Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is famed throughout the world for her murder mystery stories: 66 novels and fourteen short story collections, featuring some of the most enduring characters the genre has ever produced. She also wrote poetry and Romance stories as Mary Westmacott, as well as a number of plays for the stage and for broadcast. She…
Keep reading
Jules Verne and Amiens
“I am settling in Amiens, a wise and polite town, of equal temperament. The society there is cordial and literate. It is close to Paris … without the unbearable noise and sterile agitation.” – letter from Jules Verne to Charles Wallut, 1871 Amiens is a beautiful city. The high-Gothic cathedral dominates the town, and little…
Keep reading
Sandycove
Literary Britain takes a trip to the seaside Sandycove is a gorgeous little seaside town in the suburbs of Dublin. During my trip to Dublin this spring, I decided to take a train down the coast to discover the little town that James Joyce once called home. Leaving the train station, you could be in…
Keep reading
We Do Things Differently Here
A walk around Manchester in search of libraries and pubs Mrs. P and I love a city break. As my wife has a particular interest in shopping, she is able to indulge her love of artisanal stores, whilst I wander about looking at interesting things and finding out about the city’s literary heritage. We were…
Keep reading
The Beatles
I was late. The minibus was already at the stop. I did something I very rarely do and broke into a run. I was the last one there. I was shown into a minibus that, at first glance, appeared to have no spare seats in it. The driver indicated a space at the back that…
Keep reading
“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses, for honest men and bonnie lasses”
Robert Burns was born in Alloway, near Ayr on January 25th, 1759. For the first years of his short life, he lived in a cosy but humble cottage, which he shared with his expanding family and their cattle, who also shared the small space. The house has been preserved by the National Trust for Scotland…
Keep reading
Lichfield
Lichfield is a pleasant little midlands town. In fact, I’ve liked all the little towns I’ve visited in this part of the world. There is some grubby, late 20th Century development of course, but pre-victorian building dominates. When we visited, on a bank holiday Monday in 2022, the town was buzzing.There was nary a parking…
Keep reading
The Shire
Birmingham is not necessarily the first place you’d think of to be the inspiration for an archetypal English village. In fact, when people discovered I was spending a week there, they would ask “why?” in a bewildered tone. I was on the trail of one of our greatest fantasy authors, who spent his childhood in…
Keep reading
Blue Remembered Hills
Alfred Edward Housman is best remembered today for A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of poems celebrating the English countryside. He is seen as one of the first poets to embody a sense of ‘Englishness’ which came to dominate the Edwardian age. He was born in Fockbury in Worcestershire in 1859. He was one of seven…
Keep reading
Newstead! Fast-falling, once resplendent dome!
In the little town of Hucknall, nestling in the forest of East Nottinghamshire, is the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. A pleasant church, quite grand, indicating Hucknall’s prosperous past as a local trading centre. It nestles among the trees standing imperiously above the market place. There is much of interest in the church, but all…
Keep reading
Eastwood
I lived in that house from the age of 8 to 16, andI know that view better than any in the world … that is the country of my heart.
Keep reading
Once a Rebel, Always a Rebel
Nottingham has a reputation as a rebellious city. They supported the Parliamentarian cause in the Civil War and stood up for Chartism, women’s suffrage and battles for worker’s rights were fought on its streets. Its hero is a Saxon who stood up to his Norman overlords. Nottingham people continue to have a rebellious streak. The…
Keep reading
The Tolkien Triangle
The name given to the roughly triangular, Eastern part of Yorkshire bounded by Flamborough Head to the North, the Yorkshire Wolds to the West and the Humber to the South. To the East, the land peters out and fades into the sea, the long spit of Spurn head reaching out into the Humber to separate…
Keep reading
By the Tide of Humber
“Had we but world enough and time,This coyness, Lady, were no crime,We would sit down, and think, which wayTo walk, and pass our long love’s day.Thou by the Indian Ganges’ sideShould’st rubies find; I by the tideof Humber would complain.” Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress We crossed the Humber bridge mid-morning in October, the…
Keep reading
Out to where the Essex Marsh…
It is always an absolute pleasure to drive through drive through Essex. Despite the popular media image of the county, it is heart-achingly beautiful, with it’s pretty little villages with chocolate box thatched cottages. Mrs. P and I, along with a couple of young friends of ours, went touring this much overlooked county last summer.…
Keep reading
A Port Without Trade
Kirkcudbright, (or ‘Kirkubree’) is a very picturesque, small fishing town on the South Coast of Galloway in Scotland. Daniel Defoe, when visiting this area in 1778, described it as: … a pleasant situation, and yet nothing pleasant to be seen. Here is a harbour without ships, a port without trade, a fishery without nets, a…
Keep reading
Queen of the South
Dumfries, the ‘Queen of the South’: important trading town on the river Nith, the administrative centre and foremost town in Dumfries and Galloway. It has, over the years, been home to many people of note, including JM Barrie, who schooled at Dumfries Academy, and John Laurie, who played Private Frasier in Dad’s Army (“we’re all…
Keep reading
Melrose to Dumfries
It is late July and I am sitting in the lounge bar of George and Abbotsford Hotel, in Melrose. We had ended up here after traveling across country from Alnwick, stopping for a very pleasant afternoon at Abbotsford. I was having a pint and taking in the scenery: it’s obviously a pub that loves its…
Keep reading
Abbotsford
Abbotsford is a rather grand, gothic baronial house, just outside of Melrose in the Scottish Borders. It was built by Sir Walter Scott, the famed novelist, friend of Wordsworth and favourite of Queen Victoria. It’s often said that Scott invented the idea of ‘Scottishness’, with his Romantic nostalgia for the Jacobite rebellion, with tartan clad…
Keep reading
And so here’s Rugby at last
I didn’t have very much time to spend in Rugby but I was determined to visit as the little midlands town was home to one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, along with a great deal more literary history, much of it connected to the large public school that dominates the town. We…
Keep reading
My old, old home
Nuneaton! The very name is redolent of exotic holidays on sun kissed beaches, laying on fine white coral sand and sipping cocktails beneath tropical sunsets. It is actually quite a pleasant little Midlands town, complete with quirky local museum in a lovely town centre park and a love, bordering on obsession, for their best-known novelist.…
Keep reading
Why, Coventry!
I’ve always liked Coventry. I first came here for a work conference at the University of Warwick. A slow afternoon had me catching a bus into town and taking a look around. In the 1940s, Coventry was home to a number of light engineering and armament factories. Between 1940 and 1941 the Luftwaffe attempted to…
Keep reading
From over Leamington Spa
She died in an upstairs bedroom,By the light of the evening star,That shone through the plate glass windowFrom over Leamington Spa Sir John Betjeman, Death in Leamington Well, I’m back. It feels good to be back on the road again after so long behind closed doors. I hope I will gather enough information to see…
Keep reading
Cast by Fortune on a Frowning Coast
In which I discover the literature inspired by Suffolk’s remote stretch of coastline…
Keep reading
Harlington
When travelling around Bedfordshire last year, on the trail of John Bunyan, there was one place I overlooked. Harlington in Bedfordshire is a tiny village but was the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in Bunyan’s story. It was here that he was arrested and put on trial. In order for us to…
Keep reading
Beware the stinking fish
“Beware my Laura (she would often say) Beware of the insipid Vanities and idle Dissipations of the Metropolis of England; Beware of the unmeaning Luxuries of Bath and of the stinking fish of Southampton.” Jane Austen, Love and Friendship Summer last year saw Mrs. P and I travel the country in search of Jane Austen.…
Keep reading
Amwell’s distant bow’rs
In which I reminisce about the old days when we were allowed outside…
Keep reading
William Blake Exhibition
Literary Britain contributor Emma Pearce reviews her recent visit to the Tate Gallery.
Keep reading
Super Cowper
William Cowper (yes, it is pronounced “Cooper”), born in 1731, was an early Romantic poet. He was partly responsible for shifting the focus of poetry away from religious experience towards personal, human experience. He was admired by Coleridge, Wordsworth and Jane Austen, and is best known today for epithets such as “the lord moves in…
Keep reading
A Pilgrim’s Progress
In which I go on a pilgrimage through Bedfordshire to discover John Bunyan…
Keep reading
William Morris Gallery
In which I visit a charming museum and have a little too much to drink… again!
Keep reading
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
In which I feed the pigeons… it gives me a sense of enormous well-being.
Keep reading
Tennyson Country part 2: The Wolds
In which I force my way into a pub and end up to my knees in water.
Keep reading
Tennyson Country part 1: Lincoln
In which I traverse the upper slopes of the South face of Lincoln High Street.
Keep reading
A Walk Through Forster Country
In which I take a walk through some countryside and have some very deep thoughts.
Keep reading
Bloomsbury
A walk around the London region of Bloomsbury, in which I find an interesting graveyard, get scowled at and fail to find tea.
Keep reading
The Ugly, Lovely Town
In which I attempt to understand the Welsh literary device of cynghannedd.
Keep reading
The Strangest Town in Wales
As a child, about 13 or 14 years old, I would sneak books from my father’s library to read in my room. I didn’t ask to borrow them (permission would have been granted enthusiastically) and I never told my teachers what I was reading at home, I just took them away and enjoyed them in…
Keep reading
Happy Anniversary
It has been a long cold winter. When it hasn’t been snowing it’s been wet and miserable. Many of the properties I would like to visit have shut down for the winter months and, much as I would like to read by the fireside in a country inn, that would mean leaving my own fireside…
Keep reading
Honey’s Off, Dear.
“Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?”
Keep reading
The Charles Dickens Museum
In which I have a quiet stroll around and am late for a meeting.
Keep reading
Map Update
I have been on holiday for the last couple of weeks. The long, glorious summer holidays, during which all teachers, with their massive salaries, retreat to their villas in Tuscany and spend six weeks in complete idleness, waiting for work to begin anew in September. I have forgone the pleasures of foreign travel this year,…
Keep reading
London Pubs part 2
In which I continue my quest to enjoy a drink in every pub in London with a literary connection.
Keep reading
Map of Literary Locations
I have been playing with Google Maps this week. You can access my map to literary Britain via the ‘Home’ link above. I have tried a number of map creation tools but have found this to be generally the easiest to use. Originally, I was going to map the places features in the blog but I,…
Keep reading
Welcome to Sunny Stevenage
In which I discover some of the literary heritage of a Hertfordshire new town and the origin of Bovril.
Keep reading
Bankside & Shakespeare’s Globe
In which I visit Shakespeare’s Globe theatre and play games when I should be working.
Keep reading
Haworth Parsonage
In which I visit the home of the Bronte sisters, attempt to buy laudanum and get wet.
Keep reading
That is My Home of Love: Stratford-upon-avon & Shakespeare’s Birthplace
In which I explore Stratford-upon-Avon and commit an act of theft.
Keep reading
Literary Britain 