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The Twitnam Summer
- Author
- Hester Grant
- Narrator
- Lucy Scott
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 4 June 2026
- Run Time
- 10 hours 9 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
'A rollicking, brilliant book' GARETH RUSSELL
'Hugely enjoyable' SUNDAY TIMES
'Meticulous … warm and engaging' FINANCIAL TIMES
A rollicking narrative history set during the extraordinary summer of 1726 when Jonathan Swift arrived in London from Dublin, with a draft of Gulliver’s Travels in his bag.
Jonathan Swift settled into his great friend Alexander Pope’s new house on the river at Twickenham (or Twitnam as they liked to call it), and joined by John Gay, the trio of Scriblerus Club writers spent a delightful and creative summer, pushing each other to new satirical heights (The Dunciad and The Beggar’s Opera also ensued), exploring the gardens and houses of their aristocratic friends and thinking up ways to torment Robert Walpole’s corrupt Whig administration without going to jail.
An unlikely threesome in many ways – Swift was 20 years older, and Gay was as large and indolent as Pope was tiny and restless – “the three Yahoos of Twittenham” were unmarried and took great emotional and intellectual succour from their friendship.
The three of them added up to more than the sum of their considerable parts and, as well as being a brilliant evocation of the radical rage, the joy and stench of early eighteenth century life, The Twitnam Summer is also a very moving portrait of male friendship.
Critics Review
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'Hugely enjoyable… the genius of Grant’s book is that by focusing on a single short period — Swift’s journey from Dublin to London with his manuscript, and his summer months with his friends Alexander Pope and John Gay — she is able to bring early Georgian England triumphantly to life… The real star of Grant’s book, however, is not a person but a place — Georgian England, fizzing with life and energy… She makes [Gulliver's Travels] sound fresh and exciting, both a product of its time and an enduring lesson in the follies and hypocrisies of the human condition' Sunday Times
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'Meticulous in her scholarship, warm and engaging in her prose, Grant makes us see the value of what Pope called “a few lasting, dependable friendships” as a spur to courage and a stimulus to wit' Financial Times
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'Compellingly written and packed with intriguing details…The Twitnam Summer is an engaging introduction to Pope, Swift and Gay and a reminder that if ever there was a time when we needed writers of such calibre, curiosity and courage it is now' Spectator
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'Hester Grant’s The Twitnam Summer ingeniously frames its publication in the context of the summer Jonathan Swift and the playwright John Gay spent at the home of their mutual friend Alexander Pope in 1726. Swift, Gay and Pope — what a triumvirate… Grant gives us an engaging exploration of male friendship' The Standard
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'A rollicking, brilliant book. It feels as if the reader has been invited to the dinner parties and firesides of the hard-drinkers and – thinkers of the Georgian era. I absolutely loved it' Gareth Russell, author of Queen James
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'A very fine piece of biographical work, erudite but accessible […] and very engaging in the way it gets one alongside the personalities and brings insight on their writing. It is great to be be taught or reminded where modern satirical practice really began. Hester does that so very astutely and empathically, and yet never didactically' John Stubbs, author of Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel
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Details
- Author
- Hester Grant
- Narrator
- Lucy Scott
- Duration
- 10 hours 9 minutes
- Release Date
- 4 June 2026
- ISBN
- 9780008700010
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Biography: writers, European history
Synopsis
'A rollicking, brilliant book' GARETH RUSSELL 'Hugely enjoyable' SUNDAY TIMES 'Meticulous … warm and engaging' FINANCIAL TIMES A rollicking narrative history set during the extraordinary summer of 1726 when Jonathan Swift arrived in London from Dublin, with a draft of Gulliver’s Travels in his bag. Jonathan Swift settled into his great friend Alexander Pope’s new house on the river at Twickenham (or Twitnam as they liked to call it), and joined by John Gay, the trio of Scriblerus Club writers spent a delightful and creative summer, pushing each other to new satirical heights (The Dunciad and The Beggar’s Opera also ensued), exploring the gardens and houses of their aristocratic friends and thinking up ways to torment Robert Walpole’s corrupt Whig administration without going to jail. An unlikely threesome in many ways – Swift was 20 years older, and Gay was as large and indolent as Pope was tiny and restless – “the three Yahoos of Twittenham” were unmarried and took great emotional and intellectual succour from their friendship. The three of them added up to more than the sum of their considerable parts and, as well as being a brilliant evocation of the radical rage, the joy and stench of early eighteenth century life, The Twitnam Summer is also a very moving portrait of male friendship.
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