Our main speaker in May is Alice Jolly whose talk will focus on hindsight in historical fiction.
When we set out to write a novel we not only have to know where the story is set geographically, we also need to decide where the narrator is positioned in time. Are we writing about events as they unfold? Or is the novel looking back on known events? The decisions we make about the timelines of the book will shape the story we tell. So how do we write as though our characters don’t know what is going to happen next? Does hindsight place the events in a wider context, or does it deprive the narrative of tension? Are there ways of creating immediacy while also creating space for anaylses?
In her novel, ‘The Matchbox Girl’ Alice uses the voice of a twelve year old girl who struggles to understand the rise of fascism in 1930s Austria but she also includes the histories of Dr Asperger and his colleagues both during WW2 and after. She will discuss the decisions she made and how they might assist other writers (and not just those writing historical novels).
Alice Jolly has written novels, plays, short stories and a memoir. She
taught fiction at Oxford University for 16 years. She has won the
Ackerley Prize for memoir and the V.S.Pritchett Prize (awarded by
The Royal Society of Literature) for a short story.
Her historical novel ‘Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile’ is written in the voice
of a nineteenth century servant girl and was runner up for the £30,000
Rathbones Folio Prize in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Ondaatje
Prize and was a Walter Scott Prize recommended novel in 2018.
Alice’s new novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’ was published by
Bloomsbury in November 2025 and has been longlisted for the Walter
Scott Prize.
Our guest speaker is Stephen Hodgson, who will speak about life in ancient Sparta and, in particular, the experience of children growing up there. He will give an overview of his historical fiction novel “The Adventures of Helen and Lysander” – about a sister and a brother and their experiences of the Spartan education programme known as the agoge. Stephen will also talk about his journey into writing and share some of the lessons he has learnt along the way.
Stephen was born in Yorkshire but has lived most of his life in London or Hampshire. He spent 35 years working in the Civil Service but left in 2022 to follow his passion for writing. He is a new author and The Tales of Helen and Lysander is his first novel. It is the first in a series of novels that he intends to write about these characters which will follow them on their journey into adulthood. He recently also had two short stories published in the Paul Cave Prize for Literature 2023.
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