At Literature Cambridge we have a regular lecture to support refugee charities. Since 2024, we have also supported charities who are helping the people of Gaza, and who are working for peace.

We are offering some extra lectures live online. All proceeds to be shared between three charities:

• Oxfam Gaza and Lebanon Campaign (food and medical relief to Gaza and Lebanon)
• Standing Together (Palestinian and Jewish joint campaign for peace and equality); updates on their Instagram page
• Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group (helping refugees in the UK)

Since 2024 we have raised £3,011, shared between the charities. Very many thanks for your support.

Why pay the charities directly? Because, if you donate directly to the charities, they get the full sum. Whereas if you book via our website, 20% VAT (Value Added Tax) is deducted from the payment.

Please email us with a copy of the donation receipt and we will add you to the attendance list. If you have any problems doing this, please let us know and we will help to sort it out, if we can.

Thank you.

Timing: please note that bookings close at 5.30 pm on the day of the lecture. We can’t monitor the mailbox once we are in the zoom call, so please book before 5.30 pm to be sure that we see your email. Thank you!

Lectures for Peace 2026

Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet? with Alison Hennegan

Saturday 7 March 2026, 6.00-8.00 pm UK time.

For many people the name of Siegfried Sassoon is inseparably linked with that of Wilfred Owen, and together they remain probably the best known English poets of the Great War. But when in 1918 Sassoon published his most famous volume of war poetry, ‘Counter Attack’, he already had twenty-five years of authorship behind him, for he had been writing poems from the age of seven.

Although he would often make gentle fun of his very early pre-war poems, many of them are in fact remarkable for their focus on themes and emotions particularly associated with his ‘war’ poetry. The very young Sassoon was already ‘haunted’ by death, ghosts, a strong and constant sense of human mortality, and a vision of the world which could encompass both the nightmarishly deformed and the numinously beautiful. This lecture explores the young Sassoon as ‘a war poet in the making’.

To book, please make a donation to one or more of the charities via the buttons below, to a total of:

£33.00 full price (£11.00 to each charity)
£30.00 students and unwaged (£10.00 to each charity)
£30.00 CAMcard holders (£10.00 to each charity)

We suggest that people support all 3 charities equally, but it is up to you to decide how to distribute your donation. Links to the charities’ websites for donations:

• Oxfam Gaza and Lebanon Campaign (food and medical relief to Gaza and Lebanon)
• Standing Together (Palestinian and Jewish joint campaign for equality and peace and against the Occupation); updates on their Instagram page.
• Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group (helping refugees in the UK)

Please email us with a copy of the donation receipt and we will add you to the attendance list. If you have any problems doing this, please let us know and we will help to sort it out.

Thank you so much for your support.

HD, Bid Me to Live (1960) with Trudi Tate

Join us to study Bid Me to Live, HD’s powerful novel of civilian life during the First World War.
Sunday 7 June 2026, 6.00-7.00 pm British Summer Time.

Close Reading Poetry of the Irish Peace Process with Mariah Whelan

We explore how the poets of Ireland contributed to the remarkable peace process which, after decades of hard work, brought peace to Ireland through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Sunday 11 October 2026, 2.00-4.00 pm British Summer Time

Further details to follow soon.

Thanks to Claire Davison, Karina Jakubowicz and Trudi Tate for their Lectures for Peace in 2024 and 2025.

lectures for peace 2026

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