The Twitnam Summer: Friendship, Satire and the Writing of Gulliver’s Travels

by Hester Grant

A rollicking narrative history set during the extraordinary summer of 1726 when Jonathan Swift arrived in London from Dublin, with a draft of Gulliver’s Travels in his bag.

Jonathan Swift settled into his great friend Alexander Pope’s new house on the river at Twickenham (or Twitnam as they liked to call it), and joined by John Gay, the trio of Scriblerius Club writers spent a delightful and creative summer, pushing each other to new satirical heights (The Dunciad and The Beggar’s Opera also ensued), exploring the gardens and houses of their aristocratic friends and thinking up ways to torment Robert Walpole’s corrupt Whig administration without going to jail.

An unlikely threesome in many ways – Swift was 20 years older, and Gay was as large and indolent as Pope was tiny and restless – “the three Yahoos of Twittenham” were unmarried and took great emotional and intellectual succour from their friendship.

The three of them added up to more than the sum of their considerable parts and, as well as being a brilliant evocation of the radical rage, the joy and stench of early eighteenth century life, The Twitnam Summer is also a very moving portrait of male friendship.

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2026

Reviews

[Alice]

This isn't a book to pick up if you are looking for lots of edge-of-your-seat twists and turns, but what it does do is paint a vivid picture of a fascinating period of history that I at least, knew little about. I always enjoy books about writers and their craft, but what I found most fascinating in this book was the way that three men prioritised their friendship, with a strength that felt almost anti-establishment. It also effectively captured the melancholy that comes with the passage of time, and the wish that, with luck, a person might once in their lifetime experience that most fleeting of things - a perfect summer.

[Jason Wilson]

It’s 1726 and the writers Swift, Pope and John Gay hang out touring England and straddling contemporary politics as their works including Gulliver’s Travels - a more political work that adaptions and children’s versions often show- come into being. A delightful slice of literary history .