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2025

  • Daphne du Maurier: The King's General
  • Deborah Lawrenson: The Secretary
  • Richard Cohen: How to Write like Tolstoy
  • Adrian Tinniswood: Noble Ambitions
  • Adrian Tinniswood: The Power and the Glory
  • Martin Williams: The King is Dead, Long Live the King
  • Gavin Plumley: A Home for all Seasons
  • Robert Harris: Precipice
  • Nigel Slater: A Thousand Feasts
  • Joan Aiken: Tales of London Town
  • Alan Connor: 188 Words for Rain
  • Ben Robinson: English Villages: An Extraordinary Journey through Time

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Nancy

Do you have a favorite one you've visited?

I like that sort of thing - visiting the homes of authors. I've always wanted to visit the various places Agatha Christie lived, but haven't yet. I think the list I made covers about all the ones I've done in England (in the order visited, over the years) - there may be one or two more.

It's too late & I'm too foggy to remember many of the Americans - other than (& I know there are more): Kate Chopin (Louisiana), Mark Twain, & Harriet Beecher Stowe (Hartford CT) - ohhhhhh!!! How can I forget!! I live a couple of blocks from Emily Dickinson's home and have been a number of times. :-)

British writers homes:
Haworth: Bronte Parsonage
Far Sawry: Beatrix Potter
Stratford on Avon: Shakespeare
Chawton: Jane Austen
Lamb House, Rye: E.F. Benson & Henry James
Hampstead Heath: John Keats
Higher Brockhampton, Dorset: Thomas Hardy
Clouds Hill near Wareham: T.E. Lawrence (tiny, tiny!)
Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West (gardens & writing tower)
Burwash / Bateman: Rudyard Kipling

G'night, now...

Myrtle

A Reader's Guide to Writers' Britain is going on my wishlist immediately. I love to get the background to the book, as it were. Also, I think you can tell a lot about people by the books they keep - I know I always turn the pages round in house magazines to read what's on the bookshelves.

Nancy, I'm very impressed with the number of writers' houses you've visited. I live here and can only chalk up Keats' house in Hampstead from you list!

Nancy

In my mind England = authors. :-)
A number of trips over since 1985, but those represent only 6 visits. I should plan a trip just for that. One thing I realize got left off was Lincoln, where EFB lived as a child while his father was at the cathedral there. I've been to Rye many times & one year we went on after the Tilling event in Rye to attend a 'Benson Family Day' in Lincoln.

Sandy

I do like visiting locations in books & have retraced the steps of the Swallows & Amazons amongst others. The Reader's Guide to Writers' Britain seems very ambitious in covering so many authors - but the info in 'look inside' at Amazon is very detailed and it seems to have a lot of information. I'll see if the library has it 1st!

Dark Puss

You didn't get in to the Isokon Building (about 1 km at most from Keat's house) before it was renovated? Agatha Christie lived here during WW2.

Interested in your comment I think you can tell a lot about people by the books they keep. What sort of things? What could you tell about me for example?

Dark Puss

England = authors

What about Wales and Scotland?

:-)

Dark Puss

Visitng literary locations I can have some empathy for but I've never been all that motivated to visit writer's houses unless (like the Isokon) they are themselves interesting buildings. I don't visit the laboratories of dead, famous physicists unless I'm meeting the currently active inhabitants either.

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