This event will take place in the British Library Knowledge Centre Pigott Theatre. It will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person (physical) or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links for the online version will be sent out shortly before the event.

Medieval women from all kinds of backgrounds travelled far and wide. Some travelled for healing, others for fertility, or for spiritual enrichment. The first autobiography in the English language shows Margery Kempe on multiple pilgrimages, domestically and internationally, and her travels bring the intimate lives of medieval women into vivid focus for a modern audience. 

This session examines the origins of a tradition that has never stopped evolving, bringing together a panel of especially well-travelled experts. Join them in navigating the lives of medieval women on the move, tracing their tracks to the present day in an exploration of pilgrimages old and new; sacred and profane.

Diane Watt is an award-winning writer and academic. She is the author of several books on medieval literature, most recently God’s Own Gentlewoman: The Life of Margaret Paston (Icon Books). She is currently Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Surrey and Co-Director of the Sex ,Gender and Sexualities Research Centre. She is also joint Editor-in-Chief of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages.

Sara Wheeler Sara Wheeler is a bestselling and award-winning writer of nonfiction books about travel and travellers. They include Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (Jonathan Cape UK, 1996), The Magnetic North (Jonathan Cape UK, 2011) and Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age (Jonathan Cape UK, 2019). Sara is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is published in the New York Times, Vanity Fair and others.

Marion Turner holds the J.R.R. Tolkien Chair of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her last two books – Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019) and The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton, 2023) – both won multiple prizes. Last year, she curated the exhibition Chaucer Here and Now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. 

Kate Arnold bases her music around the hammered dulcimer and other medieval and Renaissance stringed instruments. Classically trained on violin and vocals, she previously fronted ‘punk baroque’ band Fear of the Forest. Kate is following her two-part electro-medievalist album, ROTA FORTUNAE, with a new album drawing on material encountered during her PhD research on medieval French and Arabic songs.

The discussion will be chaired by Shazia Jagot who contributed to the Medieval Women exhibition and catalogue. She is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Global Literature at the University of York, working on connections and entanglements between medieval Europe and the Islamic World. She is currently working on a monograph on Geoffrey Chaucer and his Arabic-Islamic ‘sources’.

This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words 
(25 October – 2 March 2025) 

Doors and Bar open at 18:00. If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event. Followed by a book signing. 

Half price tickets available for Members, Students, Under 26 and other concession groups. 

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