Somerville Association Book Groups

Photo: Jack Evans By The Book: Introducing the

Somerville Association Book Groups

Members of the College Book Club, including Emeritus Fellows Hilary Ockendon and Lesley Brown, and Secretary of the Somerville Association, Elizabeth Cooke

Book groups have been a feature of our alumni community since 2017. During the pandemic, these groups moved online, offering valuable intellectual stimulus and society to their members. Ruth Crawford, Chair of the Somerville London Group Book Club, tells us more.

When I confessed to the Somerville London Group (SLG) Committee that I hadn’t read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, I had no idea the effect it would have. Some members acknowledged a similar gap in their reading, while others declared themselves lifelong fans. Quick as a flash, Sarah Wyles (1987, History) proposed a book discussion and the SLG Book Group was born.

That was back in 2017, 25 books ago. In that time, we’ve read “classic” authors such as Winifred Holtby, Penelope Fitzgerald, Iris Murdoch, Dorothy L. Sayers and AS Byatt. We’ve also read Somerville novelists with more recent success, such as Maggie Gee, Michèle Roberts, Frances Hardinge, Lara Feigel and Jo Baker. One of our most popular choices was O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, who sadly died this year. We also greatly enjoyed the novels of recent graduates Daisy Johnson and Alexander Starritt, (see feature, p6).

Our highlights in non-fiction include the accounts of women transcending cultural barriers from Jane Robinson and Ann Oakley, as well as Emma Sky’s In a Time of Monsters. Finally, we read the lives of Dorothy Hodgkin and Shirley Williams with great pleasure, as well as the biographies of Sonia Orwell and Vita Sackville-West by Hilary Spurling and Victoria Glendinning, respectively.

Perhaps the most enduring pleasure of our discussions, however, is the fascinating insights and anecdotes offered by my fellow members – confirmation that lifelong curiosity is at the heart of what it means to be a Somervillian.

To enquire about joining or establishing a Somerville Association Book Group with a new theme, please contact Liz Cooke on elizabeth.cooke@some.ox.ac.uk

THE SOMERVILLE ESPIONAGE BOOK GROUP

Since the spring of 2021, a small group of Somervillians has been meeting online to discuss fiction and non-fiction related to all aspects of espionage. The group is chaired by Gill Bennett (History, 1969), whose distinguished career as a Whitehall historian specialising in the history of secret intelligence means she can usually be prevailed upon to add a ‘secret’ snippet to whatever is being discussed! The choice of fiction has ranged from novels about Elizabethan espionage (Alan Judd’s A Fine Madness) to Nicholas Shakespeare’s The Sandpit, set in contemporary Oxford. Non-fiction choices have included two books about Somerville’s former Principal, the late Baroness Park, who had a formidable career in MI6, as well as Leo Marks’ Between Silk and Cyanide, about the codes used by WWII agents in Occupied Europe.

Meanwhile… Julia Higgins (1961, Physics, Hon Fellow, FRS) has for the past year been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy with Lyn Robertson (1961, English) playing the role of Virgil during their weekly telephone conversations. Yet more lifelong learning from Somervillians!

The Espionage Book Group still has room for new members – no secret initiation ceremony is required, just email Gill at gillbennett6@gmail.com