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Summer Study

Course Six

Writers of the North East

Course Date: Saturday 7th September to Saturday 14th September

Course Leaders: Fran Doel, MA & Dr Geoff Doel

Cost:

Early bookings received by 15th March: £695.00 per person

Bookings after 15th March: £730.00 per person

The dramatic landscape, historic associations and architecture of Northern England and the Scottish Borders have produced and inspired a variety of fine writers. Laurence Sterne named his Coxwold parsonage ‘Shandy Hall’ after his best-selling comic masterpiece Tristram Shandy. Sir Walter Scott built a baronial hall at Abbotsford, collected Border Ballads and wrote poems and novels integrating the scenery, history and traditions of the Borders. The Bronte sisters dramatically used the Yorkshire moorlands, manors and farms and Ann used Scarborough (where she later died and was buried) as the setting for her novel Agnes Grey. Edith Sitwell was brought up in Scarborough at Wood End and further up the coast both Elizabeth Gaskell and Bram Stoker holidayed at Whitby and used it respectively for Sylvia’s Lovers and for some of the most dramatic scenes in Dracula.

We’ll also visit Bamburgh Castle (Malory’s Joyeuse Garde, home of Sir Lancelot) and the nearby Grace Darling Museum. Algernon Swinburne and Wordsworth both wrote poems on Grace’s heroic rescue and we’ll also visit Swinburne’s family home at Capheaton. We’ll visit Alnwick Castle, which has many literary & historic associations and an option of guided tours including a tour of the Harry Potter film sites. We’ll visit Byron’s marital home at Seaham Hall and Cherryburn, the delightful house of the engraver and pamphleteer Thomas Bewick on the banks of the Tyne, plus a tea-stop in Corbridge, where Catherine Cookson lived for many years.

The summer school will also include lectures on Byron, Scott, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Dracula & Whitby and there will much on-site information and DVDs on Edith Sitwell & Thomas Bewick.

Sunday afternoon visit to Bewick’s Cherryburn and Corbridge.

All day visits to:

  • Whitby & Scarborough
  • Seaham Hall and Shandy Hall
  • Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle and the Grace Darling Museum
  • Capheaton Hall and Abbostford

Fran Doel, MA and Dr Geoff Doel have led Summer Schools for several universities over the past 35 years, including Durham, Kent, Exeter, East Anglia & Birkbeck College. Fran has an MA in Medieval Studies and Geoff a literary PhD. They have led over 40 Northumbrian study holidays, including 9 for Durham University.