Membership

 Today I became a fully paid-up, card-carrying member of the Johnson Society (headquarters the Johnson Birthplace Museum, Breadmarket Street, Lichfield). Along with my membership card and welcoming letter came a copy of the Transactions for 2021, which I look forward to dipping into. It includes pieces on the planting of the latest clone of 'Johnson's Willow' (a tree near his father's parchment works of which Johnson was especially fond), with a new commemorative poem; on the inventor and maker John Rowley, another great Lichfieldian; on Johnson's prose style; on his attitudes to women; on Hester Piozzi's marginalia in Johnson's Letters ('many Bitter recollections'); and much else. As these volumes retail in the museum shop for £5, I have already recouped half the membership fee. I look forward to the lectures scheduled to take place in Lichfield, and to the birthday celebrations and the annual supper. I don't belong to many societies – indeed scarcely any – but I'm glad to have joined this one.