The Twitnam Summer by Hester Grant review – Swift, Gay and Pope’s season in the sun

A noble, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to argue that Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay spending a few weeks in 1726 together was a momentous turning point in each man’s career In 1726 Jonathan Swift, dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, crossed the Irish sea with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. Beneath the child-friendly chatter about a sailor marooned on an island full of tiny Lilliputians, the book was a scabrous satire on the corruption of publi...

By Kathryn Hughes