The Prentice Boy with Ray Rumsby (online)
Come along to this online talk and hear Ray Rumsby speak about his book, The Prentice Boy.
The Prentice Boy with Ray Rumsby
This is an online event (Zoom webinar). A link will be sent out on the day of the event from Eventbrite.
Free
In 1820 London, landscape artist William Daniell hires Jesse Cloud to be his apprentice. But their stormy east coast tour reveals all is not as it seems. Both William and his prentice must make their own inner journeys to expose others’ betrayals and explore their own possibilities. Faced with bankruptcy, starvation looms, friendships fragment. The artist must learn how to see and his prentice must learn how to survive – while the truth shatters all.
Join author Ray Rumsby and explore England both lost and familiar.
The story bears witness to social reform, early women’s suffrage, the emancipation of slaves, gender & class mobility, and shows how our contemporary concerns have a long history.
About the speaker
During a career in education, Ray Rumsby wrote several articles for academic journals and his work for a national charity led to a PhD. In 2013 Ray began a campaign to rescue a local bookshop scheduled for closure. A group of volunteers formed a new, not-for-profit community bookshop, and Kett’s Books has evolved successfully ever since.
In 2016 a professional theatre company toured with Ray’s dramatization of the life and work of George Crabbe. Crabbe’s 1810 poem Peter Grimes tells the tragic story of three apprentices ‘farmed out’ from a London workhouse.
This led to the creation of Jesse Cloud, a homeless teenager fleeing the workhouse and one of the central characters of the book he is presenting in this talk, The Prentice Boy.