A House for Miss Pauline: Diana McCaulay & Sara Collins in Conversation

Thursday 8 October

6.30pm - 8pm (Doors open 6pm)

£27.50

When the stones of her home begin to call out to her, Pauline Sinclair knows she will not live to see her 100th birthday.

We are thrilled to welcome 2026 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize winner Diana McCaulay for a conversation on her brilliant new novel.

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When the stones of her home begin to call out to her in the quiet of the night, Pauline Sinclair knows she will not live to see her 100th birthday.

From educating herself through stolen books to becoming one of the most successful ganja farmers in the area and raising a family, Pauline has lived a life on her own terms in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village.

Yet these whispering walls promise to topple the foundations of her security and exhume Pauline's many buried secrets, including the mysterious disappearance of the man who came to claim the very land on which she built her home, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation.

Compelled to make peace before she dies, Pauline decides to leave the only home she has ever known on a final, desperate mission to uncover truths she could never have imagined.

Lyrical, funny, eerie and profound, A House for Miss Pauline tells a timely and nuanced tale, infused with the patois and natural beauty of Jamaica, which questions who owns the land on which our identities are forged.

A House for Miss Pauline is winner of the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.

‘An evocative and powerful novel of belonging, with a fabulously eccentric protagonist, which complicates everything we assume about colonial history in all the right ways.' Claire Armitstead, 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize Judge

Ticket includes a welcome drink, book signing and a chance to view Dr Johnson's House.

Doors open & welcome drink: 6pm

Talk starts at 6.30pm.

Diana McCaulay

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican environmental activist and the award-winning author of five novels. Winner of the Gold Musgrave Medal, Jamaica's highest award for lifetime achievement across the arts and sciences; twice Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region (in 2022 and in 2012), she has also been shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award, among other nominations, and is the winner of the Watson, Little 50 Prize for unrepresented writers aged 50+.

Sara Collins

Sara is a novelist, screenwriter, and broadcaster.

After studying law at the London School of Economics, she qualified as a barrister in 1994 and worked as a lawyer for seventeen years. In 2016, Sara obtained an MSt in Creative Writing with distinction from Cambridge University, where she was the recipient of the Michael Holroyd prize. She is the author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton, which was published in 2019 by Penguin in the UK and Harper Collins in the US to critical acclaim. The novel was a Times bestseller, has been sold for translation into more than fifteen languages, and made an appearance in 'best of' lists by O, The Oprah Magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, Amazon, Apple, and Essence, to name a few. It was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize, a British Book Award, and won the Costa First Novel Award.

The novel was adapted for television by Drama Republic and ITV in 2023, for which Sara served as screenwriter and an executive producer.

Sara is also a literary critic, writing for The Guardian and The Washington Post, among others. She has been a frequent contributor and guest host on BBC Radio 4, as well as a regular contributor to the Graham Norton Book Club on Audible. Sara co-presented the How To Write A Book podcast produced by Sony Entertainment and Daylight Productions.

She has judged the Betty Trask Prize, the Nero Debut Fiction Prize and the Booker Prize.

Limited capacity. Early booking advised.

Accessibility

There is regrettably no step-free access to Dr Johnson's House.

There are seven steps to access the entrance (with a handrail).

The building is a four-storey townhouse with a staircase between each floor.

There are handrails on each side of the staircase and visitor seating in every room.

Toilets are located down a steep set of stairs.