AGM 2026: President’s Report – Janey Runci
January 3, 2026
It always seems particularly fitting that the first HHR Society event for the calendar year is the birthday picnic tea here in Chiltern. In many ways it is our main event, this chance to meet and celebrate our shared interest in the writer and her work. It struck me when I was preparing for today and considering our time last year in Chiltern and in Leipzig in Germany that there was a link between the two places. We visit both these places to honour the writer, and both of these places inspired some of her most powerful and moving fiction – in the case of Leipzig her first novel Maurice Guest, and in the case of Chiltern in the third volume of the Richard Mahony trilogy – Ultima Thule.