Our final book club was held on Wednesday 27^th August and focused on Jez Butterworth’s smash hit play Jerusalem, which was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2009. At this session, our usual ‘older readers’ were joined by two of our MA students: Jess Day from the MA in 21^st Century Literature and Alex Bevan from the MA in English Studies. This made for some particularly interesting cross-generational discussions around some of the play’s themes of Englishness, land, identity and belonging.

Some members of the group found the characters’ frequent use of swearing, vulgar talk about sex, and the prolific references to drug taking off-putting. But it was interesting that after listening to an interview with Jez Butterworth, and after watching clips of the play, many of the same group members were able to value the play’s deeper significance. The group also appreciated the charisma of the main character, Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, played mesmerizingly by the great Shakespearean actor, Mark Rylance, and through reading the play aloud and discussing it as a group, there was a much greater recognition of the play’s comedy.

Themes discussed in previous sessions – such as identity, nation, belonging and change – came up again in this session, and readers felt that these themes seemed to be a common preoccupation of twenty-first-century texts. This was an interesting and perhaps provocative text to end the book club on, but although not everyone liked the play, readers were highly engaged with it and enjoyed talking about it!