Join St Margaret’s House Book Club for an engaging evening of conversation
The St Margaret's House Book Club will next meet on Monday 15th December from 6.30pm when we will be sharing thoughts on Barry Unsworth's Morality Play in the Anson Room. Come through the main front door and ring the bell for someone to come and collect you.
For our December meeting, attendees are invited to join our festive book swap. In order to take part, please choose a pre-read book (there are no expectations for anyone to go out and buy something new), wrap it up and mark it with three words to describe the contents. Each person who brings a book will get to choose another to take home. Likewise, please feel free to bring Christmassy snacks along.
About the book:
The time is the fourteenth century. The place is a small town in rural England, and the setting a snow-laden winter. A small troupe of actors accompanied by Nicholas Barber, a young renegade priest, prepare to play the drama of their lives.
Breaking the longstanding tradition of only performing religious plays, the group's leader, Martin, wants them to enact the murder that is foremost in the townspeoples minds. A young boy has been found dead, and a mute-and-deaf girl has been arrested and stands to be hanged for the murder. As members of the troupe delve deeper into the circumstances of the murder, they find themselves entering a political and class feud that may undo them. Intriguing and suspenseful, Morality Play is an exquisite work that captivates by its power, while opening up the distant past as new to the reader.
This is the final book in our 2025 book selection, where we have alternated between two themes - animal protagonists, and genre fiction (a different genre for each of the 6 months of this theme).
For 2026, we will read a book written by a female author in each decade from the 1900s to 2010s, in chronological order. For those wishing to get a head start, in January, our book published between 1900-1909 is The Farringdons by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. It is available for free on Project Gutenburg, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19798
Contact: If you have any questions regarding this session, please email programming@stmargaretshouse.org.uk
Venue: The Anson Room at St Margaret’s House, 21 Old Ford Road — E2 9PL
Access: If you have any access needs of which we should be aware, please get in touch with us on 020 8980 2092 or email emily@stmargaretshouse.org.uk so we can arrange this for you. Entry to The Anson Room is not step-free.
Date: Monday 15th December
Time: 6.30pm
Ticket: FREE (booking is essential)