A Literary Escape to Yorkshire

A literary escape is a book club that ends somewhere. Ten women read five books together online from May, then meet in Yorkshire in October and talk about the last one in a small historic house we have to ourselves. I come with you. Most literary travel runs the wrong way round: you pay, you land, and you spend two days working out who you actually get on with. Sometimes you spend a week being polite. Here, from May 2027, the ten of you read one book a month, with two video calls a month, one public and free, one private to the cohort. By October you know who makes the sharpest observations and who notices what everyone else missed. You're not walking in alone. I'll be there the whole week, and not as a guide. I lived in Killinghall, just outside Harrogate, for several years. I know which lane gives the best view at dusk and which pub has the corner table worth claiming. The reading list is built for this trip. Two books are settled: a Brontë, read before we stand in the room where she wrote, and Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published six months before she disappeared and turned up in a Harrogate hotel we take tea in. This isn't a tour of Yorkshire. It's a route through four women who made a life of their own inside walls built to prevent it: the Brontës at Haworth, Lady Anne Clifford at Skipton, Anne Lister at York, Agatha Christie at Harrogate. The Brontë Parsonage and an hour on the moor. Fountains Abbey twice, once in daylight and once at night with a choir in the cellarium. Across the North York Moors to Whitby, the 199 steps and fish and chips at the bottom. York your own way, with lunch at Bettys. Tea in Harrogate and the women-only session at the 1897 Turkish Baths. And a last night in London at Shakespeare's Globe: whatever's on is what we see; the point is the building. In the summer of 1994 I sat on the grass at Fountains Abbey one evening, eating a picnic, listening to choral singers. I can't tell you one other thing I did that month. That's why the week is bookended by Fountains. I'm not promising you a nice week; I'm trying to hand you an evening you'll still be describing in 2059. This is for you if you're travelling alone and want to arrive actually knowing people, if you're a serious reader, and if you've been the reliable one for a long time and want nine days where nobody needs anything from you. It isn't a spa weekend, and it isn't every hour accounted for. Ten is intentionally small, and it stays that way.