What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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The Chosen is Elizabeth Lowry’s acclaimed new novel about the days immediately following the death of Thomas Hardy’s first wife Emma in 1912, and of Hardy’s writing of Tess of the d’Urbervilles some twenty years earlier.
The best-selling author paints a sad picture of Thomas Hardy’s marriage to first wife, Emma. It questions whether Florence (later his second wife) was scheming or just in love with a married man. And quotes Emma’s secret diaries, so painful for Hardy to read that he later destroyed them. But what is fact and what is fiction? In this talk, Elizabeth talks about her inspiration for the novel and the challenges of reimagining the past.
A love story and a ghost story set in the landscape of Hardy’s Wessex, The Chosen is also the story of how some of the greatest love poems in English, the ‘Poems of 1912–13’, came to exist.
You can book this online talk here, £5 per screen.
Woodcut image by Robin Mackenzie.
Elizabeth Lowry is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Her second novel, Dark Water, was longlisted for the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Elizabeth lives and works in Oxford.
The Chosen was a Financial Times Best Summer Books of 2022 choice.
‘Delicate, finely judged and full of insight’ – Hilary Mantel
To read more, please visit Elizabeth’s website.
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!