Writers in 1920s Tahiti

Tuesday 1 July 2025 at 2.00 pm at the Lowther Pavilion. Guests may attend the lecture – £10 pp (pay on door)

(Please note that because of parking restrictions due to the Lytham Festival this lecture is on a Tuesday and not the usual Wednesday)

Lecturer: Simon Keable-Elliott

This is Simon Keable-Elliott’s first visit to The Arts Society Fylde. A graduate of Durham University, Simon was Head of Politics and Director of Model United Nations at Royal Russell School for 25 years. He now works as a writer, researcher, and lecturer. His first book Utterly Immoral: Robert Keable and His Scandalous Novel was published in November 2022, and he had also written articles for The Church Times, The History News Network, The Beresford Family Society Magazine, The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (to be published next year) and Genealogy Today. He is a regular speaker at events run by Western Front Associations, U3As and Family History Societies.

More information about Simon Keable-Elliott is available on his website.

The Lecture

Following in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin, Robert Louis Stephenson, Rupert Brooke and Somerset Maugham a number of English-speaking writers settled in Tahiti in the 1920s. My talk looks at what drew writers like Robert Keable, James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff and Dean Frisbie to Tahiti; their work on the island and their enduring legacy.

Caption: Section of  Edward Penfield poster for Hall’s memoir, High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918). Wikimedia Commons