Portals to Past Women's Voices

This is an in-person only event in the British Library Knowledge Centre Eliot Room.

Drawing together two very different female medieval voices - Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and the twelfth-century author, poet and translator Marie de France - this friendly workshop is structured in the inclusive LitSalon tradition: dynamically facilitated discussion with a weave of contextual insights. A combination of texts and objects illustrates the lives of people in a particular time and place. “The idea of these sessions is to find little doors through which to step into that world and find ways to relate to it through the poetry and human artefacts as representations of that time.” (Vivian Kogut).  

There is time set by for a short break, with refreshments included.

Doors and Bar open at 18:00. If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event.

Reduced price tickets available for British Library Members. Half price tickets for Students, Under 26 and other concession groups.

This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words (25 October – 2 March 2025). Separate ticket for exhibition entry required.  Explore the Medieval Women events series here.

Toby Brothers (MA Education, Literature, Counselling, Psychology) leads the Literary Salon, which she conceived and developed in London and Paris. Her experience includes teaching literary seminars on themes ranging from creative writing to women’s literature and film, from Black American Literature to world religions and wisdom traditions, not to forget Shakespeare, Proust and Joyce. Her students include adults, secondary and primary school pupils. Toby has over 25 years of innovative teaching and seminar experience in France (where she began the Paris Literary Salon in 2004), the USA, Japan and beyond, as well as in the UK, where she founded the London Literary Salon in 2008.

Vivien Kogut (MA Comparative Literature, PhD Literature) has been teaching language and literature to groups of all sizes for the last twenty-five years, first in Brazil and since 2010 in the UK. She is a published poet and translator, and currently teaches at Cambridge University.  For many years, Vivien led groups discussing Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and for the last fifteen years she has been researching, writing and discussing renaissance travel writing, especially involving pirates and indigenous people. She is interested in history and archaeology and passionate about working comparatively, as well as finding innovative ways of reading, writing and teaching.

Jane Wymark (BA Hons Drama, Birmingham University) has worked extensively as an actor on stage and screen. She played Morwenna in the original Poldark series on BBC Television, and Ophelia to Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet at the Old Vic and its subsequent world tour. After a five-year break living abroad (in Dhaka and Copenhagen) Jane returned to acting and is possibly best-known for playing Joyce Barnaby in Midsomer Murders. She has also run drama workshops in schools for the National Theatre’s education department, worked as a continuity announcer for BBC Television and Radio 4, and been a tutor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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