Novels that evoke British places very well ...please recommend

[revolvenotevolve]

Id love to read some novels set around Britain and that really evoke the place so it inspires a visit ! Any recommendations ?

[comfortablymum]

I really enjoyed 'Notes from a Small Island' by Bill Bryson quite a few years ago now. He's an American writing about his travels along the south coast and his affectionate, humorous and quite accurate observations of the geographical areas covered and of the British in general - observations that only a foreigner could make. There's a lovely bit when he arrives in West Bay and describes a restaurant he comes across in an episode of what could only be described as serendipity that prompted me to do the same a few years ago and that restaurant continues to be one of my (and now my children's) favourites. I don't know how much West Bay has changed since Broadchurch was filmed there but it won't have been spoilt.

[Quangle]

Salt by Jeremy Page is fantastically evocative of East Anglia.

I don't actually think you can beat Dickens for a sense of place - Great Expectations for E Anglia and London. I think of Dickens so often as I walk around London - he is everywhere! I went up the Shard recently and seeing how tightly packed everything is and how the Victorians just thought "stuff Southwark Cathedral - we're putting a railway across there" - Dickens captured all that and London still has his spirit, I think.

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

Great idea for a thread.

Dracula - Whitby
Persuasion - Lyme Regis

[AndyMurraysBalls]

Wuthering Heights.
Rebecca.

[Morgause]

Any Poldark novel - Cornwall
How Green was my Valley - The Welsh Valleys

[LordEmsworth]

North & South - Manchester and Hampshire.

[tripfiction]

Rivers of London is a great suggestion for Soho. Enjoyed that.

You can try the following which is a random selection from the blog:
Cornwall: tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/UK%20%28Cornwall%29
Isle of Man:
tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/UK%20%28Isle%20of%20Man%29
Scarborough:
tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/UK%20%28Scarborough%29
Yorkshire:
tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/UK%20%28Yorkshire%29
A collection of novels to evoke the British coastline:
tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/Novels-that-capture-the-flavour-of-the-British-Coast.html
And two UK Roadtrips:
tripfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/Road-trip-Britain-via-books.html

Hope you find something.....

[JassyRadlett]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has a good feel of Guernsey to it - at least, the Guernsey I've visited, I've never lived there.

[PetiteRaleuse]

Jamaica Inn for Cornwall. I've never been but feel like I have.

[DuchessofMalfi]

Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel - two more Daphne Du Maurier novels set in Cornwall.

Hardy's novels for Dorset. Tess for North Dorset's Blackmore Vale. Mayor of Casterbridge for Dorchester etc.

[DuchessofMalfi]

And The Book of Ebenezer le Page by G B Edwards for Guernsey.

[revolvenotevolve]

Thanks for ideas so far and tripfiction for the links any other ideas anyone - perhaps some modern stuff too?

[bibliomania]

Some crime fiction can be good - Ann Cleeves for Shetland and Northumberland. I'm not a major fan of Ian Rankin and the Inspector Morse, but they might give a feel for Edinburgh and Oxford respectively.

The Mapp and Lucia books by E F Benson for Rye.

The 39 Steps for Scotland.

On Chesil beach.

The French Lieutenant's Woman, also for Lyme Regis.

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

I'd agree with lots of the above (haven't read the rest!)

The Peter May trilogy for the Outer Hebrides if you'd like to venture that far afield.

Definately yes to the Morse books for Oxford. Also Larkin's Jill for another Oxford book.

bibliomania I love Fowles' FLT, my favourite of all his novels.

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

Ooh yes to 'Jill.' Also, Forster's 'Maurice' and Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited.'

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

Another mystery writer: P.D. James.

[clearsommespace]

'Waterland' by Graham Swift really evokes the Fens but I'm not sure it would inspire a visit.

[Ellisisland]

NW by Zadie Smith for modern day London

[Selks]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

[Selks]

George Mackay Brown's short stories for their impressions of Orkney.

[crumpet]

9 Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers -the fens.

[AphraBehn]

Bath is still very much like how Jane Austen describes it in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

[SmokedMackerel]

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, for the Scottish highlands (it is set in the eighteenth century though!)

[Chocolatestain]

It's another oldie, but A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys is great for evoking Glastonbury and its surrounding countryside before the new agey types moved in.