Summer course 2024: Welcome Dinner

On Sunday 4 August, we welcomed this summer’s participants with a lovely dinner served by Clare Hall caterer Sabrina. Literature Cambridge Director Trudi Tate gave a brief talk, offering an overview of the week and some introductory remarks on our theme, Virginia Woolf and Childhood. Trudi drew attention to Woolf’s good memories of childhood, by discussing both Woolf’s own childhood (explored in Hermione Lee’s biography and in Woolf’s biographical essays) and her integration of themes of childhood into her novels.

Specifically, in To the Lighthouse, Trudi suggested, Mrs Ramsay’s ‘capacity to appreciate children as they are when they are young’ expresses Woolf’s own sentiments. Significantly, as in all of Woolf’s writing, gender plays an important role in these themes, and the way that girls and boys experience childhood — especially as childhood transitions into adolescence — gets particular attention in these texts. We ended the evening with rousing discussion as we got to know each other over a delicious vegetarian/vegan meal, excited to get started on the course over the coming week!

Photos of the dinner are by Jeremy Peters @jezpete