Jennifer Selway, journalist (including at the Daily Express) and playwright, lives in Petersfield. She has recently completed an MA in Medieval Literature (50 years from her first degree) and studied the significance of The Bed.

In an entertaining talk at the Petersfield Bookshop on Thursday 6 June. she quoted Shakespeare, Chaucer, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, as well as displaying paintings from 600 to 700 years ago that prominently featured beds and bedding, as symbols of growing wealth (bequeathed in wills) and status, the common practice of strangers bed sharing, but also how the bed had a public side ; as a meeting place as well as a symbol of power and authority.

Jennifer spoke to Mike Waddington after her talk.