Dr Ella Westland – Reading Group Don’t Look Now and Not After Midnight

Join Dr Ella Westland for an informal reading group discussion of two stories by Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now and Not After Midnight. The reading group will be a relaxed and informal opportunity for sharing ideas. Participants should have read both books, no further preparation is necessary. Just bring yourself, your copy of the stories, and your enthusiasm for du Maurier!

When Ella Westland moved to Cornwall in 1989, on taking up a lectureship at the University of Exeter, she continued to publish on feminist issues and Victorian literature (her Harvard doctoral thesis was on Charles Dickens). But she quickly grew fascinated by representations of Cornwall and began collaborating with the University’s Institute of Cornish Studies, editing a collection on Cornwall: The Cultural Construction of Place (1997) and publishing articles on Cornwall’s  romanticisation and D.H. Lawrence’s passion for West Penwith. An enthusiast for the work of Daphne du Maurier, Ella was one of the founders of the annual Daphne du Maurier Festival, making radio and television appearances, and organising academic conferences to coincide with the first festival in 1997 and the centenary festival in 2007. She contributed to Virago’s Daphne du Maurier Companion (2007) and brought out Reading Daphne: A Guide to the Writing of Daphne du Maurier (2007). She also wrote the introduction to the Virago edition of Rule Britannia (2004), the novel that drew unexpected media attention after Britain’s referendum on EU membership in 2016.