A few weeks ago our latest Triumph of Love course took place here at Novel English! This time the course centred around Jane Austen, one of the most important and brilliant of our female English novelists. We looked in particular at ‘Emma’ and the four day course proved to be as busy and productive as ever! The children had a wonderful time indulging in all things 19th Century, including baking traditional Sally Lunn tea cakes, creating and writing menu cards (using traditional ink pens!) for their Austenesque tea party on the last day and playing plenty of badminton which in Austen’s time would have been called Shuttlecock! The weather was wonderful, and so the participants had plenty of opportunity to visit the beach and go on picnics during their stay. In addition to picnic food, the children were lucky enough to arrive just as blackberry season was beginning and so we had blackberry and rhubarb crumble for pudding after dinner!

On the last day the children set up their tea party for their parents, and what a fine one it was! The table was decorated with wild flowers and roses, dainty silver jugs and porcelain plates and teacups. The magnificent silver teapot was polished for the occasion and so took pride of place next to the Sally Lunn tea cakes, delicate fairy cakes and blackberry and lemon scones!

The beautiful weather meant that the tea party was held outdoors and the participants and parents left after a good dose of sunshine!

As always, we would like to thank the participants and their parents for joining us on our Jane Austen adventures and we hope to see you all back at Novel English in the future!