On Tuesday 14 January 2025, our literary journey to Canterbury began under the guidance of David.

We started with an introduction to the life of the Geoffrey Chaucer whose life is well documented. He held a number of interesting posts, some of which resulted in him travelling to France and Italy. His homes in London are also well documented. Towards the end of his career, he even served as a Member of Parliament for Kent, which led to a move to Greenwich. His plan had been to write 4 stories for each of the pilgrims – 2 each for the journey there, and 2 each for the return journey – making a total of just over 100 tales. He even named one of the pilgrims ‘Chaucer’ so that his namesake could comment on the other pilgrims within the text! However, the task was never completed, and only some 24 tales are accessible today.

Most of the pilgrims are introduced, one at a time, in the General Prologue, and we got as far as ‘meeting’ the Knight, his son the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress who came with four supporters and the Monk. Chaucer describes the pilgrims is such clear terms that we know what he thinks of them and he describes them in great detail.

We will meet more pilgrims as the next session which is scheduled for 28 January 2025 at 10:00am.