Blog
Welcome to a world of limitless possibilities, where the journey is as exhilarating as the destination, and where every moment is an opportunity to make your mark on the canvas of existence. The only limit is the extent of your imagination.
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
Subscribe
Enter your email below to receive updates.
Literary Britain 