The Winter Term course led by communications faculty members Tom Nelson and Don Grady had a brush with literary greatness in England.
The group was fortunate to meet Virginia Nicholson at her Sussex farmhouse in the southeast of England. Nicholson is the direct descendant of many Bloomsbury circle literary figures, including Virginia Woolf. Nicholson is herself a well known literary figure authoring many books pertinent to the World War I period, including “Among the Bohemians.”
It was this book that brought the students and Nicholson together. Assigned to be read in a classroom as part of a study-abroad preparation, the book focuses on idyllic pre-World War I life among young people. Nicholson and her family invited the students and professors Tom Nelson and Don Grady to an afternoon of tea and cake while she entertained questions pertinent to the study of the golden years before the Great War that stand in contrast to the cruel war years themselves.