Ross Hall

In January 1766, fleeing persecution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau arrived in England with his long-suffering companion Thérèse Levasseur. While resident for some eighteen months in the Staffordshire village of Wootton, Rousseau began and may have completed Part One of The Confessions. It was an unhappy time for all concerned. Rousseau was in great physical discomfort and psychological torment. Deeply paranoid, he believed that friends old and new - led by his benefactor, the philosopher David Hume, who had accompanied him on his journey from France to England - were part of an international conspiracy to discredit him. This strange and difficult sojourn is brilliantly reimagined by Andrew Key in the pages of Ross Hall.