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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
In which I discover the literature inspired by Suffolk's remote stretch of coastline...
In which I discover the hidden gardens of Easton Lodge...
"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. We [...]
Or 'Clement Scott slept in my bathroom'.
In which I visit an old friend and get too drunk for tea.
A walk around the London region of Bloomsbury, in which I find an interesting graveyard, get scowled at and fail to find tea.
Literary Britain 