Three hundred years ago, in March 1726, Jonathan Swift travelled from Dublin to London with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. He had last been in England twelve years earlier, and was returning to find a publisher for the Travels, and to be reunited with his friends the poet Alexander Pope and the poet and playwright John Gay.

The friends spent the summer together in Pope’s villa at Twickenham, reading, writing, exchanging ideas, exploring Pope’s famous garden and grotto, and boating downriver to visit Henrietta Howard’s newly built Marble Hill.

In The Twitnam Summer, the writer and historian Hester Grant brings the summer of 1726 vividly to life, while also describing the poignant friendship between three brilliant but troubled men, their satiric onslaught on Robert Walpole’s corrupt administration, and the clandestine publication of Gulliver’s Travels.

A brilliant book. It feels as if the reader has been invited to the dinner parties and firesides of the hard-drinkers and thinkers of the Georgian era. – Gareth Russell

We’re delighted to welcome Hester – author of The Good Sharps – back to Alfriston for a spirited discussion of extraordinary people and times. She will be speaking in the first-floor event room of The Star in Alfriston, from 3pm on Sunday 14 June.

Copies of The Twitnam Summer will be available – and will be at Much Ado in the days before the event.

Tickets costing £6 are available in advance from Much Ado, as well as by clicking the button here. (Note: We won’t issue a physical ticket - we’ll keep a guest list.)