both bewildering and strangely dreamlike. Time and space appear malleable, apparently led less by the laws of physics than those of the emotions. Assailed by troubling memories of childhood, Ryder gradually realises that his upcoming performance will be about much more than the challenging postmodern music he will play . . .

When The Unconsoled was published in 1995, readers of Ishiguro’s previous works, and in particular those who loved his Booker-winning The Remains of the Day, reacted with a mixture of bafflement, confusion and sometimes downright hostility. Just what was this exactly?

While James Wood famously wrote: ‘Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel has the virtue of being unlike anything else; it invents its own category of badness’, the New York Times Book Review described it as ‘the most original and remarkable book he has so far produced’ and, writing in The Times, Rachel Cusk declared it ‘A masterpiece. It is above all a book devoted to the human heart.’

Many have read The Unconsoled in relation to Kafka, assuming it was intended to emulate that writer’s work in some way. Other reference points suggested by readers include cubism and surrealism (in particular the work of Giorgio de Chirico), or the logic (or illogic) of dreams and nightmares; others have read it as a series of music-like ‘variations’ on a theme, or as a magical realist allegory, or an exposure of the wounding and trauma at the heart of modern society. Michael Wood pithily called it a ‘long metaphor for deferred and displaced anxiety’.

There is much pleasure to be had in the reading of this book. The absurd sometimes descends into hilarious farce, and Ishiguro’s celebrated prose is as delightfully lucid as ever. The cumulative effect of the strange narrative shifts, impossibly overheard conversations, and increasing anticipation is ultimately extremely moving.

On this eight-week study we will also take time to consider the background to Ishiguro’s writing of the novel. The enormous success of The Remains of the Day led to the author going on an 18-month international book tour, with its attendant disorientation and confusing, absurd demands on his time. Ishiguro has also said that the book’s genesis was a comment from his wife that dreams are a kind of universal language, which sparked his interest in ‘the grammar of dreams’. As he worked, he says, he ‘started to see parallels between memory and dream, the way you manipulate both according to your emotional needs at the time’. Thus, like all his work, this can be read as a study of memory, and how it can dominate our lives, for both good and ill.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight week study, live on Zoom, led by Lewis Ward
• Mondays, 5.30-7.30pm (UK), 13 April – 1 June 2026
• £280 for eight meetings
• Recommended edition: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber & Faber, ISBN 9780571283897

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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 litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

This will be our fourth year offering opportunities to read Virginia Woolf in East Sussex, a county which in many ways became the writer’s spiritual home and where we can consider her work surrounded by some of the countryside she loved best. In 2026 we will have two long weekend studies in Alfriston, the first (9-12 April) focusing on her 1933 ‘biography’ of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel Flush, together with her only play, Freshwater (1935); the second (16-19 April) exploring her 1941 novel Between the Acts.

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

In this novel 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. According to Edward Mendelson: “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 1,000 years of English history, together with a close examination of the intricacies of village life in England in the days leading up to World War II. 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” that one of her characters describes.

“She wanted to expose them, as it were, to douche them, with present-time reality. But something was going wrong with the experiment. ‘Reality too strong,’ she muttered. ‘Curse ‘em!’ She felt everything they felt. Audiences were the devil. O to write a play without an audience – the play” 

Between the Acts

Miss La Trobe – passionate, demanding, visionary and frustrated playwright/director/producer of the pageant – yearns to have the self-satisfied people of the village and the great homes see themselves for what they are. She believes – as I believe – that art can illuminate people to themselves, make them grasp the history that precedes them, understand the contemporary moment in light of that history and drive out complacency, make the audience feel the horrors and the miracle of the world they occupy. The book is filled with moments of passion exploding, of submerged violence, of desires frustrated.

The setting of Between the Acts ‘somewhere in the south of England’ at Pointz Hall, could be a village very much like Alfriston. Among the possible activities we will include for our retreat may be a pageant of our own: how might we construct a mirror to ourselves—a historical enactment of the phases of progress and stagnation that have brought us to this moment in time? We will consider closely how Between the Acts uses the particularities of the setting -Pointz Hall, the surrounding countryside, unpredictable weather, the cultivated and wild spaces – to reflect how the backdrop of our daily performance of living impacts and sets the rhythm for our habits and encounters.

JOINING DETAILS:

• To ask questions please email us at litsalon@gmail.com using ‘Between the Acts 2026’ as the subject line. To reserve a place please use the form below to pay an initial deposit of £50. Full payment may be made later by bank transfer.
• Four-day in-person study facilitated by Toby Brothers and Karina Jakubowicz
• Thursday 16 – Sunday 19 April 2026, Alfriston, East Sussex
• This is an opportunity to enjoy the locale, including visiting Charleston House, Charleston in Lewes and Monk’s House, as well as joining with other readers in discussing Between the Acts and its relationship to Woolf’s other works. We will also research outings in the area based on exhibits that will be available at the time of our visit, these will be added to the schedule as we confirm the best options.
• As in previous years, we are in conversation with our fellow enthusiasts at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who have created a great community that celebrates reading and the art of books in wonderful ways. Together we will offer an event celebrating Woolf and Between the Acts during our stay there.
• £500 for twelve hours (or more) of study in six meetings spread over four days, plus accommodation costs (please see details below).
• Please note that participants are responsible for booking their own travel, accommodation and any insurance required.
• We will stay at Wingrove House, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel set in the beautiful and historic village of Alfriston, East Sussex in the South Downs National Park. We will be within easy reach of sites associated with Bloomsbury, making it the ideal choice for Woolf-related Salons. We expect the cost per night, including breakfast, to start at £206.00 per room, rising to a maximum of £244.50 (charges vary across a range of accommodation). These rates are discounted for London Literary Salon participants, so please reserve your room as soon as possible after registering for the study and mention the London Literary Salon when booking.
• Recommended edition: Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf, Oxford World’s Classics ISBN-13: ‎978-0199536573

“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

Since it was first written and circulated in 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli’s treatise on statecraft and how the often brutal politics of his time and place – Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – really worked has remained notorious. Intended as a guide for rulers whose political fortunes could rise and fall with alarming speed and devastating consequences, Machiavelli examined questions that echo down the centuries. How to acquire power? How to keep it? How to inspire loyalty? Is it better to be feared than loved?

Over six meetings we will explore Machiavelli’s often harrowing calculations and consider how alive and controversial they may seem today. To what extent do his ideas remain relevant to our own politically turbulent and uncertain times? How much has really changed over the last five hundred years?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six-week live online study of Machiavelli’s The Prince, led by Vivien Kogut on Zoom
• Thursdays, 5.30-7.30pm GMT
• 16 April – 21 May 2026
• £210 for six two-hour meetings, to include background materials and opening notes
• Recommended edition: The Prince: A Norton Critical Edition, with introduction by Wayne A. Rebhorn, ISBN 978-0393936919

Henry James called Balzac “a final authority on human nature” and said that he “took in more of human life that anyone since Shakespeare.” James referred to Balzac as “really the father of us all.”

If you’ve read James, you will find this extremely surprising because neither Balzac’s life nor his fiction bear any resemblance to James’s own.

Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850) lived his chaotic life to the fullest. Life was one long adventure. Many mistresses, and perhaps some boyfriends too (his sympathetic picture of gay male characters is referred to more than once in Proust’s oeuvre), illegitimate children, crazy business schemes, debtors’ prison, law school (he dropped out), parties, travel – he never stopped. He was his own greatest creation.

In his spare time, Balzac managed to complete 91 novels, all of which are part of his lifetime literary project, La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). If you hear echoes of Dante, don’t be surprised, Balzac always compared himself to the literary greats. Charles Robb, one of Balzac’s modern biographers, wrote of La Comédie humaine: “Balzac’s epic of modern life is the last attempt by any writer to comprehend and educate a whole world in its diversity, to offer a complete, unified, scientific picture of society and human experience.”

I know that in prior material for the Literary Salon I referred to Flaubert as the inventor of literary realism. I’m not stepping back from that, but the birth of literary realism wasn’t an immaculate conception: Balzac was there at its beginning.

Our work with Balzac’s La Comédie humaine continues with Lost Illusions (Les Illusions Perdues). Why? Mostly because the three-novel series (Le Père Goriot, Les Illusions Perdues, and Les Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes) form a unified work that covers all of Balzac’s preoccupations. Each work, brilliant in its own right, is amplified in proximity with the others, uplifted into the highest stratosphere of French literature.

And, as a bonus, we’ll spend more time with Eugène de Rastignac and Vautrin from Père Goriot.

JOINING DETAILS:

• 10-meeting study led by Ralph Kleinman
• Thursdays, 7.00-9.00 pm (UK), 16 April – 25 June 2026
• Recommended edition: Lost Illusions, translated by Herbert Hunt, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 9780140442519
• £350 for 10 two-hour meetings

Now more than ever it seems right to read Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita (1955). The man who famously described himself as “an American writer, born in Russia” understands his adopted country as only an immigrant can.

Born into Russian nobility, Nabokov fled for his life twice: first escaping the 1917 Revolution for Berlin and Paris, and then, in 1940, fleeing Nazi-era Paris for New York City alongside his Jewish wife, Véra. A respected lepidopterist, Nabokov spent years working at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The immigrant, the scientist and the novelist brought all he knew about camouflage, metamophosis, mimicry, migration and classification to his writing.

Lolita combines Nabokov’s keen observations of the new, post-World War II superpower that was late 1940s America with his scalpel-like dexterity with the English language.

One of the world’s most banned books? Yes.

A savage send-up of a country awash in Norman Rockwell imagery and pop psychology? A land where clueless elites become intellectually complicit in a world that infantilises adults while sexualising children? Yes.

Narrated through the notoriously unreliable perspective of one Humbert Humbert, aka Paedophile-in-Chief? Yes.

Hilarious and infuriating by turns, but always mesmerising? Yes.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six-meeting study led by Dr Nancy Goldstein
• 23 April – 28 May 2026
• Thursdays, 6.30-8.30 pm (UK time)
• £240 for six two-hour meetings
• Recommended edition The Annotated Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000): ISBN: 978-0141185040

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.

Four Quartets (1943) was written at the end of T.S. Eliot’s poetic career and is considered by some to be his greatest work. The Four Quartets reflects the four seasons and the four elements, with each section having its own attendant landscape. These include the gardens of Burnt Norton, the open fields of East Coker, the small group of rocks that make up The Dry Salvages, and the village of Little Gidding. All of these spaces reflect facets of England in the 1940s while also serving as Eliot’s internal environment, a place where he wrestles with the themes of death, nature and time. The backdrop of the Second World War adds an eerie pertinence to Eliot’s musings as he contemplates his own demise, yet the poem is rarely despairing. ‘What we call the beginning is often the end,’ he states, ‘And to make an end is to make a beginning./ The end is where we start from.’

Contrary to Eliot’s suggestion, we will start at the beginning and work our way to the end (perhaps to look back on the beginning with new eyes). The study will take place over five weeks.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study led by Karina Jakubowicz live on Zoom
• Wednesdays, 13 May – 10 June, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
• £200 for five two-hour meetings

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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.

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.

The London Literary Salon invites you to join a five-day study based in Edale, in the Peak District National Park in June 2026. There we will explore Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through landscape, literature and creative practice. This long weekend will be a living conversation between text, location and lived experience — an invitation to read, write and walk in immersive engagement with Brontë’s novel and the moors that inspired it.

How might we read Jane Eyre today — as a story of selfhood and rebellion, but also as a text shaped by gender, empire, class and desire? This immersive study combines literary discussion, reflective writing, and walking on the moorland paths that inspired Brontë’s novel. A short train trip to Hathersage, the village closely linked to the novel, will offer further insight into the places that inspired Brontë’s writing. Participants will also have the opportunity to walk the 8 km Jane Eyre Hathersage Trail, tracing the village, architecture and landscape that shaped Brontë’s imagination.

Toby Brothers will lead our literary discussions, guiding us through the rich text with reflections that include psychological, feminist, postcolonial and queer readings of Jane Eyre. Alison Cable will co-facilitate and offer walking and creative writing sessions, encouraging reflection, response and imaginative engagement with both text and landscape. Together, we will explore the familiar and the overlooked: Jane’s struggles for autonomy, the silences within the text, and the ways literature continues to resonate with questions of freedom, identity and justice in our own lives, here and now.

According to the poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich:

‘The concern of the tale is not with social mores, the social mores may occur among the risks and challenges encountered by the protagonist. Neither is it an anatomy of the psyche, the faded chemistry of cosmic forces. It takes its place between the two: between the realm of the given, that which is changeable by human activity, and the realm of the fated, that which lies outside human control: between realism and poetry.

‘The world of the tale is above all a “vale of soul making”, and when a novelist finds herself writing a tale it is likely to be because she is moved by that vibration of experience which underlies the social and political, though it constantly feeds into both of these. In her essay on Jane Eyre, critic Q.D.  Leavis perceives the novel’s theme as “. . . an exploration of how a woman comes to maturity in the world of the writer’s youth”. I would suggest that a novel about how a man “comes to maturity in the world of the writers youth” would not be dismissed as lacking in range or in Woolf’s words, “a sense of human problems”. I would suggest further that Charlotte Bronte is writing not a bildungsroman but the life story of a woman who is incapable of saying “I am Heathcliff” because she feels so unalterably herself. Jane Eyre, motherless and economically powerless, undergoes certain traditional female temptations, and finds that each temptation presents itself along with an alternative –the image of a nurturing or principled or spirited woman on whom she can model herself, or to whom she can look for support.‘

Adrienne Rich, Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman (published in the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre)

While Virginia Woolf wrote that the Brontes:

‘. . . seized those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a dull page or display the writer’s powers of observation – they carry on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book.’

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1916)

We will be based in Edale, with accommodation confirmed at The Gathering, a combination of glamping ‘lodges’ and barns, with options for shared or single rooms. Walking across the hills and moors will offer space for thought and inspiration, but all activities are optional: indoors, we will read, write and talk together, fostering immersive engagement with text and the landscape. To round out the evenings, participants may choose to join the local pub quiz or a folk music night, taking advantage of the lively sense of community and place.

SAMPLE SESSIONS INCLUDE:

• Morning literary discussion with Toby Brothers: close reading of key passages, exploring Jane’s journey, moral choices and the novel’s social and political contexts.
• Afternoon creative writing and walking with Alison Cable: guided reflective walks on the moors, using the landscape as inspiration for short writing exercises and prompts.
• Short train trip to Hathersage: experiencing the village that inspired Brontë, with an optional walk to Stanage Edge, passing ‘Vale Hall,’ ‘Thornfield’ and ‘Moor House’, and the added bonus of Robin Hood’s cave and the gravesite of Little John.
• Evening reflection sessions: sharing insights, discussing emergent themes, experimenting with creative responses, and optional participation in pub quiz, bonfire, and folk night.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five-day study in Edale, Derbyshire led by Toby Brothers and Alison Cable
• 18-22 June 2026
• £550 for the study and background notes, plus £105 for three days half board (breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday), total cost £655
• Additional costs: participants are responsible for arranging and paying for their own travel, glamping accommodation at The Gathering, additional meals and insurance. Group bookings for accommodation and optional guided walks must be arranged in advance.
• We strongly recommend reading or re-reading Jane Eyre in preparation for the weekend so the language, ideas and vision of the text are fresh. 
• An initial non-refundable deposit of £50 secures your place, with the balance of £605 (including breakfasts and lunches) payable by 1 May 2026.
• Any refunds will be at the discretion of the London Literary Salon, dependent on our ability to fill the place, and will be subject to an administration charge.