Conversations with a Curator: Tim Jerrome

The Museum of English Rural Life is hosting another one of its curator-led online talks on Thursday 5 November, and this one centres on the English novelist Sylvia Townsend-Warner. It's led by Tim Jerrome, a PhD researcher who'll spend the hour talking through Warner's life and work, and the life she shared with her partner Valentine Ackland in rural Dorset.

At the heart of the session is an artwork by Joyce Finzi, Sylvia Townsend-Warner (1960, graphite on paper, UAC/10244, © Finzi Trust), which Jerrome will use as a starting point to look at Warner's place in the landscape. It's a graphite drawing, so it's a quiet, detailed piece of work to build a whole hour around, and the talk will move from that single image out into the wider story of Warner's writing and her time in Dorset.

The talk is part of the museum's free online series, where curators, conservators and scholars take the lead on different parts of the collection, and it sits within the broader 'What's On' programme of talks and seminars they run throughout the year. If you've got a thing for 20th-century English novelists or for the way a single object can open up a whole life, this is exactly the kind of thing the series is for.

It runs from 19:30 to 20:30 on Thursday 5 November, and since it's online you can join from wherever you are. It's free, but you do need to book your place in advance.