The Twitnam Summer

The Upside-Down World of Three Friends and the Writing of Gulliver’s Travels

By: Hester Grant

Narrated by: Lucy Scott

A rollicking narrative history set during the extraordinary summer of 1726 when Jonathan Swift arrived in London from Dublin, with a draft of Gulliver’s Travels in his bag.

Jonathan Swift settled into his great friend Alexander Pope’s new house on the river at Twickenham (or Twitnam as they liked to call it), and joined by John Gay, the trio of Scriblerius Club writers spent a delightful and creative summer, pushing each other to new satirical heights (The Dunciad and The Beggar’s Opera also ensued), exploring the gardens and houses of their aristocratic friends and thinking up ways to torment Robert Walpole’s corrupt Whig administration without going to jail.

An unlikely threesome in many ways – Swift was 20 years older, and Gay was as large and indolent as Pope was tiny and restless – “the three Yahoos of Twittenham” were unmarried and took great emotional and intellectual succour from their friendship.

The three of them added up to more than the sum of their considerable parts and, as well as being a brilliant evocation of the radical rage, the joy and stench of early eighteenth century life, The Twitnam Summer is also a very moving portrait of male friendship.

©2026 Hester Grant

Critic reviews

Praise for The Good Sharps (2020):

'A luminous and detailed account of the lives of this unique family and the turbulent times they navigated … Striking and poignant' David Olusoga, Sunday Times

'Group biography at its best … The Sharps leap off the page and into your heart' Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess

'An account of lives fulfilled and well-lived, narrated with exceptional insight, warmth and humour' Ariane Banks, Spectator

'Grant skilfully weaves her vast knowledge of 18th-century English history and the complex story of a large family into a fluent narrative… It's the intertwining in their lives of the radical and the typical, the ordinary and the extraordinary which Grant's book so beautifully reveals' Ivan Hewett, Daily Telegraph