Dorset Delights with Brian Nellist

Treat yourself to some serious reading for pleasure on this ten-week reading course with Brian Nellist. Brian will be leading a literary tour of Dorset from the comfort of Birkenhead Central Library, where you can share his wisdom, insight and infectious enthusiasm for literature.

Today Dorset has become a national playground and retirement home but in the past it was a place of rural poverty with an important seaboard (Poole harbour), local fishing and quarrying. That was the Dorset that Wordsworth and Hardy knew, though Jane Austen writes of the beginning of tourism at Lyme Regis. We shall read a few things rather slowly so as not to burden you with a lot of time-consuming demands.

In Part I we shall read Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, a selection of the poems and a few of his short-stories as well as poems by his friend and mentor William Barnes. After Christmas in Part II we would read Jane Austen’s last novel Persuasion, Lyrical Ballads and ‘The Ruined Cottage’ by Wordsworth and maybe short stories by T. F. Powys and John Fowles. You could sign up for either part or both.

All proceeds support The Reader Organisation.

The first session will be 10.30am – 12.30pm on Thursday 13^th October and then a further nine consecutive Thursdays at the same time, with the last session on Thursday 15^th December.

The sessions will take place in the Meeting Room at Birkenhead Central Library, Borough Road, Birkenhead, Wirral, CH41 2XB.

The cost of the course is £60, with concessions for pensioners, students and those receiving income support (£50), Get Into Reading members (£40) and Get Into Reading members receiving income support (£30).

To book your place you need to fill in a booking form, which you can find here, or contact Mike Butler, Communications Intern, at mikebutler@thereader.org.uk or 0152 207 7207.

See for yourself what it's like to read with Brian here.