Redhill & Reigate Social Group

Warwickshire in the 1580s.

Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford-upon-Avon, and the couple have three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith.

The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play entitled Hamlet.

Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, and at its heart, the loss of a beloved child.

Above all, this novel is a stunning portrait of a mother’s grief. As Agnes prepares for Hamnet’s burial, when she goes to his grave or can’t bear to part with his clothes, we all feel the depth of her grief.

Hamnet has won many awards, including the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction, and has garnered enormous literary acclaim.

Watch the Epsom Derby for free with a picnic.
Meet at Furlong 3 on the hill. Cross the track and walk down to the Grandstand. Bring your chairs, drinks and money for your bets with the bookies.
I'll be there from 12.00 to keep the space.

It’s Belfast and the year is 1975, at the height of sectarian violence.

Cushla Lavery is 24 and works as a primary teacher in a school on the outskirts of the city. She also does the odd shift in the family pub, which is frequented by leering and aggressive British soldiers. Here she meets Michael Agnew: handsome, middle-aged, sophisticated, but married.

Michael is a Protestant barrister who defends young Catholic men who have been unjustly arrested. He invites Cushla to an “Irish language evening” with his bourgeois-bohemian friends, liberals who toy with pro-Republican politics.

Thus commences an affair that Cushla must keep secret from everyone, on pain – literally – of death.

This novel was a number one best-seller (The Times) and winner of numerous awards over 2022 and 2023.