Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society

Have you seen the new film Night & Day, directed by Tina Gharavi? If so, what did you think of it? I haven’t seen it yet, but hoping to go very soon. That ‘&’ in the film’s title is doing a lot of work by the way, distinguishing it from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Night and Day, first published in October 1919. From what I’ve heard, the film is great fun, well acted and funny, but departs quite a bit from the original.

Sir Eardley Lancelot Holland by Walter Stoneman, bromide print, 9 January 1947 (NPG x168373) © National Portrait Gallery, London. ‘Now his face was plain to read, like a bold landscape revealed in the strong light of day.’ (31) ‘One of the great fables about late bloomers is the tortoise and the hare. We are taught as children its simple moral that the race is not to the swift. However, what we are not told is that applying the fable isn’t straightforward.

How do you start writing a book, and how important for you is a memorable opening sentence? The historian Helen Castor has recently written about the importance of first sentences: ‘they matter to me because I write in order, sentence by sentence, from the beginning to the end. Finding the right place to start therefore means I can go on.’ Helen is currently working on a new, full-length biography of Queen Elizabeth I and re-reading her favourite books on the Tudor queen.

Cambridge women 1870-1948 ‘The fact of a daughter of Papa being sent here ought to have a good influence’ Hello! and welcome to Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society. It’s been incredibly hot here these past few days, but a week ago, as I cycled home from the library on a Friday evening, the Cam was looking especially peaceful with the punts neatly moored. Don’t let that fool you.

Mary Newcomb, ‘Six Violas’, oil on board 1985. Private collection, currently on display at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. My diary has been full of literary-cultural-library treats this week, springing up everywhere like billowing clouds of white cow parsley by the river in Cambridge in May (after poetically mislabelling this lovely, ubiquitous wildflower as ‘meadowsweet’ in my photo of King’s College Chapel below, I’ve decided to lean into the flower theme).

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), chalk drawing by Ellen Sharples (1769-1849) ©Down House, courtesy of G.P. Darwin, Darwin Heirlooms Trust. This week’s post is my archive post about Susannah Wedgwood Darwin (1765-1817), the mother of Charles Darwin. I’m reposting it today on this second Sunday in May, when Mother’s Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society explores hidden corners of women’s history.

Enjoying my peaceful walk along Ballycastle Strand, beneath the massing clouds of rain-heavy spring skies. Dear Readers, I hope you’re well. It’s the early spring Bank Holiday weekend here, and I’ve been enjoying a short break on the lovely North Antrim coast (yesterday I sent some of you an ‘email postcard’ with the seaside snap above, but I actually meant to send it to you all – so here it is again, in case you missed it).

April is almost halfway through, so here’s my round-up of news of exhibitions, literary events, a sneak preview of our next 20th-century book club novel and more. In this ‘Letter from Cambridge’ series I usually start with a letter from someone who lived here (you can find a letter from Sylvia Plath here and from the photographer Lettice Ramsey here). This time it’s from an American writer who was greatly influenced by the writings of a famous Cambridge professor.

Hello, Happy Easter, and I hope you had a good break, if any of that applies to you. It’s been a balmy, breezy week here in Cambridge – unseasonably fine and sunny – and I’ve been making the most of it, dawdling by the river to enjoy the riverside colleges’ fine show of windblown daffodils and tulips (while this good weather lasts, which won’t be long).

Hello and welcome to my latest post. This year, I’m honoured to be taking part in the tenth anniversary of summer courses run by Literature Cambridge, this year on the theme of ‘Virginia Woolf and the Natural World’. My afternoon talk ‘Sleeping on the ground and swimming in a river: Virginia Woolf, Rupert Brooke and the Neo-Pagans’will be about the ‘Neo-Pagan’ circle that gathered around Rupert Brooke from 1908 to 1912, and its lasting legacy.