To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield

We had a lovely summer, Mrs. P and I. Rather than take a long holiday, we took a series of short breaks: we motored around the country, visiting friends in various far-flung locations, staying for one or two nights in guest houses. We weren’t tied to an itinerary but meandered around, stopping where the fancy took us. It’s the only way to travel and allows the literary traveller to take their time and discover a few literary gems. Mrs. P could discover some interesting and unusual shops. One of the best places we have found for both activities was Lincoln. Lincoln is a fine city. The Cathedral sits atop a hill that dominates the low-lying East Anglian landscape for miles around. The top of the hill is an oasis for the literary traveller: teashops and pubs abound and there is a distinctly medieval flavour. Stone buildings hug the hillside in winding, narrow streets. There is a castle, a Cathedral and some of the most ancient buildings in the country.

Lincolnshire is where Queen Victoria’s favourite poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born and the city is home to the largest collection of Tennyson texts in the country. The Tennyson Research Centre is located within the county archives and most of the documents under their care are available for you to research if you give them a couple of days’ notice. I had reserved some of them for closer inspection: a couple of early drafts of the The Charge of the Light Brigade with annotations and corrections, along with some letters and photographs. I just wanted to hold some of his work in my hands and see a great writer’s handwriting close up. They did not disappoint! The early drafts of Light Brigade were fascinating as I was able to see how Tennyson had adjusted the rhythm and emphasis. I was witnessing the poet’s craft in action and it was a breathtaking experience. I wondered why, with all these marvellous, historically important texts, do the archives not open a permanent exhibition? “It’s all a question of money,” the extremely helpful archivist informed me. “There are constant requests for funding to put some of the artefacts on display but there are so many demands on the council’s funds.” It would be wonderful if there could be displays. Not just at the Tennyson Research Centre but at county archives throughout the country. These places hold a bewildering collection of historically important documents, all filed away to rarely see the light of day. It’s a real shame because they deserve to be seen and studied and enjoyed; I’m sure they would be welcome additions to local heritage. They do have some artefacts on display in the foyer and I was able to view the poet’s famous hat and cloak while I waited my turn.

Local heritage is something at which Lincoln excels: there is a very good archaeological museum, mapping the history of the region through displays and reconstructions. I wandered around it now. My attention was caught by a display about the significance of place names (they are mostly Viking in Lincolnshire, apparently). Elsewhere in the exhibition were reconstructions of local scenes through the ages and fossils collected from the fens and wolds. I love local museums: they remind me of childhood days out and I always try to seek them out when I travel. There is a very good Art Gallery on the same site, featuring Lincolnshire artists past and present and there are many views of the city (about a hundred scenes featuring Lincoln Cathedral appearing from various densities of mist). The collection goes right up to the present day, and there are some really clever modern installations by local artists working today. I loved it and, were it not teatime, would have stayed longer. I had promised to meet Mrs. P for tea and so I set off to find her now.

If anyone ever tells you that Eastern England is flat, get them to walk up Lincoln high street. It’s ridiculously steep (the name, ‘Steep Hill’ is a bit of a giveaway). I had to stop for a breather halfway up (the council has installed a lot of public seating and railings for leaning against!). On reaching the upper slopes of the south face I met Mrs. P, who had set up camp before the final assault on the summit. She told me that she had seen a nice dress in a vintage clothes shop down the hill and could I go and see it? I could, and I agreed that it was very nice and bought it for her. I now faced the hill for the second time that afternoon but tea was beckoning so I pushed on, stopping halfway up for a breather. Mrs. P then left me to review her purchases in front of the TV in the hotel room so I ventured out alone. I had an hour or two to kill, and here’s what I decided to do. I would go to a lovely little second-hand bookshop I had seen earlier, located in the Jews House: an ancient building dating from 1150. I would see if they had a collected works of Tennyson, find a nice quiet pub and sit and read and drink for a while before dinner. Good plan? I thought so. They didn’t have a Tennyson. So... I would walk down the hill, find Waterstones and get one there. Back down the hill I went, thinking how I would shortly have to climb up the bloody thing again for the third time today! I was unsuccessful in my quest for Waterstones but I found a WHSmith’s but - guess what - they had no Tennyson. Neither did the Tourist Information office. I climbed back up the hill, stopping for a breather half way, found a pub and ordered a Bateman’s. I had picked up a few leaflets and flicked through those and made a few notes but... not quite what I had in mind.

I had come on this trip expressly to find out about Tennyson who is part of the history of a city which really appreciates its history. Lincoln should do more to celebrate him: bookshops could keep a couple of editions of his poems; I am sure that some tourists would buy a copy. I know he has fallen out of favour and is a little Victorian and sentimental for our modern, sophisticated tastes but he is still much loved, was used to illustrate Olympic ideals at the 2012 games and is on the GCSE curriculum. Surely the tourist information office could keep a couple of cheap editions of his work? Or even a leaflet, “Visit the Lincolnshire Wolds: birthplace of Queen Victoria’s poet laureate”? I know such a thing exists because I have one. I picked it up in the Lincolnshire Wolds, when I was already there and didn’t need it! He’s an historically and culturally important figure. Lincoln, you need to celebrate him more.

I had planned to spend some time looking around the Cathedral but on discovering that they charge you eight quid to get in, I decided to give it a miss. I visited a few years ago so felt no pressing need to see the church. I suppose it’s not that expensive when you consider what you get for the price: a locally famous stone carving of a demon, known as the Lincoln Imp; some wonderful glass; beautiful architecture; the Magna Carta and a Bede manuscript. And to be fair to the Cathedral, they do open for free once a week for the benefit of people who can’t afford the usual entrance fee. I had no need of these entertainments, however. As I looked up at the magnificent double towers, I was happy to see the resident peregrines wheeling around. Regular readers will know that I am no bird expert but a pair of peregrines, flying and swooping around their adopted urban cliff face, is a magnificent sight, so I stopped for a minute to watch them. They were making their presence felt and squeaking and squawking and generally expressing how happy they were about being peregrines.

I reluctantly left them to their peregrinations and I returned to mine, making my way to the Cathedral east green, where there is a large bronze statue of Tennyson by George Frederick Watts. It depicts the poet, with faithful dog, Karenina, at his side, closely examining a tiny flower in his hand. Although unveiled in 1905 (the year after Watts’s death), it is a fittingly Victorian scene: the intellectual gentleman mulling over the intricacies of nature. I rather liked it and was particularly impressed, not only by the imposing size, but also by the loving gaze of his faithful companion. I was now suitably intellectually refreshed and went to collect Mrs. P. for dinner. There is a great restaurant in Lincoln we first visited about 30 years ago (yes, I was little more than a child then!)

Mrs. Brown’s Pie Shop, as you could probably guess from the name, specialises in pies. They have every kind of pie you can imagine and quite a few that you can’t and they are served with all the trimmings and good ale and a smile: I had lamb and rosemary; Mrs. P went for the traditional Steak and Kidney. It is friendly and welcoming and inexpensive and, I imagine, it is immensely popular among the city’s student population. The reason I had chosen to visit this particular venue is that it was once the home of T.E. Lawrence: friend of George Bernard Shaw, author of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and popularly remembered as Lawrence of Arabia. He was stationed nearby while serving with the RAF. There is a plaque to him outside the restaurant and, inside, pies, ale and the promise of a sticky pud with custard, probably. Unfortunately, we never got that far. We were so stuffed by the pie course that we left for a walk, promising ourselves we would return, but never did. We walked around the castle and some of the streets that trace the top of the hill. There are some pleasant pubs throughout Lincoln and the town was buzzing with happy drinkers. On street corners and by old buildings there are plaques offering you further information and the whole place just seethes with history. We love Lincoln, Mrs. P and I. Whether the bookshops stock Tennyson or not, it really is a lovely city.

“The chief glory of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.”

I first encountered Samuel Johnson at university, where I read Journey to the Western Isles: an account of his famous tour with James Boswell. I have to admit that I rather liked him. I was expecting pomposity but what I found was someone witty and extremely skilled with language. He must have seemed rather an odd figure: he was tall and heavy, childhood scrofula had left him hard of hearing and blind in one eye, as well as giving him obvious scarring (scrofula is an infection of the lymph nodes that results in large, purple swellings on the head and neck). He was clumsy, displayed strange gestures and hand movements, and suffered from extreme facial and vocal tics, which, some now believe, are indicative of Tourette’s syndrome. Rather than being part of a literary establishment, he was an outsider: a misfit who produced one of the most important books ever written in the English language. After visiting his house, I like him even more. He liked pubs and cats and tea; he was fiercely opposed to slavery and entertained a variety of other misfits at his home in Gough Square.

In 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnson with the aim of creating a dictionary of the English language. The task went on to occupy him for the next decade. He hired a team of amanuenses, set them to work in the attic of his house in Gough Square, and estimated he would have the Dictionary ready for publication in three years. But the task he had given himself was close to impossible. Johnson was writing during The Enlightenment: a time of rapid progress in science and industry. Through the creation of his ‘laws’ in 1725, Newton had rationalised and ordered the universe. Johnson, likewise, attempted to rationalise and order the language, with his dictionary. He soon came to realise, however, that this couldn’t be done; the best that he could hope to do was to record the way in which English was used and had been used in literature. English defies categorisation. Think about the verb ‘to take’ for example. How many meanings can you think of? steal, obtain, extract, possess, overthrow, capture, occupy, use, agree, buy, make, remove .... Then there are phrasal verbs: take on, take over, take up, take down, take ill ... once you start to think about it, the meanings seem to be endless. Johnson found 134 different meanings for the verb ‘to take’. The work began to overwhelm him, and he started to suffer from frequent bouts of depression. This not only prevented him from working but also stopped him from socialising, which meant he was not involved in the conversation and discussion that had previously inspired him. On top of all this, in 1750, his wife became ill and needed a full-time nurse. Johnson was unable to continue paying his amanuenses, and had to continue to work on the dictionary on his own. Then, in 1752, after a long illness she had been treating with alcohol and opiates, Johnson’s wife, Hetty, died.

Life in Gough Square then took a strange turn. The house began to fill up with strange and wonderful people: a 15-year-old freed slave named Francis Barber became Johnson’s servant. Johnson had always been a vociferous and outspoken opponent of slavery and he seems to have treated Francis more like a son than an employee. He made him the major beneficiary in his will, leaving him the sum of £750. Anna Williams, a blind poet, Robert Levet, a ‘doctor’ who ‘learned’ medicine by eavesdropping conversations at a medical school in Paris, and Mrs. Johnson’s nurse, who continued to live in the house and, according to some sources, became Johnson’s lover. This newly vibrant household seems to have reinvigorated Johnson; he started to socialise, become known in the taverns and coffee shops of Fleet Street and to recommence work on his dictionary. He completed most of it in two years, finally publishing it in 1755, nine years after work had begun.

I had long been aware of the little museum in Gough Square, nestled away behind Fleet Street; I’d passed it hundreds of times, each time thinking “I really must go and visit that someday.” I worked in Holborn for 12 years, and never took the time to go round this small, friendly little house. Sir John Soane’s Museum, I must have visited ten or twelve times; The British Museum, I went to every couple of weeks or so; Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, frequently. I mentioned this to the young woman who ushered me in. “Lots of people say that,” she replied “We’re tucked away so nobody knows we’re here.” There were very few people there on the day I visited: 3 or 4 different parties at most, which makes it a pleasure to wander around. To appreciate the house (or any museum for that matter) at its best, one needs quiet and space to move and time to think. You should be able to hear ticking clocks and creaking floorboards. The house feels cosy and personal: a real lived-in home rather than an exhibit. There are few personal effects, most of the original furniture being long lost, but you can still feel Doctor Johnson’s presence in every room. I particularly enjoyed the library, with its small collection of books; the dining room, complete with David Garrick’s costume chest and a number of Reynolds portraits, including one of Francis Barber.

I had enjoyed half of the museum in blissful, contemplative silence and was midway through the first floor, looking in wonder at the ingenious arrangement of moveable walls, allowing for the space to be changed from a large entertaining space into smaller private rooms, when my assigned annoying person arrived. As the museum-goers amongst you will know, on entering a museum, library or stately home, you are assigned an annoying person, or family, who will accompany you throughout your visit. No matter what speed you go round, what route you take or how many rooms you miss out, they will always be with you and have some ingenious way of pissing you off. This couple, for example, consisted of two females, an older and a younger. The older woman would read from the information leaflet in each room in a loud authoritative voice, as if she were recalling it all from memory; the younger, in response, would ask questions, which foxed her companion completely. I was first alerted to their presence as they ascended the stairs to the first floor, complaining about how steep they were. I slipped away and went up to the attic, figuring that they wouldn’t be tackling any more stairs just yet.

The attic was sparsely furnished and served more as an exhibition space than a recreation of Johnson’s home. The house was heavily bombed during the Second World War and Johnson’s original garret was more or less obliterated. There were some facsimile copies of the dictionary here, which visitors were invited to leaf through, and I spent a happy few minutes, looking up some of Johnson’s definitions, until I heard some familiar voices on the stairs, saying something like: “Ah yes! Unusually, Johnson chose to have his attic located at the top of the house” and “it’s very steep, why did he have stairs?” At which point, I decided it was time to leave. Besides, I had a luncheon appointment.

I had arranged to meet an old friend at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, in order to continue the Johnson theme of the day. On my way to the pub, I paused to have a look at the statue of Hodge. Johnson was extremely fond of cats and had several throughout his life. The statue depicts the cat, sitting on a copy of the Dictionary, surrounded by oyster shells. Hodge was, apparently, particularly fond of oysters. It was a weekday lunchtime when I visited and the square was well used. Office workers and labourers sat by the statue to contemplate it and enjoy their lunch. I always love seeing people enjoying art in the open air; it means they are not inside the pubs and museums I want to visit

I made my way into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, pausing a while in the doorway to allow my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. The pub is cosy and dimly lit and has the most astounding literary heritage, being in the heart of the journalistic and publishing quarter of the city, it has attracted a huge array of literary customers. I have previously written about some of them in a short pub guide, which you can read here. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith both used the tavern. in a later age, it became popular among Tennyson, Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and Charles Dickens. Mark Twain dined here during his frequent visits to London. The Rhymers Club, a group of poets founded by WB Yeats had their meetings here & PG Wodehouse writes about favouring the pub over the more formal, stuffier Gentlemen’s clubs. Trollope uses it as a setting in his novels, as does RL Stevenson, and it features in A Tale of Two Cities: Sidney Carton brings Charles Darnay here to celebrate the latter’s release. Hercule Poirot meets a new client here in Agatha Christie’s short story The Million Dollar Bond Robbery.

Today, I made my way down to the labyrinthine basement, where there are several rooms. The passageways between them lead to a large food servery, where one can order traditional pub fare. Now, I very much enjoy meeting Mr. Scott: a plain-speaking, down-to-earth sort of chap, in the way that people from his home city of Liverpool tend to be. We enjoyed our lunch, and the associated conversation over a pint of Sam Smith’s, so much so that we ordered more drinks. We enjoyed the second even more than the first and so ordered a few more and, before I knew where I was, the afternoon had bled into evening and it was well past time to go.

By the time I left the Cheshire Cheese, I was somewhat pie-eyed. I had wanted to pop into Twinings on the Strand for fresh tea supplies but this never happened. If any other tea lovers out there have not visited Twinings, I strongly suggest you get yourselves down there right away. They have an astounding variety of tea and coffee available and offer tastings and tuition. They also have a vast array of all the paraphernalia required for a proper brew (teapots, caddies, tea strainers, etc). The smell is heavenly! There is a statue of Johnson opposite, in a little courtyard outside St. Clement Danes church, where he was a worshipper. To finish off a day visiting his part of the city, it’s worth remembering that he described himself as:

“a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant …who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.”

Forster and his Mother, recently widowed, moved to Stevenage in 1883. He was four years old and the house, the surrounding countryside and some of the local characters were to influence his writing in years to come. The house was Rook’s Nest: a moderately large red brick house on the very outskirts of the town, on the road that leads to the village of Weston. Today, Rook’s Nest is a private house with no plaque to mark its previous occupants; no indication that this was home to one of the greatest figures in English Literature.

“I took it to my heart and hoped . . . that I would live and die there.”

Forster’s reminiscences of Stevenage make fascinating reading. they are written with such affection for the house and the surrounding countryside; it was clearly hugely important to him. So much so that, during the 1960s and the rapid expansion of the new town, Forster, along with other leading literary figures of the age, campaigned for the area to be saved from the bulldozer. The area is still under threat of development. There is a society, The friends of Forster Country, who tirelessly campaign for the preservation of this area that is such an important part of our literary and natural history.

Rook’s Nest House was a direct model for the idyllic cottage in Howards End: the house beloved by the Schlegel family and closely guarded by the Wilcoxes. Margaret Schlegel’s first visit to the house is a significant moment in the novel. In Chapter 33, Forster writes:

“Walking straight up from the station, she crossed the village green and entered the long chestnut avenue that connects it with the church... At the church the scenery changed. The chestnut avenue opened into a road, smooth but narrow, which led into the untouched country. She followed it for over a mile. Its little hesitations pleased her. Having no urgent destiny, it strolled downhill or up as it wished, taking no trouble about the gradients, or about the view, which nevertheless expanded. The great estates that throttle the south of Hertfordshire were less obtrusive here, and the appearance of the land was neither aristocratic nor suburban. To define it was difficult, but Margaret knew what it was not: it was not snobbish. Though its contours were slight, there was a touch of freedom in their sweep to which Surrey will never attain, and the distant brow of the Chilterns towered like a mountain.”

It is possible to retrace Margaret’s walk from Stevenage: no railway station now, it has moved south to the new town and stands astride the East coast Main Line, creating a bridge between a leisure centre and a retail park. The village green is still there, as is the chestnut avenue, though it now includes a concrete footbridge over a dual carriageway. It does, however, still open out into a road by the church. What Margaret says of the countryside is also true, though perhaps for ‘great estates’ we should read ‘housing estates’, because it is difficult to imagine that such a large town is so close: only the pylons and the large, concrete mass of the Lister Hospital give you any clue.

The church is typical Norman, with a flint tower dating from about 1100. Tucked away in the northwest corner, surrounded by ivy and against a chain-link fence, is a memorial to EM Forster. It bears the legend: “Only Connect“, the epigraph of Howards End and an exhortation for people to connect to one another, regardless of race, faith or class. The memorial is dedicated jointly to Forster and to the composer, Elizabeth Poston, whose family moved into Rook’s Nest in 1914. The Postons were friends of the Forsters, allowing Edward to continue visiting the house that he continued to cherish throughout his life.

From here, you can walk out into Forster Country: the fields and woods that Forster knew as a child. Forster, in his reminiscences, writes:

“I was brought up as a boy in a district which I still think the loveliest in England. Hedges full of clematis, primroses, bluebells, dog roses and nuts.”

It was too late in the year for bluebells; it was a blisteringly hot July morning, but there were dog roses and the hazelnuts were ripening in the hedgerows. At once I was plunged into open countryside. Rook’s Nest is visible from the path, nestling in its wooded grounds and occasionally giving a glimpse of a chimney, a window or a gable. I was following a route provided by the Friends of Forster Country, and it was a really pleasant little walk. I took the shortest route and it took me about an hour to get back to the church, having trod the ways young Forster would have wandered, on his childhood ramblings through the county. The route is quite well-defined and so easy to follow that I only got lost once (quite an achievement for me, as regular readers will know). I was largely alone throughout my trek: I saw two dog walkers (and two dogs, obviously). I was left to myself to enjoy the countryside and reflect on Forster and his writing.

Howards End is a masterpiece of Modernist literature, reasserting the importance of nature in the face of incessant progress. At the close of the novel, Helen Schlegel looks out over the fields from Howards End and, prophetically, sees the progress of industrialisation encroaching upon their rural idyll:

“She pointed over the meadow—over eight or nine meadows, but at the end of them was a red rust.

“You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now,” she continued. “I can see it from the Purbeck Downs. And London is only part of something else, I’m afraid. Life’s going to be melted down, all over the world.”

Even now, we live in an age when our heritage is under constant threat of development and to be part of what has become known as the heritage ‘industry’ is to be prepared to constantly fight. Developers are given priority, not conservationists.

And places such as this are so important. Every year, I take a bunch of students up here, to see the idyllic countryside on their doorstep and to try to see one of the authors they study as something more than a name on a page. Some of them have lived in Stevenage all their lives and never knew Forster country existed and this is an internationally acclaimed author, not a local oddity. Dickens’s houses are sites of worldwide pilgrimage, as are Austen’s and the Brontes’. There is money to be made from our literary heritage but it requires care, conservation and investment. In our society, only the opportunity to make money quickly from the sale of assets or land for development is considered worthy of our governments’ support. We must do whatever we can to protect our rural heritage and areas of local interest because one day they will be gone and people will be poorer for it.

The epigraph of Howards End is ‘only connect’, describing the need for individuals to find some sense of connection to one another. Forster believed there was a need for us to find balance in all things: progress and conservation; rural and urban; town and country. The Schlegels represent the artistic; the Wilcoxes soulless business. When Margaret and Henry marry, the two sides come together in a brief accord and this is what the house represents: the point of balance between these two worlds. We need to find a balance between the necessity of progress, housing and development and the need to connect with our history and environment.

Arriving at King’s Cross Station, the first thing you will notice is the Harry Potter ‘Platform 9¾’ exhibit. You will notice it by the throngs of people queuing to have their photograph taken next to a bisected luggage trolley bolted to the wall. The effect of this is to make it appear to be entering a portal into the magical world of Hogwarts. I ignored the queues but took a photograph or two of the exhibit, complete with happy, smiling people trying on scarves and clinging to the trolley as if about to be transported into fantasy land. There is a Harry Potter gift shop here too, selling various memorabilia: wands, scarves and the like. This owes more to the film franchise than to the books but the queues outside the store at least show how effective this series has been in getting people, particularly young people, excited about fiction. Some of them will find a lifelong love of reading through the Harry Potter books; many of my students began their literary journey reading about the boy wizard. These books, along with the film and theatre franchises they have spawned, have had an enormous impact on our culture and on the reading habits of the younger generation.

Walk north of the Station and you will find St. Pancras Churchyard. Really well worth visting for some of the notable people with memorials there, chief among these is the joint tomb of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, political philosopher and advocate of women’s rights. Their bodies were moved to the family vault in Bournemouth but the memorial is still there, covered with remembrances of admirers. Other notable burials include John Polidori, author of one of the first Vampire novels, and Johann Christian Bach, son of Johann Sebastian.

There is also the Hardy Tree. When the railway was built, the churchyard had to be cleared to make way for the new line. A young apprentice architect was put in charge and he had the removed gravestones leant against an ash tree. The stones stayed and the tree grew around them until they became embedded in the trunk. It’s a really interesting and unusual sight and well worth the short detour to view it. The architect’s name was Thomas Hardy and he went on to become one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century.

In St. Pancras station is a wonderful statue of Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman by Martin Jennings. Betjeman had a great love of public architecture: churches and railway buildings in particular. In the post-war years, when there was a zeal for development; for clearing away the past, he could see that much of it was worth saving for future generations. He was instrumental in the campaign to save St. Pancras station in the 1960s and so has been immortalised here, gazing up at Sir Gilbert Scott’s magnificent pointed arch. Unfortunately, I had little time to contemplate the statue, or the quotations from Betjeman’s poetry that surround it. I was meeting Emma for a little stroll through Bloomsbury. We’d planned an aimless wander through the squares: browsing in museums and second-hand bookshops, stopping somewhere for tea, and generally reflecting on our rich cultural heritage. When I suggested the trip, the vision in my head was of a brisk but bright spring day. This was London, however, and, by the time I met her train, it was absolutely chucking it down.

We took refuge first in the British Library: the national Library of the United Kingdom. It moved to its present site, next to St. Pancras Station, from the British Museum in 1998 and now has a gallery, completely free to view, containing the foremost books and manuscripts of our culture: Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare’s first folio; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Faraday, Ada Lovelace and Charles Darwin are here, as are Handel, Beethoven and the Beatles. Simply to wander through a room containing these documents is a breath-taking experience; to stand at one short remove from the literature that changed the world. Literature like Virginia Woolf’s hand-written text of her groundbreaking novel, Mrs Dalloway.

The Stephen family came to Bloomsbury following the death of the literary critic and biographer Leslie Stephen, moving to Gordon Square in 1904. His daughters, Virginia and Vanessa, were largely educated at home; although women did attend university at the time, it wasn’t normal practice for a middle-class family to send their daughters there. The sons, Adrian and Thoby, however, went to Cambridge and mixed with some of the brightest intellectuals of the age: Lytton Strachey, a biographer; EM Forster, novelist and literary critic; Leonard Woolf, essayist; Maynard Keynes, economist; Roger Fry, painter and Clive Bell, art critic. After university, they settled in the squares of Bloomsbury and continued to meet to discuss their ideas as they had done at university. Now, however, Virginia and Vanessa would join in and quickly became pivotal members of the group. This was the origin of one of the major intellectual flowerings of the modern age.

They began to see, not just what the problems were in society, as Victorian writers had done, but how things could change. They looked forward to a new age: new ways of writing and artistic expression were a part of this. Virginia herself found a new way of writing, in which the thoughts and feelings of characters were presented to the reader in an uninterrupted flow; the so called ‘stream of consciousness’. There was much intrigue within this group and they caused a great deal of scandal, with outrageous pranks, affairs and fluid sexuality. Eventually, Virginia married Leonard Woolf and the two of them moved out of Bloomsbury, first to Richmond, where they set up the Hogarth Press, and then to Sussex.

Virginia had a number of residences and you will find many plaques as you wander around. As well as Gordon Square, Virginia lived in Fitzroy Square (in a house previously occupied by George Bernard Shaw) and Brunswick Square. She and Leonard temporarily returned to London from Sussex, taking houses in Tavistock Square and Mecklenburg Square. There are plaques and memorials to a number of other literary folk too: Shelley shared a flat with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (daughter of the aforementioned Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin) in Marchmont Street (they had previously met in secret in St. Pancras churchyard as Shelley was married to someone else at the time). Mary is, of course, well known for writing Frankenstein, one of the archetypal gothic novels. Charles Dickens once lived in Tavistock House, the site of which is now occupied by the British Medical Association, and Christina Rossetti was living in Torrington Square at the time of her death. Yeats, George Du Maurier and Jerome K. Jerome also made their homes in the area. There is a statue of Virginia in Tavistock Square and I stopped to take a photograph of it. On a spring or summer’s day, the squares of Bloomsbury are extremely pleasant places to be. Most of them are now parks and serve as recreation spaces for workers and students as well as residents. They are, however, not quite as nice on a rainy afternoon in January and I soon became aware of Emma scowling from beneath the umbrella she had been bidden to hold while I happily snapped away at statues, plaques, squares and buildings. I thought it mete to find shelter and we made our way to the British Museum.

The museum, located in the heart of Bloomsbury, was home to the British Library before its move to St. Pancras, which gives this walk a nice sense of circularity. The Reading Room was an attractive prospect for writers, mainly as a warm place to read and write. George Bernard Shaw came here when he couldn’t afford to heat his flat. EM Forster and Virginia Woolf were both frequent visitors. It was famously where Karl Marx would come to work on his political manifestos. Oscar Wilde used the reading room, as did Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Today, you will find a large open space at the heart of the building with a fantastic glass roof. Leading off from the central courtyard is The Enlightenment Gallery. This recalls the early days of museums, when people would travel throughout the world and bring back interesting things with them. They encompass an array of curious objects: cabinets contain stuffed animals, coins and architectural drawings; medieval artefacts jostle for space with fossils and porcelain; classical statues vie for floorspace with scientific instruments. Although the gallery has been arranged thematically, there is still a sense of the haphazard way that the objects would have been arranged in the early museum.

Elsewhere in the museum are many items of interest to the literary traveller or casual observer. It is one of my favourite places in the world. When working in London I would visit it about once a week, discovering something new every time. Today, there isn’t time to see any more. It is well past four o’clock and Emma and I must leave in search of tea. We are both big tea fans, Emma and I. We don’t always see eye-to-eye: she favours Earl Grey while I go for Ceylon but what we do agree on is the absolute necessity of stopping for a cuppa mid-afternoon. In London, this is no easy task. You are well-served by pubs and a lunchtime pint and sandwich is easy to find but there are very few teashops in the capital and none at all in Bloomsbury, as far as I’m aware. The Museum itself has the courtyard café, which is very well reviewed but it is always too busy and - at least in my opinion - hideously overpriced. We went to a well-known coffee chain that I frequent, not because I particularly like it but because it’s named after a literary character. We had a coffee and a sandwich and it was absolutely fine, just not really what I was looking for at the end of an afternoon out. As we left the café and and faced the long walk back to King’s Cross and home, it had stopped raining. It was turning into quite a pleasant evening.

I was born in a large Welsh town at the beginning of the Great War. An ugly, lovely town, or so it was and is to me. Crawling, sprawling by a long and splendid curving shore...

Dylan Thomas described his town in his Reminiscences of Childhood, written in 1937, before the town as he knew it was devastated by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. He witnessed the bombing, watching with Caitlin and his old friend Bert Trick, but wasn’t able to write about the experience until 1947. Return Journey to Swansea is a masterpiece: Dylan returns to his hometown and tries to find his younger selves, asking the characters he meets if they knew where he might find ‘Young Thomas’. His writing about childhood is beautiful and imbued with a nostalgic longing, a sense of loss.

It’s an attractive town, Swansea, with the usual collection of shops and a plethora of bars and restaurants. It has a very ‘studenty’ feel, being home to the third largest university in the country. It grew around a harbour and docks, now largely given over to leisure use, and by the maritime quarter and the marina you will find the Swansea Museum and the National Maritime Museum, along with an Art Gallery and theatre. Dylan Thomas Square sits at the heart of this quarter, with cafés and bars; it’s a fitting place to begin your Dylan Thomas tour of the city. A statue of the Man himself sits at the centre of the square. To his left, the marina, complete with a statue of old, blind Captain Cat from Under Milkwood, who rings his bell to wake the town.

To his right is the Dylan Thomas Theatre. Inside, a display commemorates Dylan’s time as an actor with the Swansea Little Theatre, which was based in Mumbles, a little seaside town a short drive (or tram ride, in Dylan’s time) along the splendid curving shore. Dylan eventually fell out of favour with the theatre group: his pre-rehearsal drinking session increased in length until it blended into his post-rehearsal drinking session. In his time he was, by all reports, a fine actor. The theatre has now moved to its permanent home in Swansea and is a thriving community theatre, with regular performances including plays, musicals and concerts. Their display has photographs of Dylan’s performances as well as reminiscences of his time with the company.

Leaving the theatre, I walked back towards the town, past the Queen’s Hotel, where Dylan drank frequently during his time as a journalist, and on to the Dylan Thomas Centre, a permanent exhibition dedicated to the town’s greatest son. The Centre is housed in an old art gallery, has exhibition spaces, a shop and café and is an essential visit for the Thomas devotee; at least as necessary as a trip to Laugharne. The permanent exhibition has a bewildering range of Thomas artefacts on display: notebooks, manuscripts, photographs, belongings... even the original door from Dylan’s writing shed, rescued from a skip in the 1970s. The exhibition is magnificent: it is child-friendly and has interactive displays and audio and video recordings of poems and performances. Throughout the exhibition, there were children actively engaging with the exhibits, parents desperately trying to provide context or patiently waiting for their charges to finish playing so that they could move on to the next display. It gave the whole thing a family feel which I liked: it is not stuffy or overly formal. I particularly liked the video of a performance of Under Milkwood in New York, in which Dylan exhorted his actors to “love the words” (hence the name of the exhibition). They have education outreach events, creative writing workshops and tours of the city and are doing everything they can to engage people, particularly young people, with Dylan’s work and to appreciate the extent to which he could manipulate language and the effects he could achieve. This is exactly how literature should work: children love words and word games and we too often mystify poetry which is, after all, ‘playing’ with language. Love the words.

I bought a couple of guides (Uplands trail and Swansea town trail) in the gift shop and these have proved invaluable in my research. I had a really nice conversation with the young woman behind the till, who had a genuine enthusiasm for Dylan and was charming and friendly. In fact, everyone I met during my trip to Wales was charming and friendly. I reluctantly left the museum (and its café; it was now well past midday) walked reluctantly past the Queen’s Hotel and back into the town where I walked reluctantly past the No Sign Wine Bar (another of Dylan’s favourites where they, apparently, serve a really good lunch) and met Mrs. P by the leaf sculpture - a beautiful glass and steel sculpture, depicting a leaf floating on a stream - in Castle Square at the heart of the city. Mrs. P had had an exhausting morning’s shopping and was herself ready for lunch.

We decided to drive to Uplands in search of lunch. A slightly tentative drive across the city (I knew it was more or less northwest) and we were there in no time. Uplands is very close to the university and, consequently, has a young, cosmopolitan feel. We had just finished lunch in a very pleasant vegetarian café when Mrs. P suddenly realised that she hadn’t set foot in a shop for almost half an hour; she left me to continue my journey alone. The Uplands Tavern, where Dylan used to come and drink while living at the family home, is a live music venue now but they have preserved a snug as Dylan would have known it. It is comfortable and nicely decorated with poems and photographs and I spent a very pleasant hour or so in there before walking up the hill to Cwmdonkin Drive and Dylan’s birthplace.

5 Cwmdonkin Drive is a fair sized, comfortable suburban villa. It was a student house and in a fairly pitiful state in 2003, when it was bought by a local businessman who set out to restore and preserve it in Dylan’s honour. It has been lovingly restored, at the owner’s own expense, to reflect the way in which it would have been decorated when Dylan grew up there. There are some remarkable rooms: the front bedroom in which Dylan was born in 1914, the little bedroom, complete with the desk on which he had already written about two thirds of his poetry when he moved out at the age of 19; the front parlour, recognisable from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”:

“Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlours; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms’ length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers.”

It is charming and atmospheric but there is something a little uncomfortable about it: as if you are intruding in a family home and the occupants will arrive at any moment to express their outrage at your trespassing. Perhaps we should have called in advance for a tour (as they advise on their website). They have regular guided tours of the property. Occasionally they will have a talk or a book signing and it is possible to rent it out on a daily or even weekly basis; that would be quite an experience! There are details on their website, along with loads of information and photographs about Dylan and the restoration.

We wandered back to Uplands via Cwmdonkin Park, where Dylan used to play as a child and with which many people are familiar from the poem “The Hunchback in the Park”. The park is a large and well-used recreational space; it was the Easter holidays when we visited. A warm, spring afternoon: children were playing, young women with overladen pushchairs met for a chat while older folk rested in the café over tea and ice cream. Alongside beautiful, exotic plants, reminders of an age when explorers were sending back newly discovered flora from far-flung parts of the world, are the streams and rockeries from Dylan’s poem:

from “The Hunchback in the Park”

Eating bread from a newspaper

Drinking water from the chained cup

That the children filled with gravel

In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship

Slept at night in a dog kennel

But nobody chained him up.

Like the park birds he came early

Like the water he sat down

And Mister they called Hey mister

The truant boys from the town

Running when he had heard them clearly

On out of sound.

Past lake and rockery

Laughing when he shook his paper

Hunchbacked in mockery

Through the loud zoo of the willow groves

Dodging the park keeper

With his stick that picked up leaves.

Dylan’s family spoke no Welsh: his father was head of English Literature at Swansea Grammar School and Thomas Jnr had grown up on a diet of English poetry. His poetry, however, as well as displaying a deep connection with the Welsh landscape, reflects the lyrical cadences of the Welsh language. The Welsh eschew English poetic devices of rhythm and rhyme and rely instead on ‘cynghanedd’. As I understand it (I do ask forgiveness from my Welsh readers but it is a difficult thing to get your head around and I only have a basic grasp of it) Welsh poetry should ‘harmonise’, rather than rhyme. The important words in Welsh poetry are the stressed syllables and there is a great deal of alliteration and assonance. So a line such as “To begin at the beginning” displays cynghanedd because the two ‘g’ sounds are stressed and harmonise (now I know how my students feel when trying to understand iambs and trochees). This explains why his poetry is so beautiful and lyrical and the richness of his imagery. It doesn’t always rhyme but it alliterates and harmonises. Consider Fern Hill, another reminiscence of childhood, this time at his aunt’s farm in Carmarthenshire, and possibly the most beautiful poem ever written:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

When the Luftwaffe obliterated Swansea in 1941, Dylan Thomas, turned to his friend and said “Our Swansea has died.” But the grand suburban villa in which he grew up and spent his remembered Christmases is still here; the park in which he played and ran from hunchbacks is still here; the pub where he had his first drink is still here, as are the No Sign and the Queen’s Hotel. And Dylan is still here, in the epigrams on the statues and the monuments in the city centre and the marina; in the exhibits in the museum dedicated to him; in the minds of the children who play games with his poems and look at his photo and wonder who he was. He is still in the hearts of those of us who laugh at his stories and are moved by his poetry and love his words.

Reading has always been a solitary activity for me: a way to escape from the world. Besides, I was rather an odd child. The writers that stand out in my memory from this time are Dickens, Steinbeck, Hemingway and Dylan Thomas. I loved Thomas’s stories then and love them still: Holiday Memory, Quite Early One Morning and, particularly, A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I have since added Under Milk Wood and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog to my list of favourites. A visit to his home town is always a special event for me.

Brown’s Hotel was Dylan’s favourite pub and he would spend most afternoons here, drinking and sitting in the bay window, watching passersby: an endless source of fascination for a poet who loved to create unique characters. Brown’s has recently reopened as a boutique hotel. I was reading about this online recently when I noticed that they were doing a special midweek offer: two nights for £145. As a teacher, money is tight at the best of times but no Dylan Thomas fan could resist a deal this good: to stay at his favourite pub in his home.

I booked and quite early one morning, Mrs P and I took the journey across country to the far west. Brown’s is a fine little pub that serves a decent local ale and has a selection of comfortable and well-decorated rooms with excellent facilities, including a small collection of decent books. The corridors are decorated with artwork depicting the town and inspired by its favourite inhabitant and the rooms are all named after inspirational places for Dylan: Fern Hill, Talacharn, Uplands etc. We stayed in ‘Llareggub’ and were very pleased to do so.

Laugharne (pronounced ‘Larn’) was described by Dylan as “the strangest town in Wales” after his first visit there. It is a beautiful place and (at least midweek in April) it is quiet, peaceful and friendly. On our first evening there, Mrs P and I eschewed the restaurant and went for a wander. There were very few people about but those we did see smiled and nodded. A group of small boys played with a rugby ball outside the Castle View chip shop. Coming from the South-East of England, I am used to seeing small boys kicking footballs about; it’s part of our national landscape but rugby balls? Never. In the warm spring twilight with the distant sound of the sea, this struck me as the most ‘Welsh’ scene I had ever witnessed. We ate fish and chips on a picnic bench beneath the castle walls in the chilly twilight: we know how to live, Mrs P and I. We watched the light fade over the Taf estuary while starlings swarmed (’murmurated’?) above us. The occasional dog walker passed but we were mostly alone. There is a path alongside the estuary that leads towards the boathouse, and we walked along it, looking at the houses on the cliff above us and watching the lights come on in little villages across the river.

In the morning, following my excellent, home-cooked full Welsh breakfast (very similar to a full English but includes cockles and laverbread, which I tried because I was feeling particularly brave that morning), I went for a wander up the hill to the church while Mrs P. stayed at the hotel. It was raining quite steadily as I set out but I wasn’t far into my journey when it relaxed into a light drizzle. I don’t mind walking in drizzle and no one wants to visit a churchyard in bright sunshine anyway. It is one of the most atmospheric churchyards I have ever walked around: mossy pathways snake through the hillside and a bewildering array of lichens cling to the crumbling tombstones.

To reach Dylan and Caitlin’s grave, you must cross a footbridge into a ‘new’ cemetery, where graves are arranged in ordered rows. Dylan’s grave stands out among them as it is a simple, plain white cross. He was brought here in 1953 after his untimely death in New York. The legend is that he dropped dead in the Chelsea Hotel after a particularly heavy drinking bout, uttering the famous words: “I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies; I think that’s a record!” The truth, as with many legends that grow around great people, is quite different. It seems he was being incorrectly medicated and, having been advised not to drink, fell into a coma from which he never recovered, finally dying of a brain haemorrhage. Caitlin also died abroad in 1994, having lived in Italy for most of her life since Dylan, unable to stand living in Laugharne without him. Their relationship was a tempestuous one, marked by infidelity and jealousy; alcoholism and violence. They were kindred spirits: both bohemian and artistic, neither of them could keep the other grounded and the result was a passion born of both love and hate. She requested in her will to be buried alongside him in Laugharne.

Dylan first settled in Laugharne after his marriage to Caitlin Macnamara in 1938. He first met her at the Wheatsheaf pub in London. she was with her ‘bf’, the artist Augustus John. Dylan wooed her away from him and they embarked on a relationship that would last until his death just 15 years later. They rented a small cottage (called ‘Eros’) before moving into Sea View, a three storey Georgian townhouse. They were always poor. Dylan lived off the proceeds of his poetry and what little income he could earn from radio broadcasts. The lecture tours of America (he did three of them) helped to supplement his income but, for most of the time, the Thomases relied on handouts and lived in debt. It was partly to escape this debt that they fled Laugharne in 1940.

Dylan’s presence is everywhere in Laugharne but he is treated with reverence, not exploited for tourist money. There are no Dylan Thomas tearooms or Milkwood gift shops. The tea room where I met Mrs P for a morning coffee was a very pleasant one. Called the Owl and the Pussycat, it is adorned with owl and cat pictures and ornaments, does a wonderful coffee and has a huge range of home-made cakes on offer. We finished our morning repast and went next door to the craft shop. Dylan has asserted his presence here but the wares on offer are tasteful and genuine. And I liked the owner very much: she was friendly and chatty and laughed at all of my jokes, which is a rare experience for me and I was quite taken aback. Mrs. P and I spent an hour or two walking along the shore: chatting, spotting wildlife and looking for interesting stones. By now, the rain had stopped completely, the sky was clearing and the sun was beginning to break through, turning the picturesque little town into an achingly beautiful one, basking in the golden spring sun.

The laverbread was still providing me with a persistent reminder of breakfast, so I forwent lunch and walked instead along the heavily wooded cliff-top path that leads to the boathouse. “My sea shaken house, on a breakneck of rocks”, the boathouse hugs the bottom of the cliff by the estuary. Inside is a nice, quiet little museum. The house itself is tiny for the home of an internationally famous writer. The parlour on the ground floor has been restored to how it would have looked when Dylan was living there. It is cosy and comfortable and a radio plays selections from Dylan’s readings. You are invited to sit and listen and contemplate your surroundings, which I did. There was a fair stream of visitors coming through, considering the town itself was all but deserted. The upper floor has two rooms, one of which has an exhibition room, with books and letters and other documents in Dylan’s hand, and an art gallery, featuring works inspired by Dylan’s poetry; in the other room a documentary film about his life and work plays on a continuous loop.

The ground floor has a small tea room, where I had hoped to get tea and Welsh Cakes and read my newly bought books (they have a little bookshop here too). There were no tables available however, as it was crowded for their lunchtime service and it was too cold to sit outside, so I walked back along the path to have a look at the writing shed, where the poet would retreat to escape the distractions of family and work amid stunning views of the peaceful estuary. The shed has also been restored so Dylan would recognise it, and has his desk, in disarray with open books, screwed-up papers and coffee mug, as if he has just got up and left.

I had a quick look around the castle then. A dramatic, 13th Century fortress, guarding the once bustling port that brought to West Wales goods from throughout the world. The ramparts make the best viewing platform for the town and from here you can see the streets laid out beneath you. It is supposed that the town of Llareggub in Under Milkwood was based on Laugharne but, personally I can’t see it. There are some features you can recognise from the play: the town square and the wood on the hill in the distance but I think Llareggub more closely resembles the little fishing villages further to the west. New Quay fits the bill and Dylan did live there for a short time. The castle also has a summer house, in which Dylan used while he was staying at Castle House with Richard Hughes. He wrote ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog’ there.

I met Mrs P back at the café, where we had tea before returning to Brown’s and I finally got to read my guidebooks. I sat in Dylan’s window seat but it was particularly uncomfortable, so I found a more conducive corner in which to peruse my purchases, which I did over a pint or two of Brown’s ale. We ate at Brown’s that evening too: it was unfussy but good, simple food and I finished it off with a Penderyn Welsh whisky: an astoundingly good one that can hold its head high among many Scottish single malts. They sell it by the bottle ... so I was able to pick up another souvenir.

We left the following morning for Swansea to continue our Dylan pilgrimage. I was sorry to leave lovely, friendly little Laugharne. It could well be my favourite town. It certainly makes top three, along with Stratford-upon-Avon and Haworth, and it is more intimate; one feels at home here. It certainly is a strange town but its isolation and atmosphere call to mind Dylan’s later epithet, written 5 days before he died: “a timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town.”

“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

I am writing this on a snow day: one of the unexpected holidays beloved of schoolchildren, hated by Daily Mail readers and one of the few perks of being a teacher. As I look out of the window here at Literary Britain HQ, a robin is happily gorging itself on the crumbs I left out for him and the cats seem quite interested in the show, too. It’s a beautiful, Christmassy scene and seems a long way away from the bright, warm August day when I visited the picturesque village of Grantchester in Cambridgeshire.

Grantchester is known for its associations with three literary figures and has been visited by many more as a result. Its proximity to Cambridge means that it is just a short stroll from the city, and many writers, as teachers or students, took the short walk through the meadows to leave the city behind and spend a few hours in the lovely Cambridgeshire countryside.

George Gordon Byron has become literary folklore. He lived the romantic, rogering, roistering, celebrity lifestyle of an eighteenth-century poet and the ‘Byronic hero’ has been a literary archetype ever since. It was during his time at Cambridge (he was a student at Trinity between 1805 and 1807) that his legend was born. A local story has it that, on being told he would not be allowed to keep a dog in his rooms, he returned with a bear. He overspent, became involved in scandalous behaviour and published his first volume of poetry.

His athletic prowess is often alluded to, and he is known to have been a proficient swimmer. He swam across the Dardanelles in 1810 and, while living in Portovenere, would swim across the ‘Bay of Poets’ to visit Shelley in San Terenzo, a distance of about 4km. He is supposed to have come to Grantchester to swim in the pools of the Granta, (The river here is the Granta, hence the name of the village; it becomes the Cam as it flows through Cambridge).

Byron’s Pool is a densely wooded area of water meadows, with beech, ash, wych elm, pendunculate oak and field maple (according to the leaflet). It makes for a really pleasant walk on a hot day. It is also home to a great deal of wildlife, including woodpeckers, chaffinches and kingfishers. The wildlife most evident during my visit, however, was dogs, as it is a popular recreation area for locals and has been designated a Local Nature Reserve by Cambridge City Council.

Mrs. P and I spent a very pleasant afternoon wandering through the woodland and enjoying an hour of bucolic peace and quiet. We picked blackberries from the hedgerows as we made our way back to the village and the Orchard Tea Garden for afternoon refreshment. The Orchard has been a popular location among students since 1897, when Orchard House was a favoured lodging for students wishing to escape the hectic social whirl of Cambridge. Rupert Brooke came to stay here in 1909 and, due to his popularity, attracted a succession of friends and visitors.

They included Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and E.M. Forster and, since then, many others have been attracted to this charming little garden. Its list of visitors includes an astounding number of scientists, philosophers, actors and other public figures, along with some of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent many afternoons walking through the meadows to Grantchester with the sole aim of taking tea at the Orchard.

You can still enjoy a decent cup of tea and a piece of cake here beneath the apple, pear and medlar trees. They produce a little guidebook detailing the Orchard’s literary links. It even contains the full text of Brooke’s most popular poem and is well worth the couple of quid they charge for it.

Rupert Brooke, born in 1887, became friends with the Bloomsbury Group (Woolf, Forster and Strachey) whilst at Cambridge. He later fell out with them following an ‘emotional crisis’ during which he blamed Lytton Strachey for destroying his relationship with Katherine Cox. It’s likely that he had discovered his bisexuality. Following his breakdown, Brooke travelled to the US, publishing his travelogues in the Westminster Gazette. He travelled home via New Zealand and Tahiti, where he settled for a short time with a Tahitian named Taatamata.

On returning to Grantchester and finding that his rooms at the Old Orchard had been let, he moved into the Old Vicarage, next door to Orchard House, where he continued to live his bohemian lifestyle and entertain his literary friends. He first came the public’s attention following the publication of ‘1914 and Other Poems’, the collection that contains his most famous poem, ‘The Soldier’, written during the First World War. As most of his poetry was written early in the war, it tends to be more optimistic and less satirical than that of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; it is highly patriotic and full of hope.

In 1915, he was sent to Gallipoli. He suffered a mosquito bite, which became infected, and he developed septicaemia. He died on 23rd April and is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Brooke’s poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, celebrates the English countryside and does so with sentimentality and humour. It has the wistful longing of a young man a long way from home (it was written in Berlin in 1912), filling the English landscape with literary allusion and natural imagery. It pokes gentle fun at the rivalry that exists between neighbouring villages and celebrates the countryside where Brooke walked barefoot, foraged in the hedgerows, travelled by punt into Cambridge and (allegedly) swam naked with Virginia Woolf in Byron’s Pool.

The Old Vicarage is now the home of politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer. I must confess to never having read one of Archer’s novels; they’re not really my thing. He may be very good, for all I know, and he remains quite popular. At least he has acknowledged an earlier and greater inhabitant of his house through the statue that stands on his lawn.

...And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

As You Like It, II.7

For most commuters, myself included, it’s easy to forget how much of the City you are missing. All I really saw for the first couple of years of working in London were the insides of railway stations and the grimy walls of tunnels, in which the Tube would be delayed for sometimes interminable periods of time. Tube trains are not conducive to reading, either: the press of people and endless announcements make it a stressful experience. All very necessary if you have to cross to the other side of the capital, but I commuted like this for a couple of years before I realised that, as well as costing me money, it wasn’t really saving me any time. Two stops on the Underground was about a mile and a half and took me around 20 minutes. So I invested in a fairly good umbrella (for about the cost of one journey) and took to ambling above ground. In doing so, I was able to discover lost little communities and pleasant urban streets that otherwise I would never have found.

I found myself slowing down considerably: rising above the bustle (literally) and taking the pace down a bit. Now, this is not an easy thing for me to achieve: I only have one speed setting, somewhere between a stroll and a saunter; slowing this even further is a tall order. Nevertheless, I was able to take my time and absorb my surroundings, wandering around interesting shops or museums, taking tea occasionally, or perhaps stopping to read in one of London’s many parks or squares. Taking one’s time is good for the soul.

One of my regular routes took me through Gray’s Inn and along Doughty Street to Mecklenburg Square. Among the locations I discovered at this time was the Charles Dickens Museum. I walked past this modest terraced house at 48 Doughty Street on my journey to and from work every day for several years but never went in. It was quite a low-profile place at the time; I am pleased to say that it is now increasing in popularity and, on a recent visit to London, I stopped in to have a look around.

Charles Dickens was a keen walker himself: he would spend hours wandering the streets, observing people as they went about their business. He became notorious for the fast pace of his walking and frequently referred to his habit of “lurking” in the shadows—to observe without being observed. He was particularly fond of walking at night, when he could witness London’s darker underworld: the thieves, urchins, prostitutes, and ne’er-do-wells who populate so many of his stories.

When Dickens moved into Doughty Street, he was a young man just starting to make his way in the world. He had married Catherine Hogarth the previous year, and they had a baby son, Charley. They had two more children, both daughters, while living in the house. Dickens had recently started writing fiction following a reasonably successful career as a journalist: his “sketches” of London life were gaining him admirers among the public as well as within literary circles.

Dickens loved to be among friends: he enjoyed drinking, entertaining, telling stories, and reading aloud. Among the friends he entertained at Doughty Street were Daniel Maclise, George Cruikshank, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and John Forster, who would become his closest friend and biographer. Moving in with the Dickens family were Charles’s younger brother, Frederick, and Catherine’s teenage sister, Mary. The little terraced house must have witnessed much laughter and happiness. It also saw its fair share of tragedy.

This part of London, close to Great Ormond Street Hospital and within easy walking distance of King’s Cross, is surprisingly quiet, considering its proximity to Gray’s Inn Road. Doughty Street is tree-lined and leafy and feels more like a suburb than the centre of a busy modern city. It is the quiet that you first notice on entering the museum, which is accessed via a neighbouring property.

Visitors are guided through the house, but unlike many museums, the route is not strictly enforced, and you are generally free to wander. I noticed that many people skipped the basement completely, which contains the kitchen, wash-house, and wine cellar. This surprised me, as it is one of the most interesting parts of the house, displaying the inner workings of a Victorian household.

The dining room, set for a formal dinner, has a soundtrack of Victorian street sounds, so the gentle clip-clopping of hooves fills the room. Normally, I don’t go in for these sorts of enhancements, but in this case, it worked rather well and added to the atmosphere already created by the subdued light and drawn blinds protecting delicate fabrics.

The house is very cleverly presented, with exhibits and artworks placed in rooms furnished as they would have been when the house was occupied. The drawing room contains one of Charles’s lecterns, from which he delivered his famous and extremely popular readings of his own works. His bedroom reveals a more personal side, and the suit on display shows his preference for flamboyant clothing.

At the back of the house is the small bedroom occupied by Mary Hogarth, which lends the property a note of sadness, for it is here that, at the age of seventeen, Mary died suddenly of a mysterious illness. Charles was devastated. He had become very close to Mary, and her death, in his arms, affected him deeply. It is often said that Dickens’s heroines changed profoundly following her death, and you can see this in later works, with Little Nell and Nancy reflecting the heartbreaking loss of a young woman.

Charles expressed a wish to be buried alongside her (though this never happened) and wore her ring for the rest of his life. Her story is skilfully presented through the pictures and engravings that adorn the walls of her room. The whole house is lovingly curated. A special mention must go to the staff: they are friendly and knowledgeable. I would guess that many are students earning some extra money. They don’t intrude on your visit but are there if you want to ask anything, and they are warm and welcoming. In fact, this is possibly the friendliest museum I have ever visited.

There is a lovely-looking café in the garden (my third favourite thing about museums is tea shops), but I didn’t visit it on this occasion as I was keen to go to the Lamb in nearby Lamb’s Conduit Street. This little pub is something of a local landmark. The food and ale are both very good (I had a Young’s Special; then another), and there is a charming courtyard garden that gets very busy during the summer.

The Lamb was said to have been a favourite of Dickens. Now, anyone familiar with London will know that many pubs in the capital claim this connection. I used to scoff at this as a marketing ploy, but having read more about Dickens, I have to admit it may well be true. The man drank an extraordinary amount and was rarely without a brandy flask. His letters and diaries reveal that he took alcohol very seriously: “I arrived home at one o’clock dead drunk & was put to bed by the missis” is a typical entry. The cellar in Doughty Street is certainly large enough to keep a serious drinker happy for a very long time.

I would have loved to have stayed longer, but I was meeting friends in Islington that afternoon. I wandered there through the leafy streets of Clerkenwell (I was late, but then I usually am), recalling that this is where the Artful Dodger takes Oliver to learn his trade. Dickens has never fallen out of popularity, nor has he ever been out of print. He remains as much a part of our culture as Shakespeare, and his characters are forever woven into the fabric of our capital.

These days, the fields are a very pleasant place for office workers, and students from the nearby LSE, to spend a lunch hour. There are netball and tennis courts and a very nice café. A central bandstand is surrounded by avenues of London planes. These trees are common throughout the capital as they are tolerant of high levels of pollution, a fact that appealed to Victorian town planners. In the South West corner of the square is The Old Curiosity Shop, selling art, antiques and curios. The sign outside states that it was “immortalised by Charles Dickens” in the novel of the same name but there seems to be some dispute as to whether the shop actually existed in 1840 when the book was published.

Elsewhere in the square, there is an array of pleasant buildings, including the neo-gothic land registry office, the classical Royal College of Surgeons, incorporating the (slightly macabre) Hunterian Museum of Surgical History and, on the north side, the superb John Soane’s museum. Soane was the architect of the Bank of England and was an inveterate collector of architectural features, artworks, furniture and ... well, just interesting stuff. The house (actually two adjoining houses) is packed from cellar to attic with objects that Soane collected from around the world. There is a room full of artworks, including Hogarth, Turner and Canaletto, Egyptian sarcophagi, Roman sculpture and objects of scientific interest. The whole place is decorated and furnished as it would have been when Soane died here in 1837. Best of all, on the first Tuesday of every month, it is open in the evening lit only by candlelight. It’s very atmospheric and quite romantic and completely free. You should definitely experience it.

Lincoln’s Inn itself lies to the East of the square behind a high brick wall and separated by a gatehouse. The Great Hall of Lincoln’s Inn was where Dickens set the opening of Bleak House, one of his greatest, and most poetic, novels. Far better than The Old Curiosity Shop anyway. You can walk through Lincoln’s Inn, although you can’t go into any of the buildings (unless you have business there, of course). The buildings appear to be mid-Victorian: red brick with soaring pinnacles and castellated towers, though parts of the complex date from the 15th century.

The Seven Stars

If you leave the Fields by the South East corner, past Lincoln’s Inn, you will find yourself in Carey Street, which runs behind the Royal Courts of Justice. The Seven Stars is a relaxed and friendly little pub that serves real ale and excellent food. It is frequented by people from the courts at lunchtime, and you can encounter a wide variety of folk. Get there in mid-afternoon and you should find the place quiet enough to get a seat inside. The walls are adorned with newspaper cartoons and old film posters, all with a legal theme, and the building is a delight: cramped yet comfortable. If you do need to use the lavatory, you will have to ascend a near vertical staircase with no room to pass someone coming in the other direction. When I worked in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (or L.I.F. as we used to call it), I would sit in the pub and write sometimes, supervised by the pub cat, Tom Paine (this was a few years ago; I very much doubt that Mr. Paine is still in residence). The Landlady, Observer food writer, the friendly and mildly eccentric Roxy Beaujolais, once told me that John Banville used to visit the pub in order to write. I have no evidence for this, only Roxy’s story, and she did tell a lot of stories. True or not, the pub is a lovely place to spend the afternoon reading or writing, and to stay and watch as it fills up towards evening and people begin to spill onto the street, where an impromptu party atmosphere can develop.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

A short walk towards the Strand will take you past the magnificent Maughan library, part of King’s College and not open to the public as far as I’m aware. Eventually, you will arrive at Fleet Street, the one-time hub of the newspaper industry. Turn left towards St. Paul’s and you will find one of the world’s most famous literary pubs. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese has been playing host to journalists and writers since 1538. The current building was built after the fire in 1666 and is another Samuel Smith’s house. TARDIS-like, it is entered through a narrow doorway in an alleyway and opens up into a huge space, including a labyrinth of wood panelled rooms and a vaulted cellar. There are plaques commemorating former visitors and these read like a who’s who of literary history: Oliver Goldsmith, Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, WB Yeats, Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton, PG Wodehouse, RL Stevenson and, of course, Charles Dickens. The pub is mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities, as the place Sydney Carton takes Charles Darnay for a celebratory dinner following the latter’s acquittal. Samuel Johnson is also supposed to have visited here regularly: his London home, now a museum, is just around the corner in Gough Square.

The Lyceum Tavern

Walk Westward from here back towards the Royal Courts and you will eventually get to the Strand, so called because it used to run along the bank of the Thames. Behind the Lyceum Theatre is the Lyceum Tavern. This occupies the space that used to be the theatre foyer, before it was moved into the classical portico that now fronts the building. This is an actors’ pub: photographs of famous, and not-so-famous, former patrons adorn the walls. This is yet another Samuel Smith’s pub, so you are guaranteed a quality ale and a warm fire in the winter. There was a period in the 70’s and 80’s when the theatre became a live music venue (it was under threat of demolition in those days, as were most historic buildings in London) The Clash, The Who and Bob Marley, among many others played here. Who knows which modern icons have visited here for a post gig refresher. I can just imagine Marley sitting in a quiet corner and enjoying a suspicious cigarette. The Lyceum was once managed by Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Edward Gordon Craig (see previous post on Stevenage) acted there, so he is very likely to have walked through this space. I have visited the Lyceum occasionally, although, if I am in the area, I usually head for the opposite side of the road and the Coal Hole.

The Coal Hole

So called because it once served as the coal cellar for the Savoy Hotel. It was known as a ‘song and supper club’, where Victorian gentlemen could enjoy a light supper and sing-a-long before making their drunken way home to the far-flung, outlying suburbs of Islington and Clerkenwell. Edmund Kean (a famous Shakespearean actor in the early 19th Century) was a member of one of these clubs. Gilbert & Sullivan sometimes sang comic songs to entertain the crowds here: the Savoy theatre, where their operettas were performed, was next door. William Blake spent the end of his life in a two room apartment in No. 3 Fountain Court, which was once located just behind the tavern. He spent his last days sitting in bed colouring in copies of his manuscripts. The building he lived in was demolished when the Savoy hotel was built. The Coal Hole is a pleasant place to spend a couple of hours. The name doesn’t really do the place justice, as it is high-ceilinged and large-windowed and not at all dark or dingy. It is, however, intimate and very friendly, although it can get a bit ... rowdy ... at times (although, I confess, one time I visited was when the England Rugby team paraded the World Cup along the Strand in 2003, so this may not have been entirely representative).

Gordon’s Wine Bar

If it’s subterranean drinking dens you’re after then walk further westward along The Strand towards Trafalgar Square. Before you reach Charing Cross you will find Villiers Street and Gordon’s Wine Bar. The bar has a candlelit, vaulted cellar and a wood-panelled parlour adorned with paintings and newspaper clippings . I’m not much of a wine buff, but I like something red and full-bodied and they were able to oblige at quite a reasonable price. In my experience, wine bars appreciate those asking for advice on what they have on offer, rather than people putting on a French accent and ordering the second cheapest bottle on the list. The food is just how I like to eat: platters of cold meats or cheeses with lots of crusty bread. If the cellar gets a bit too close for you (and it can get very warm in summer) there is a terrace by Victoria Embankment Gardens. Personally, I like the subterranean feel of the place. The building that hosts the bar was once rented by Rudyard Kipling, who used to come down to the parlour to write and GK Chesterton also favoured the parlour for a spot of writing. The building the wine bar occupies has been renamed Kipling House in honour of its previous inhabitant.

The Anchor

I don’t know the South bank of the Thames as well as the North but I have visited Southwark many times. There is an enormous amount to see and do on Bankside and it has always been the playground for those living and working in London. These days, there is the South Bank Complex of theatres and art galleries, the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe. In Shakespeare’s day, the entertainment was rather more nefarious. It was safely out of the jurisdiction of the city fathers, who tended to look down on Londoners’ favourite activities of cock fighting, bear baiting, drinking and ‘Winchester geese’ (or prostitutes). Spoilsports. Worst of these vices, of course, was the theatre: unholy, bawdy and seditious.

One of the most pleasant things to do in London now is to enjoy a refresher by the river. I have spent many a happy hour in, or outside, The Anchor, gazing at the dome of St. Paul’s, watching the traffic on the Thames, mulling over the changes of the tide and, if you’re very lucky, watching Tower Bridge opening (still an exciting event for anyone that lives and works in the city). The Anchor claims to have been built on the site of a pub once visited by Shakespeare himself. Not an unusual claim, it seems: just as every pub north of the river claims to have once been a regular haunt of Charles Dickens, so those in Southwark claim Shakespeare as a patron.

The current Anchor dates from 1825, although it has been rebuilt several times and an Anchor Inn is recorded on the site since 1665. Samuel Pepys witnessed the devastation wrought by the Great Fire from the safety of the Anchor. It was also visited by Samuel Johnson, David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith. Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke are also known to have dined here in its heyday. They serve a decent pint and always have fish and chips on the menu. It’s a great place to watch the river or enjoy a post-theatre drink.

The George

The George Tavern also features in my post on Southwark. The George is remarkable because it has the galleries around which inns were designed. Inn courtyards used to host theatrical performances before the days of purpose-built theatres. If you also visit the Globe theatre, you can’t help but notice the similarity in construction. There used to be several such inns in Southwark, including the Tabard next door, from where Chaucer’s pilgrims embarked on their journey to Canterbury (incidentally, pilgrims on horseback used to travel at a pace known as ‘Canterbury gait’. We have since shortened this to ‘canter’. Ain’t language wonderful?).

The George is divided into a number of interconnected bars. These used to serve as waiting rooms for passengers on the horse-drawn coaches that would whisk them away to Kent and Sussex in a matter of days. One of the bars was used by Charles Dickens, who mentions the George in Little Dorritt. He may have known it from visiting his father at the Marshalsea Prison, which was just to the South of here.

It gets very, very busy on summer evenings, full of office workers on their way to London Bridge station. This seems to make the staff a little twitchy: I was once refused service as, according to the young woman behind the bar: “I think you’ve had enough already”. I had only just arrived and was anticipating my first drink of the evening! It made little difference, as I simply moved to another bar and ordered my drink there without incident. The pub is maintained by the National Trust and is an essential visit if you’re in the London Bridge area, or visiting Borough Market or the Globe Theatre.

Wherever you are in London, you are not far from a hostelry. Most of these are friendly and welcoming and worth stopping by if you have some time on your hands. I am never without a book and will always welcome a few minutes to sit and enjoy a chapter. I can’t guarantee that the one you choose will have any particular literary connection but, who knows, it may once have been visited by Charles Dickens

The Fitzroy Tavern, Charlotte Street, W1.

I was at university just around the corner from here and at the end of a long, studious day, my friend Christian (a larger-than-life character in every sense of the phrase, with a public school drawl that would make Boris Johnson sound eloquent) suggested we take refreshment. He led me to the Fitzroy and, once we had bought drinks, instructed me to sit in a very specific place. “Why here?” I asked, perplexed. “Because” he replied, indicating a photograph of a curly-headed young man in tweeds “that is Dylan’s chair.” Dylan Thomas lodged in nearby Rathbone Place the 1930s. He had published a couple of volumes of poetry and was widely being hailed as a genius and courted by the London literary community. It was while he was living in the area that he met Caitlin Macnamara, who was to become his wife. He spent an enormous amount of time in the pubs of Bloomsbury. Eventually his fondness for pubs and drinking would get the better of him: alcoholism destroyed his marriage and eventually killed him. His photo hangs on the wall here, along with many other past patrons.

In the 1920s The Fitzroy began to acquire a reputation amongst bohemian artists of the day, including Augustus John and Jacob Epstein. There is a BBC recording studio on Charlotte Street and the Fitzroy also became popular with broadcasters. Several writers, perhaps drawn by the bohemian reputation, visited here, including George Orwell (though he preferred the Newman Arms around the corner, using it as the model for the proles pub in 1984), T.S. Eliot (who also frequented The Marquis of Granby, a few yards down the road) and the playwright Brendan Behan (who also visited every pub in the area, frequently). Today, it is a light and pleasant corner pub, embracing its literary and artistic heritage and serving good food. Very handy for a break when visiting the West End or the British Museum.

The Princess Louise, Holborn, WC1

The Princess Louise is also handy for the British Museum and its location near to Holborn Underground Station will give you an opportunity to reflect upon your day’s museuming while waiting for fools to finish rushing, so that you may make your way home at a more leisurely pace. The Louise has no particular literary connection that I’m aware of, although it is a Samuel Smith’s pub. This Yorkshire-based brewery owns several historic inns in the capital (including the Fitzroy). They are an interesting company because, firstly, they only stock their own products, and, secondly, they try to refurbish their premises according to the criteria set out by George Orwell in his 1936 essay, The Moon Under Water. In this essay, Orwell describes the features that make his ideal pub, including:

• The architecture and fittings must be uncompromisingly Victorian.

• Games, such as darts, are only played in the public bar so that in other bars you can walk about without the worry of flying darts.

• The pub is quiet enough to talk, with the house possessing neither a radio nor a piano.

• In winter there is generally a good fire burning in at least two of the bars.

The Princess Louise conforms to most of these criteria, having no music or games and being quiet enough to hold a conversation (or read) with ease. I cannot recall a single occasion, summer or winter, when they haven’t had an enormous fire roaring away. Most of all, the architecture and fittings are spectacularly Victorian. There is an ornate island bar in rich mahogany with gleaming brass fittings; several private booths; a bow-fronted bay window and an ornate plaster ceiling. I don’t have any photographs but it’s worth having a look on Trip Advisor to get a idea of just how magnificent it is.

The Cittie of Yorke, Holborn, WC1

George Orwell also stipulated that the ale in his ideal pub should be drunk out of a pewter tankard. If you wander eastward along High Holborn, you will find, tucked away down a very narrow street, a basement wine bar called Bunghole cellars. I haven’t visited for a number of years but, when I was last there, you could request your ale be served in a pewter mug or copper jug. A little further along High Holborn towards Chancery Lane is the Cittie of Yorke. Another Samuel Smith’s house, this one is less ornate gin palace and more honest boozer. A large, vaulted, stone-floored back room is heated by a stove. It has private cubicles, rather than open tables, which makes socialising more intimate and private. I think this is a much more pleasant experience (unless it’s crowded and you’re forced to share with someone else, when it’s just awkward). In 1951, Dylan Thomas, similarly impressed by the surroundings wrote an ode to ‘Henneky’s Long Bar’, as it was then called. This was only discovered as recently as 2014, down the back of someone’s sofa. Probably.

The Lamb, Lamb’s Conduit Street, WC1

Although a large number of London’s pubs claim to have been visited by Charles Dickens, one pub that has a better right to this assertion than most is The Lamb. Dickens lived around the corner from here, in Doughty Street, between 1837 and 1839. This was an extremely significant part of his life: recently married with a young family and starting to make a name for himself. A Journalist with an enormously successful book recently published, he was making friends among the London artistic and literary community. Things took a decided downturn when his beloved sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, died in his arms, aged just 17; An event that seems to have caused him such upset that he never really recovered. He wore her ring for the rest of his life and the was inspired to write some decidedly tragic heroines (Nancy in Oliver Twist and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, for example). The house in which he lived is now an excellent and very friendly museum. The Lamb is perfectly situated for perusing the museum guidebook, which has become something of a ritual for me after visiting a writer’s house.

For many years, I walked from work in Holborn to King’s Cross station every evening and the Lamb was about the half-way point. Like Charles, I sometimes stopped here for a refresher. The beer is always very good and they do some very nice pub fare too. Inside, there is an original Victorian interior (anyone starting to notice a theme here?) with several small rooms and a central island bar. The pub is famous for having original ‘snob screens’. These are small glass screens that separate you from the bar. These can be opened for placing an order, and then closed to give you some privacy from the lower orders behind the bar whilst you conduct your conversation. There is also a charming little courtyard garden that gets very busy on summer evenings. It is in this pub that a young Sylvia Plath would meet Ted Hughes when they were courting.

Lamb’s Conduit Street (so called because someone called Lamb built a conduit in it) is a lovely little oasis. There are some nice little cafés, family-run restaurants and interesting little shops, among them Persephone Books, a gorgeous little bookshop specialising in 20th Century women’s fiction. There are also several pubs (including the Perseverance, which I have visited often; it brews it’s own beer and is popular among medical staff from the nearby Great Ormond Street Hospital).

Ye Olde Mitre

Walk along High Holborn to Hatton Garden and you will find a barrier, complete with security guard, at the entrance to Ely Place. This is because the area you are about to enter doesn’t actually exist within London. Slipping through this portal in space-time, you will find yourself in a small exclave of Cambridgeshire. It exists to accommodate St Ethelreda’s catholic church and, originally, the London residence of the Bishop of Ely. There are stories of jewel thieves from Hatton Garden making a dash for Ely Place as the Met have no authority here (I think, however, this might be a particularly risky course of action).

Ye Olde Mitre can be difficult to find, tucked in an alleyway between Ely Place and Hatton Garden but it is definitely worth seeking out. The pub slots in to some tiny brick alleyways, between buildings which close in around you to lend the area a gloomy, Dickensian feel. The canyon widens slightly to accommodate the Mitre and creates a little oasis of light. The Mitre looks like an old sailing ship at dock: the front is oak and glass; there are brass lanterns hanging outside and barrels stacked in the alleyway provide leaning places for the exiled smokers. Inside is a labyrinth of tiny rooms, narrow staircases, wood panels and cosy fires. It is cramped but feels friendly and homelike. One can get very comfortable here.

I don’t know of any literary connections, but there is a legend about Elizabeth I meeting Sir Christopher Hatton beneath a cherry tree. Apparently, the tree is preserved as part of the structure of the building (I can’t recall ever seeing it). The pub is registered with CAMRA (an organisation that does a great deal of work to preserve this important aspect of our heritage) and is on their register of historic pub interiors. It has an armful of awards and apparently the food is good. The atmosphere is excellent.

To be continued ...

The diarist Samuel Pepys overnighted at the White Lion, Daniel Defoe is known to have stayed here, and Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor. Furthermore, the convenient proximity to the capital meant that London literati could have conveniently placed country residences within easy travelling distance of the smoke. If you travel from London today, you will notice, as your train pulls in to Stevenage station, the Gordon Craig Theatre. Who, you may wonder to yourself, the heck is Gordon Craig?

The Terry family were a hugely prolific acting dynasty (the great Sir John Gielgud was a descendant of the Terrys) and were immensely popular among Victorian theatregoers. Ellen Terry was at one time regarded as the greatest actress on the British stage. Along with her business partner, the actor-manager Sir Henry Irving. She played a plethora of heavyweight dramatic roles at the Lyceum Theatre (It is rumoured that they were partners in more than just the business sense). In 1864, fifteen years before she met Irving, she was married to the artist, George Frederic Watts. She was only sixteen when they wed; he was 46. Watts was known and admired among a circle of eminent Victorians including Browning and Tennyson. They were not exactly welcoming towards Watts’s teenage wife. She must have been disillusioned with the artistic lifestyle as, ten months later, she skedaddled. She embarked upon a relationship with the architect William Godwin and, at some point before 1872, they found themselves at Railway Street, Stevenage. They had two children together: Edith and Edward Gordon. Terry chose the surname ‘Craig’ to avoid the scandal of illegitimacy.

Edward spent a large part of his childhood at various London theatres, where he observed the work of his mother and Sir Henry, whom he came to greatly admire. He began to realise what a great deal of influence the director could have over the production of a play and formulated his idea of a play’s director as a major artist of the stage. He had a short career as an actor, but was more interested in art than drama. He became a full-time designer. He designed sets for some extremely successful performances, but made little money from them and yearned to express his art further afield. He travelled to Russia to work under Konstantin Stanislavsky, where he designed and built elaborate stage sets for the Moscow Arts Theatre, most famously for Hamlet in 1911. In this year, he published “On The Art of the Theatre”, establishing the art of theatre direction. He worked at theatres throughout Europe, and was notoriously difficult to work with. Single-mined and uncompromising, he demanded complete artistic control over any production he worked on. Eventually, as you might expect, the work dried up completely. He did live a life, though: he was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War 2, had a series of glamorous lovers (including the dancer, Isadora Duncan, famous for her long flowing scarves and travelling in open-topped sports cars for very short distances), and finally died at his home in France aged 94.

Perhaps a slightly better known Stevenage resident is E.M. Forster. Shortly after the death of his father, he and his mother moved here from London. They lived in Rooksnest House on the outskirts of town, towards the village of Weston. He had very fond memories of his childhood, roaming around the Hertfordshire countryside, foraging in the hedgerows and visiting strapping young agricultural workers in the nearby farms. Howard’s End, one of his best novels, pays homage to his childhood home, which serves as the model for the coveted house in the novel. The house that now occupies the site of Rooksnest is a private home and can’t be visited. You can visit the nearby St. Nicholas’s Church, where you will find a memorial to Forster tucked in a quiet corner of the churchyard. Look East from here and you can see the house quite clearly. Elsewhere in Forster’s writing you will find many references to the countryside around Stevenage, and his affection for it is evident. The land around here is under threat of development, of course. Whenever there’s a penny to be made, the developers will move in and exploit our land for their own personal gain. There is a movement to save the countryside: if you visit their website, you can download a map of Forster country, featuring information about the campaign and a very pleasant country walk.

Just north of Stevenage, near the town of Baldock, is the tiny and picturesque village of Wallington, where a cluster of houses nestle round a duck-filled pond. It was surrounded by daffodils when I visited and looked very pretty indeed. George Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in St. Mary’s, Wallington, in 1936 and the couple moved into No. 2 Kitt’s Lane. Although he moved out in 1940, Orwell continued to hold the lease and used the cottage as a weekend getaway. It was here that he wrote some of his best known novels, including Animal Farm. The Manor farm of the novel is based on the Manor Farm in the village, and the farm buildings include a great barn, similar to the one in which the animals meet to plot their revolution. Eileen died in tragic circumstances in 1945 (heart failure whilst under anaesthetic for a hysterectomy) and George abandoned the cottage completely.

Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor to Stevenage, as he had a great friend who lived nearby. Dickens’s works have never gone out of fashion, and modern readers still delight in his caricatures of Victorian society. The politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton, was no less prolific a writer and, at the time, was at least as popular as his limelight stealing mate. Dickens was a very keen actor, loved the stage and often stated how he could easily have been a professional actor (he was suffering from a cold and had to miss the audition that could have been his big break). In 1850, at the height of his literary career, he staged a number of amateur theatrical performances in order to raise money for charity. Bulwer-Lytton was one of his co-actors and they staged a performance in Knebworth, a couple of miles south of Stevenage. Knebworth House, the ancestral home of the Lytton family, is a magnificent neo-Gothic hall, parts of which date back to 1471. It is now best known as the venue for major rock concerts. Oasis played two sell-out nights here in 1996, and it is the location of the Sonisphere festival. The house is also a good location for family outings, and it hosts a huge array of activities for young and old alike. It costs £22.50 to get in, which, I have to say, is a little steep if you just want to visit the writer’s home, but is fantastic value for a fun-filled family day out. If it all gets too much, you can always retreat to the Lytton Arms, famous for its huge range of real ales.

Bulwer-Lytton is now famous for three things: “It was a dark and stormy night” is the opening line of the novel Paul Clifford; “the pen is mightier than the sword” appears in his play, Richelieu; and ‘Bovril’. In the dystopian science fiction novel The Coming Race, He discusses an energy-rich substance which he names ‘vril’. This became a popular concept at the time and caught the attention of the makers of the unpleasant beefy drink, who adopted the name: bovine vril. Bulwer-Lytton’s writing is now considered old-fashioned and cliché, but the fact that some of his phrases have become part of our language is testament to his past popularity. Some readers and academics are starting to rediscover his writing: his collected works are available as a free ebook and are definitely worth dipping into if you’re interested in Victorian literature. I shall leave the last word with his great friend, Charles Dickens, who wrote of Stevenage:

“The village street was like most other village streets: wide for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree.”

The oft retold story goes, that Sam Wannamaker (You will, of course, remember him as Private Benjamin’s Dad) upon arriving in London, asked to see the Globe Theatre and was horrified to hear that it no longer existed. This was the 1970s and the Government had more pressing concerns than our literary heritage. He founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust to build a replica theatre on the South Bank of the Thames, as close to the original location as possible. It opened in 1997 and continues to give audiences an experience akin to that of an Elizabethan playgoer, while educaating them about Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

It is a very striking building: painstakingly constructed, using drawings and descriptions from the time plus a fair amount of guesswork. It is crafted from English oak, using Elizabethan building techniques. The thatched roof is the only one in London, and the first to be built in the city since the great fire in 1666. It was the thatched roof that was the downfall of the original, as the whole thing burned down in 1613. Best viewed from the river, or the nearby Millennium bridge, The Globe nestles amongst the office blocks of Southwark, adding to the architectural diversity of the south bank.

They have a dedicated education centre, staffed by an extremely efficient team, who will create a day of bespoke activities designed to fire young imaginations and engage young interest. It was here that Miss Pearce and I arrived with an assortment of young adults. We were given a guide for the day, taken on a tour of the theatre, given a discussion about the play we were studying (The Taming of the Shrew). We were also treated an acting workshop, where we all got to take part in the sort of games and activities the company use to better understand a play and its language. Tremendous fun and very informative. If you ever have the opportunity to take a group of young people on a trip, I strongly recommend it.

We also took a trip round the exhibition, which is well worth the entrance fee. Built underneath the theatre, the exhibition features a large central space surrounded by galleries. In the central hall, they stage demonstrations. It was stage fighting skills when we visited. The galleries feature a huge range of exhibits: a reconstructed printing press; audio recordings of Shakespearean actors; artefacts uncovered during the excavation; props and costumes. It all helps you to build a complete picture of Elizabethan life and see Shakespeare as a living, evolving entity, rather than a relic from the past.

It is with this attitude that they approach their productions. Miss Pearce and I returned in the summer to see a production of the ‘Shrew’ and were very impressed. It was imaginatively staged, setting the play in Ireland in the early 20th Century. Not a traditional Elizabethan production but you still get the feel of what a traditional production would have been like, with music, dancing, exuberant acting and audience involvement.

The theatre also stages productions by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and, in the newly opened Sam Wannamaker Playhouse (a recreation of a renaissance theatre: indoor, smaller and candlelit) – stage new writing and hosts music concerts. The whole theatre complex, complete with restaurants, bars and a shop, is more like a vibrant, living arts centre than a museum.

While we’re on the subject of shops, the Globe’s bookshop is a peach. it offers a wide selection of books on all things Shakespearean, along with the usual array of gifts from pencil sharpeners to plastic skulls, with something for everyone: I bought a facsimile edition of Hamlet. I am pleased and proud to say that, when asked for feedback, all my young charges cited the bookshop as their favourite part of the day. In the age of online shopping, they don’t often get to visit a bookshop, so a decent one like this still has the power to captivate.

The whole Globe complex fits very nicely into the redeveloping Bankside, along with Tate Modern and Gabriel’s Wharf, it is becoming the capital’s foremost destination for the arts, particularly when you consider that the National Theatre and South Bank Centre are a short riverside walk away. After the show, it’s worth taking a walk to discover some of Bankside’s other attractions.

If you find your way to Park Street and turn East towards London Bridge you will find the site of the Rose Playhouse. Here, most of Marlowe’s plays were performed and Shakespeare presented his early work under the management of Philip Henslowe, whose diary survives and can be read online. The site was discovered during excavations for the office block that stands over the site. There was a campaign to preserve it but this was the 1980s and the Government had more pressing concerns than our literary heritage. A compromise was reached, however, and the new building was erected over the site. You can access it only at certain times as it is still an active archaeological site. There is a display of archaeological finds and it serves as a venue for lectures, talks and performances. There are also regular events and open days.

Continue down Park Street and you will see a memorial plaque on your right just after you go under Southwark bridge. This marks the site where the original Globe Theatre stood, now occupied by some very smart flats.

It’s also worth visiting Southwark Cathedral, which contains a further monument to the Bard, along with a window depicting scenes from his plays. It also contains the tombs of several people of note, including Edmund Shakespeare, Will’s brother, who was a player, as was Edward Alleyne. John Fletcher, who also lies here, was a writer who collaborated with Shakespeare and succeeded him as writer in residence for the King’s Men. The famous Borough Market can provide you with some interesting food if you’re peckish, although it can be rather expensive. There is an excellent fish and chip shop, however. I expect you’ve worked up quite a thirst by now and will need some refreshment before the journey home.

The George Inn is the only surviving example of a galleried Inn left in the capital. It was in the courtyards of Inns such as this that plays were first performed, from the courtyard you can observe the triple-tiered galleries and reflect on the similar design of the theatre. It is a beautiful and atmospheric place for your post-theatre pint. They serve food if you want to make an evening of it. It can get very busy on summer evenings and there are a couple of places still left to visit.

In the adjacent street, Talbot Yard, once stood the Tabard Inn from where Chaucer’s pilgrims set out on their journey to Canterbury. A blue plaque marks the location. Continue south and you will see the modern Harvard Library on your left. This was built on the site of the Marshalsea Prison, where Charles Dickens’s father was sent for debt in 1824. Dickens, who was only 12 at the time, was deeply affected by the experience. The prison features prominently in Little Dorrit (The George Inn also makes an appearance).

To finish our tour on a Shakespearean note, his contemporary, Ben Jonson was incarcerated at Marshalsea in 1597 for writing a seditious play. Although the building has mostly gone, one wall is still visible in St. George’s churchyard.

Details of performances are available from Shakespeare’s Globe and Rose Playhouse. The George Inn is run by the National Trust.

Into the modest parsonage to the west of the churchyard were squeezed Patrick, his wife Maria and their six children: Maria (7), Elizabeth (5), Charlotte (4), Patrick Branwell (3), Emily (2), and the infant Anne. Five years later the family was reduced by three; by 1855 only Patrick remained. He lived on to the ripe old age of 84 but had to endure the deaths of his entire family. The parsonage is preserved by the Brontë Society as a delightful little museum. The entrance fee is modest, and you get a lot for your money. The house itself is decorated in keeping with the period in which the sisters inhabited it, using letters and diary entries from Charlotte and her friends and associates, including Elizabeth Gaskell. The exhibits link each room with specific family members, and you can see the dining room in which Charlotte, Emily, and Anne wrote some of the greatest novels in English literature.

There are also two exhibition rooms. One houses a permanent exhibit of objects associated with the Brontës and Haworth. I found the tiny little books they wrote as children particularly interesting: they created fantasy worlds with their own history, myths, and legends, all recorded in tiny handmade books. There are some of Branwell's paintings (his famous portrait of his sisters hangs on the stairway) and a large collection of what has become known as "Brontëana." This collection of personal possessions and artefacts was dispersed—bought or otherwise acquired by Brontë collectors. The Brontë Society has been returning it to the museum since 1928. There is also a temporary exhibition containing works by local artists as well as pieces inspired by the Brontë novels. Before leaving the house you will be ushered through the bookshop, which is among the finest I have visited. When running a gift shop in a historic house, it must be tempting to fill the shelves with piles of cheap tat. I am happy to say that the Brontë Society has resisted this temptation. There are beautiful editions of all the novels and poems; you will find one to suit your pocket. There are reproductions of Charlotte's drawings along with gifts and products inspired by them.

Elsewhere in the town there are many other places of interest. You can visit the family's graves (except Anne; she requested to go to Scarborough when she became ill) in the church. You can get a very good lunch at the Black Bull, the pub where the ne'er-do-well Branwell spent much of his time. You can also visit the apothecary where he bought his laudanum (don't ask to buy any: although the shopkeeper laughed politely, her expression told me she gets asked this question at least a hundred times a day in high season). This is now a fantastic little shop selling handmade toiletries and beauty products, along with "bathroom curiosities": old-fashioned shaving equipment and the like. The smell of the place is amazing. Mrs. P. and I lunched in a small café called Cobbles and Clay, which also houses a pottery studio. It was lovely. We had a Yorkshire Platter: a board heaving under the weight of rustic bread, ham, cheese, and pickles. We do love a sharing board, Mrs. P. and I.

I have relatively recently become a fan of the Brontë sisters. Although I read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre when I was younger, they confused me. The stories seemed disjointed and uneven, some of the characters unattractive, and the landscapes were described in a way I wasn't used to from other early Victorian literature (much of which is more heavily influenced by the Romantic era). I now see that it is the unusual construction that makes the novels so compelling. If you haven't already, I strongly urge you to read these two novels. I'm never sure which is the better; I change my mind after every rereading. These two books stand head and shoulders above the rest of the canon. The landscape features strongly throughout the stories: episodes that take place on the moors are at the heart of both of them, and to appreciate them properly you should spend some time wandering the moorland. There are a number of influential places within walking distance: Ponden Hall, Wycoller Manor (the model for Ferndean in Jane Eyre), and Top Withens. Top Withens was never the model for Wuthering Heights, but it has become inextricably bound to it.

Top Withens is about four miles out of Haworth, across the moors, so it was to this destination I planned to walk. It was a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon when I set out to appreciate the atmospheric ruins, which would, no doubt, shimmer in the late-afternoon sunshine; I would perch on a nearby boulder, shield my eyes from the glare, and spend a lazy hour sunning myself and taking in the ambience. This was Yorkshire, however, so ten minutes into my walk I was soaked to the bone, knee-deep in mud, and shivering with cold. The path was well defined, though I was forced to leave it at one point by a particularly aggressive sheep. He stared me out. I made it as far as the falls (about halfway) before I gave up. The Brontë Falls are beautiful; they cascade down the hillside into a brook, where there is a lovely stone bridge to cross if you continue the journey. Nearby is a chair-shaped rock in which the sisters are supposed to have taken turns to sit and tell stories. There is a circular walk across the moors that takes three days to complete, and I hope to undertake it one day.

If you’re now in the mood for investigating the lives of young women writers who died far too young, Sylvia Plath’s grave is in Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge. You can also stay in Ted Hughes’s childhood home in Mytholmroyd, which is now a holiday home. You should also try to visit the Brontës’ birthplace in Thornton, Bradford. All of these are a short drive or a long walk from Haworth. You should also take a ride on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, which stops at Haworth Station and was used for the classic film The Railway Children. If you are a fan (of the film or just of Jenny Agutter) you should definitely give it a visit.

There are some really good online resources for Haworth and Yorkshire: start with the excellent Brontë Society website.

Stratford-upon-Avon is a charming town. Centred around a large park on the banks of the Avon which, in the summer months, teems with day trippers from the nearby West Midlands conurbation and tourists from around the world. Few of these people visit the three theatres (four if you include the free one in the park) run by the Royal Shakespeare Company or visit the museums owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust but this is unimportant. Families hire boats and glide along the river amongst the swans. Older folk hire deckchairs and laze in the sun while puppeteers and magicians entertain the children, all of them enjoying a delightful, peaceful rural English town.

The town has been a shrine to Britain’s favourite writer since David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. If you do decide to visit, you will not be alone. In the summer in particular (and you should visit in the summer), the birthplace will be full of tourists happily chatting and snapping away. Personally, I like to take my time and soak up the atmosphere, so my advice is to arrive early. The other properties in the town aren’t nearly as well visited, and (in my opinion) are better. You could, if you were very energetic, explore the town in a single day but you will need longer if you are going to see all of the properties and visit the theatre. There are plenty of hotels in the town. You could even stay in an Elizabethan Inn, such as the Falcon or, if money is limited, there are the usual clean and pleasant budget hotels on the outskirts. The Premier Inn has a particularly pleasant location by the canal. Being a small town, nothing is more than a short walk away. Our usual procedure for exploration of a literary location is for Mrs. P. to explore the shops, while I take my time wandering around the house/museum/bookshop and getting lost.

The birthplace itself is a pleasant Elizabethan house, much altered and extended over the years. It has a real feel of atmosphere and antiquity, and bears the marks of visitors through the centuries. I particularly enjoyed the old birthroom window. It seems it was once traditional for visitors to scratch their names into the glass and many people of note have done so. See who you can spot. There is a very good exhibition included in the birthplace visit and it has an excellent bookshop. Actors will entertain the crowds in the garden during the summer, by playing scenes from the greatest hits in the garden. The staff are all friendly and helpful and smile a lot, which is always nice. A short walk down the High Street brings you to the recently re-opened New Place. The ‘footprint’ of Shakespeare’s home is indicated in this very pleasant attraction that features commissioned artwork, an Elizabethan knot garden and a beautiful and tranquil garden. There are three mulberry trees in the garden, one of which was, allegedly, planted by the great man himself. No one was looking so I pinched a mulberry or two. Delicious. Why they don’t sell a mulberry liqueur in the gift shop is beyond me. On the way out, you are channelled through an exhibition, featuring archaeological finds from the site and the usual activities for kids. Next door, you will find the Guild Chapel, featuring some fine medieval wall paintings.

It’s about time for tea now, and there’s an excellent tea shop in Hall’s Croft. This was the home of Susanna, Shakespeare’s eldest, and she did alright for herself. Married the local doctor, John Hall, and got a substantial property into the bargain. I happen to enjoy just spending time in old houses and this one’s a peach: some of the glass is original (very little of the glass in my house, which is considerably newer, is original) there’s another fine garden. This one features the Birthplace Trust’s temporary exhibitions, which are always interesting and insightful and help you connect the town to its history. It’s easy to forget that away from the tourists and the theatres and the hype, there’s a living, breathing town with a heritage of its own. If you buy a ticket to the birthplace, you get New Place and Hall’s Croft bundled in.

Shakespeare and his family are buried in Holy Trinity Church (well ... most of them are, watch the recent C4 documentary for further details). The church stands in a lovely, leafy churchyard by the Avon and is worth a wander around. They charge you to see the tombs and the memorial. It’s very cheap (about £2, if memory serves) but I didn’t have any cash on me so gave it a miss. There is still much of interest in the rest of the church, when I visited, there was a display of artwork created by local people. It was late afternoon by now and I was developing a heck of a thirst. The route back in to town is via a riverside walk through some very pleasant gardens, much less frequented than the Bancroft Gardens at the front of the theatre. On the day I visited there were one-or-two picnicking families and some beautiful young people lazing in the late afternoon sun. There really are very few places I would rather be.

I still had about half an hour before I was due to meet Mrs. P., so I spent it in the Black Swan, or ‘dirty duck’ as it prefers to be known. A lovely little pub, proud of its dramatic heritage. It is a popular watering hole for actors playing in the nearby RSC theatres, so you may be lucky enough to spot someone you’ve seen on Casualty (we once met Robin Nedwell there. I kid you not). We had tickets for The Two Noble Kinsmen, so I downed my pint and met Mrs. P. for a quick bite in the Theatre restaurant. Really good value and excellent, simple food. They have three places to eat, so you should be able to find something good no matter what your budget. We went to the Circle Bar and had a ‘sharing platter’ full of lovely, tapas-y things, and a cocktail each. It was all superb.

The theatres themselves have recently been done up and have improved immensely. The production was well-cast and imaginative and rounded off the day beautifully. I know I’m biased (English teacher, you see) but however much you delight in the Shakespeare ‘brand’, however many ‘Anne Hathaway’s cream teas you consume, or pints of Old Prospero’s you drink or even, dare I say it, museums you visit, you can only really connect with Shakespeare through the words that he wrote. As well as enjoying the olde England that he came from, it is always a more worthwhile experience to spend some time experiencing the plays he created. Whatever you think of our deification of the bard, it’s always worth reminding ourselves ... the dude could write. Whoever he was.

Find out what’s on through the RSC website and more information about the Shakespeare properties through the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, born in 1835 was an immensely popular novelist during the Victorian era, with a life as outrageously sensational as her novels. She was raised alone by her mother, who had left Mary’s father because of his frequent infidelities. A separation was still an unusual event at the time. After school she befriended Clara and Adelaide Biddle, sisters who had been well known as child actors and were now making their way through the profession, playing minor roles throughout the country’s theatres. Mary joined them and realised her childhood dream of acting. In 1860, Mary met the publisher John Maxwell, the two began an affair and moved in together, although Maxwell was married at the time. His wife had been admitted to a mental asylum and Mary acted as stepmother to their five children. Maxwell’s wife died in 1874, enabling he and Mary to marry; they had six children together.

Mary was a hugely prolific writer, with over 70 (some sources say close to 90) novels and a number of plays attributed to her; most of these are supernatural thrillers and Ghost stories. She became know for sensation novels: a genre that combined melodrama and the gothic and challenged societal norms. By far her best known book is Lady Audley’s Secret, which became a bestseller and made her a small fortune. The novel, about a young woman who marries a rich widower, is set in Ingatestone Hall, in which Mary had recently been a guest.

A glorious old place. A place that visitors fell in raptures with; feeling a yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there forever, staring into the cool fish-ponds and counting the bubbles as the roach and carp rose to the surface of the water. A spot in which peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on every tree and flower, on the still ponds and quiet alleys, the shady corners of the old-fashioned rooms, the deep window-seats behind the painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues...

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret

Following her lead, I gathered the team and we headed South to Essex one Sunday afternoon late last summer. It’s in a rural setting and we had to wind through country lanes through farmland to get there. It’s difficult to imagine that it is so close to Ingatestone and the A12 corridor; just 7 miles from London.

You enter the property through a distinctive arched gatehouse, half timbered with a clock tower above. The clock has a single hand that slowly counts out the hours and bears the message “Sans Dieu Rien”: without God nothing. The hall itself was once a closed quad with a courtyard within. It now only occupies three sides of the square,

There were restrictions in place because of Covid, but the staff were friendly, chatty and helpful, guiding us through with ease and filling in the details as we went round. Rooms of note are the Dining Room, lined with tapestries, and the Gallery with portraits and artefacts of the Petre family, who still occupy the hall to this day. We were particularly keen on the smaller rooms, like a lovely little book-lined study. There are also some secret places tucked away. Many old houses have a Priest’s hole, where the family pastor could be hidden during an unexpected visit from the (protestant) authorities. This house has two, one of which is quite large and must have made a surprisingly comfortable retreat for a hunted clergyman. There isn’t much information about Braddon, unfortunately. There is a notice-board covered with fading magazine and newspaper articles but these are more concerned with the film adaptations that have been set at the hall, rather than the novel.

As most places last summer, they were struggling to comply with Covid restrictions and some facilities, such as the restaurant, were closed. We had to make do with Ploughman’s lunches and ginger beer, served outside in the garden. It was simple fare but really excellent; we all enjoyed them immensely. We spent the afternoon wandering around the grounds, chatting and enjoying being outside in the late summer sunshine. There are sculptures, vast fish ponds, where Mrs. P spotted a cormorant, and some secluded woodland walks alongside the more formal gardens. Lots of little hidden corners where we could get lost.

Our visit over, we still had a couple of hours to kill, so headed past Colchester to Paper Mill Lock for tea. A popular leisure area and there were many people around, mostly loading up their cars and heading home after a long day out. We staked our place in the tearoom and enjoyed the lowering afternoon sun over tea and cake. The stretch of river between here and the sea was well known to the nature writer, JA Baker.

JA Baker was a reclusive chap. He lived in Chelmsford and spent all of his spare time cycling along the lanes of the Chelmer valley and observing the wildlife. In his best book, The Peregrine, he describes the landscape and the lives of the birds he pursues throughout the Essex countryside. It is an interesting read, having no narrative to follow, but is fascinating nonetheless. Baker has an intriguing way of describing the natural world and the book is absolutely captivating. There is an audiobook version narrated by David Attenborough which is really worth seeking out. Baker would sometimes stop at Paper Mill Lock for refreshment on his bird watching journey and it was nice to for us to do the same.

We said goodbye to our friends here, who hurried off home but Mrs. P and I stayed to enjoy the autumn evening sun. We drove to the nearby village of Ulting, where Baker would cycle in pursuit of his beloved peregrines. Mrs. P collected blackberries from the hedgerows, while I went for a walk along the towpath, walking upstream back towards Paper Mill Lock as I wanted to see Ulting church from the opposite bank: a particularly beautiful setting. I just managed to get there for the last of the evening light.

It was a lovely September evening, some of my favourite times of the year. The hedgerows are loaded with fruit, the evenings are still and golden. It is still warm but the sun is starting to lower and the days shorten, with the promise of cosy firesides to come,

I didn’t see any peregrines though.

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It is always an absolute pleasure to 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. We drove towards the coast past some gorgeous little villages. Thaxted, Flinchingfield, Howe Street, along with the wonderfully named communities of Stebbing and Steeple Bumpstead, present one with an endless array of pink-washed, half-timbered and pargetted cottages.

In Howe Street we stopped to look at the neat, white thatched cottage that was once home to Dorothy Smith. Dorothy, known as ‘Dodie’, moved here when her writing was starting to bring her success. She was primarily a playwright. Her plays, such as ‘Dear Octopus’ and ‘Call it a Day’ were enormously successful on the London stage, attracting the foremost actors of the day, along with favourable critical opinion. She was forced to move to America during the Second World War, due to her stance as a conscientious objector. She then turned to novel writing, producing her most famous works, ‘I Capture the Castle’ and ‘101 Dalmatians’, set in Sudbury, where she is commemorated with a display in the local museum.

We spent the afternoon driving towards Suffolk through Dedham Vale to take a look at Flatford Mill: the beautiful area that has been dubbed ‘Constable Country’ as it inspired the great artist to some of his best loved paintings. It was lovely to see the mill and Willy Lott’s Cottage: familiar sights from paintings in an area largely unspoilt. The National Trust do a marvellous job of keeping these areas maintained without giving in to the pressures of gift shops and cafeterias. Dedham Vale was once the home of Ruth Rendell. In fact, there are a startling number of crime authors who have found a home in the region: PD James, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham, of whom, more later. Rendell lived in the village of Polstead, also home to the infamous ‘Red Barn’, site of the murder of Maria Marten, as recreated in several popular Victorian songs and melodramas.

The village of Thrope-le-soken is another parade of pleasing old buildings. Some houses in the high street still bear the signs of a previous life in commerce, and the old bay shop fronts are still visible on many of them. There are some lovely old buildings here including a picturesque little police station, complete with blue lamp. We were staying at the Rose and Crown. A lovely, quiet little pub serving very good food with lovely, clean little rooms at an extremely reasonable price. They did us a good dinner in the evening and one of the best ‘full Englishes’ I have ever had. Freshly cooked and piping hot.

We visited Walton-on-the-naze, ostensibly to see Hamford Water, a marshy network of creeks and backwaters, that Arthur Ransome enjoyed exploring by sail. His novel, Secret Water, is set among the this vast area of muddy inlets and reeds. The plan was to walk around the point and explore the water by foot. There are boat trips that will take around the water to observe the multitude of wildlife that lives and breeds in the marshes. With the threat of Covid still a pervasive force in our everyday lives, we opted not to share a boat, crowded with several other breathing individuals, and to forego the opportunity to see seals, terns, geese and others in their natural, muddy habitat.

Mrs. P has a love of beach-combing and collecting interesting objects from the foreshore, so the morning was spent walking up and down the beach, looking at wildlife, talking to dogs, collecting fossils and glass and interesting stones.

Today, this seems to be mostly made up of caravan sites and holiday parks, so there is no shortage of visitors to this remote corner of Essex.

We drove then through Colchester and across the causeway to Mersea Island. Not a true island, it is only cut off from the mainland twice a day, when the high tide rises to cover the road. It is a patch of wooded high ground standing slightly proud of the surrounding muddy marsh. Here the Reverend Sabine Baring Gould was rector of St Nicholas Church in East Mersea.

Sabine Baring-Gould, Anglican priest, writer and scholar, spent ten years presiding over the marshy residents of Mersea. He returned to the family home of Lewtrenchard in Devon, on the death of his father in 1872. You probably know the hymns he wrote: ‘Onward Christian Soldiers‘ is one of his. He also wrote hundreds of stories, some of which were based on his university study of folklore, collected together in a volume entitled ‘The Book of Were Wolves‘ is the first recorded reference to werewolves in literature. He wrote novels too. Mehalah, a story of romantic obsession, is set amongst the mysterious, marshy landscape around the island

It is a wide waste of debatable ground contested by sea and land, subject to incessant incursions from the former, but stubbornly maintained by the latter. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of moss or Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions.

Mehalah, Sabine Baring-Gould

The marshes and estuaries around this part of the coast continue to inspire. The Essex Serpent makes use of this ancient and mysterious backwater to provide an atmospheric backdrop to this recent recreation of a Victorian novel. It is possible to imagine the ancient creatures that slip and slither among the dark, sluggish waters of the estuary.

We stopped at the village of West Mersea for tea for seafood at one the oyster sheds on the shore. This area is famous for Colchester oysters, which thrive in the muddy waters and have been harvested since Roman times. We ordered up a seafood platter and ate it huddled in a chilly tent, wrapped in jumpers, coats and cardigans. watching the boats on the creeks feeding the Blackwater estuary, and picking at the selection of mussels, crab, prawns, cockles and crayfish finished with polystyrene cups of tea. It was all fresh and delicious and remarkably good value.

A few miles from Mersea Island, in the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy, a rather grand Victorian house was once the home of crime writer Marjorie Allingham. Allingham was, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the triumvirate of crime writers that ruled detective fiction during the 1920s and 30s. Her detective creation, Albert Campion, an affable aristocrat who motors around the country solving crimes, accompanied by his faithful sidekick, Lugg. He was portrayed on TV in the nineties, played by Peter Davidson.

We rolled into Maldon in the early evening, as the light was fading and the town emptying. A short walk along the coast led us to the site of the battle of Maldon and the oldest identifiable battlefield in the country. The East Saxons, tired of the King’s appeasement policy towards Vikings, took matters into their own hands and met them on Northey Island in 991. Big mistake: the Vikings took out the Saxons quite easily. The events of battle where the inspiration for one of the earliest poems in English, The Battle of Maldon.

the Viking army, westward across the Pante,
across the bright waters, carrying their board-shields,
sailing-men to the shore, bearing yellow linden.
There they stood ready against the ferocious one,
Byrhtnoth and his warriors.

The Battle of Maldon

There is a statue of Earl Byrhtnoth, the Saxon chief, in Maldon, in what is clearly a popular spot for locals to walk dogs or just to sit and contemplate the dark river and the endless marshes. It was only a week since 10th August, the anniversary of the battle, and some red roses had been left at the base of the statue. Why red roses, I don’t know. Fen violets or Columbine would have been a better choice, as you can see these throughout the marshland. I doubt that red roses, adopted as a national symbol in 1485, would have held any meaning for Byrhtnoth at all. I wondered what motivated someone to commemorate the death of a thousand year old chieftain and hoped it was not indicative of a growing wave of post-Brexit Nationalism. Any modern Essex dweller is just as likely to be descended from Vikings as Saxons, and I concluded, then, that it was a poetry lover, commemorating the nascence of that epic poem with a symbol of Burns and the Romantic era.

If you have not done so, I urge you to visit Essex. You won’t find many seaside towns with wide, sandy beaches or amusement arcades and chip shops. You will find sleepy little villages with pleasant pubs and musty old churches. And mud. Lots of mud.

_{©2024 Joel Posner. Additional photography by Matt Lingley}

Torquay is a pleasant little seaside town on the south Devon coast. The town clings to the low hill that surrounds it and, away from the little harbour, narrow streets criss-cross the hillsides. Elegant Georgian and Victorian buildings bear testament to a more prosperous past. Although some of the buildings are a little grubby, it was clearly once a celebrated location amongst the smart set. Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived in Torquay form 1838 to 1841. Her home now forms part of the Regina hotel, marked with a commemorative plaque. Other literary inhabitants include Charles Kingsley, who stayed at Livermead House while his wife recovered from an illness, Rudyard Kipling, who lived at Rock House and Oscar Wilde, who spent a year at Babbacombe Cliff.

Agatha Miller was born in Ashfield, Torquay in 1890, today just marked by a plaque, the original house having been demolished in the 1960s. Throughout the town are the places she knew as a child: the coves where she swam, the pavilion where she went to concerts, meeting Archie Christie there in 1913, and the Grand Hotel, where they spent their honeymoon the following year.

Torquay is centred on a harbour, with little boats docked in ordered rows and buildings on three sides: cafés, restaurants and bars predominate. I headed first to the tourist office, pausing briefly to admire the new bench statue of Christie, by Elisabeth Hadley, erected on the Harbourside inn 2025. In the tourist office, you can pick a leaflet which will guide you around the 'Agatha Christie Mile': a short walk around the town taking you to Christie related locations. I walked around it on a pleasant morning in July while Mrs. P availed herself of shopping and seal-watching opportunities.

The walk takes you in a figure of eight loop from the tourist office, around the harbour and up Beacon Hill, past the Yacht club, where Agatha's father was a member, past Beacon Cove, where young Agatha went swimming (on one occasion, getting into difficulties and being rescued by a fisherman) to the Imperial Hotel. It's worth stopping here to appreciate the opulence of the surroundings.

Christie fans will know the Imperial as it appears in Sleeping Murder'; Miss Marple takes a break from sleuthing here at the end of the novel. Unfortunately, this isn't the hotel Christie knew, having been built in 1965, but the interiors are grand and include panoramic windows from which you can enjoy spectacular views across Torbay.

I took a seat in one of these panoramic bays, enjoying the magnificent view of the riviera and hoping to enjoy a drink before continuing my journey. There were a few people around, enjoying a morning coffee or pre-lunch drinks. I waited for a few minutes but of waiting staff there was nary a one. So I left and went on my way.

Here the route leaves you to make your way back into town, to be picked up again at the Torquay Museum. I took a short-cut through Parkhill Road, hoping its elevated position would give me some nice views of the town. There is quite a pleasant view of the little square harbour, but the road ducks behind buildings and the view is lost from sight. Eventually, I arrived at a busy road junction and climbed the hill towards the museum.

Agatha was a frequent visitor to the museum, attending talks and functions here. The museum has a gallery dedicated to the queen of crime, telling the story of her life in Devon and examining some of her characters. I enjoyed seeing the recreations using period furniture, and having Agatha's earlier life and work arranged chronologically. The exhibits, however, seemed to focus more on TV and film adaptations of the novels, rather than the books themselves. Poirot's cane is here, and some of his costumes from the shows, alongside some sported by Joan Hickson as Miss Marple.

I followed the route back into town, where it visits the Princess gardens: a pleasure garden named after Princess Louise. Founded in 1890 and featuring in The ABC Murders, the gardens have a prominent bust of the queen of crime. The route continues west on to visit the pier and the railway station but I left it here and made my way to Torre Abbey. The Abbey dates from 1196 and now houses an art gallery. I would have liked to have spent some time in the gallery but, not really having the time, I made directly for the garden the object of my visit.

The Agatha Christie Gardens features examples of some of the plants used in her stories. Christie, who had trained as a pharmacist, had a great understanding of poisons and their effects on the body. More than half of her victims meet their end through poisoning. You will find examples of the plants here: some beautiful; some sinister. There are opium poppies, castor beans and Foxgloves and cyanide yielding peach trees.

I wandered back into the town after this, where I met Mrs. P back by the harbour, where she had been doing some seal watching. We dined on Fish and chips from a cardboard carton. and delicious it was too.

The following day we drove further down the coast to the west side of Torbay, where Christie's home, Greenway, is in the care of the National Trust. Christie spent most of her life traveling, staying at one of her many homes in the UK or touring lands on world tours and archaeological digs (her second husband, Max Mallowan was a world-renowned archaeologist) but she always returned to Greenway for summers and Christmases. It's a long walk from the car park to the house but it is a pleasant one: the path isn't too steep and leads to a small courtyard with tea rooms, gift shops and second-hand books. A further short walk brings you to the house itself.

Greenway is a stately, white building with a colonnaded portico. It has been preserved more-or-less as Christie left it. Personal items adorn every room:, giving the place a lived-in, homely feel. The family, as you might expect of archaeologists, were great collectors and every room of the house some sort of collection. There are displays of fine china and dolls as well as ancient artefacts. There are display tables full of stamps, miniatures, watches, snuff boxes and all sorts of ephemera. In some rooms, dominoes, cards and board games litter the floor, as if the child had left the room briefly and would return to her game. Christie's DBE Medal sits with a bunch of other tuff in a c rowelled cupboard, a notice informs us that this is where it was found after Christie's death.

The room I was looking forward to most was the library, complete with its military mural. The building was requisitioned by the US army during the Second World War and they painted a regimental mural on the library wall. On leaving the house, they offered to paint over it, restoring the room to its original decoration but Christie insisted it stayed.

The house makes a fine location. for an afternoon out. There are extensive grounds and we rounded off our visit with a short walk through the woodland. For the fan of Christie, there is a treasure trove of memorabilia, from the queen of crime herself and from the various adaptations of her work that have been reinvented for successive generations of fans.

If you want to find out more about Agatha Christie and her life, I highly recommend Lucy Worsley's biography. Lucy writes with beauty and clarity and her books are always a pleasure to read. history