We're all volunteers as well. Our venues include friendly cafés, Headingley Library, the HEART Centre on Bennett Road and the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road. Headingley has connections with many writers: Arthur Ransome (born in Headingley), J R R Tolkien (lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 2
5), Alan Bennett (lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners), George Orwell (used to stay in Headingley with his stepsister and her husband Humpy Dakin), T S Eliot (his mother-in-law lived in Weetwood Lane), William Fryer Harvey (brought up in Spring Bank), Trevor Griffiths (lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace), Jon Silkin (the first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road), Sir Geoffrey Hill (lived in Shire Oak Road), Peter Redgrove, and Kay Mellor (lives near The Hollies) to name just a small selection. Headingley LitFest 2020, held just before the first lockdown, was the thirteenth, and the second as part of the new Leeds Lit Fest. The next one in the first part of March 2022 will be the fourteenth, and will celebrate Orwell's 'The Road to Wigan Pier' which was partly written during a stay in Headingley.
