09/04/2026
April’s weather has offered a glorious, much-needed reminder of the pleasures of being outdoors — long light, blossom, and a renewed appetite for books carried into gardens, parks, and sunny corners.
After a lovely Easter pause, we are delighted to return to a particularly rich run of events here at Books on the Hill 📚
This Sunday 12th brings our Breakfast Book Club — always one of the most convivial mornings in the month, with lively conversation, fresh recommendations, and the irresistible curiosity of hearing what everyone has been reading lately. We are also quietly wondering whether sunshine changes reading habits… perhaps lighter pages, longer novels, or simply books best enjoyed outdoors ☕📖
On 15th April, our Afternoon Lecture turns to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman — a remarkable and unsettling text, widely regarded as an early landmark of American feminist literature, not least for its striking treatment of women’s mental health in the nineteenth century.
Also on the 15th, our Get Into Reading series explores the classics — with the cheerful aim of dismantling the old myth that classic literature must be difficult or forbidding. So often these works remain startlingly immediate, intimate, and recognisable.
Our Text Book Club on 19th April will discuss Silence by Shusaku Endo — a profound work of historical fiction, and one of literature’s most searching meditations on doubt, fellowship, and enduring faith.
On 24th April, we have two Bibliotherapy sessions:
In the morning: Reading Plays for Wellbeing — a course that uses dramatic texts not only to explore character and theme, but also as a way of reflecting on emotion, behaviour, and our own lived experience 🎭
In the afternoon: Advanced Bibliotherapy — a deeper exploration of how books may be thoughtfully curated to help address some of life’s more complex questions. No previous attendance required; all are warmly welcome.
Our Classics Book Club on 30th April turns to Catch-22 by Joseph Heller — hilarious, tragic, razor-sharp, and still unmatched in its satire of military absurdity and human survival.
Continues in comments…
