Planning some literary breaks - starting with London but all ideas welcome

[AgualusasLover]

For various reasons, I will get to use a reasonable amount of my annual leave just for me this year.

I live in London but want to devote one working week to literary pursuits. All ideas very welcome. I’ve done a lot of British Library/pottering about Bloomsbury but not averse to a day doing that. Keen to visit Westminster Abbey for Poets’ Corner. I’ll need to do everything by public transport. Hit me with your ideas along with food recommendations.

I am planning a few weekends as well. High on my list is:

Dorset - Jane Austen, Hardy
Devon/Cornwall - Agatha Christie, Daphne du Maurier

Apologies for my appalling sentence structure.

This sounds like my idea of fun! I'd like to visit Whitby and do some Dracula tourism.

Howarth - Brontes
Hay on Wye - full of book shops
Stratford upon Avon - Shakespeare

Harrogate for the Literary Festival - easy travel from London.

Assuming you are going to Lyme Regis (since I would associate Jane Austen with Hampshire or Bath) then you can tick off the French Lieutenant's Woman while you are there.

Edinburgh - Ian Rankin (Rebus) and J K Rowling

My reading these days is perhaps not as highbrow/classic as yours but these areas are on my list (yes, I know I'm reading too much murder murder death death):
Wensleydale - Harry Grimm books
North Norfolk - Tom Jansen books
Anglesey - Laura Hart books

You can get literary maps that suggest various places. Treasured Islands, by Frank Barrett is a book about visiting places with literary links.

If you're in Yorkshire (for Haworth and Whitby, as suggested above), then Shandy Hall near York is delightful, even if you're not a fan of the book (not much read these days, but worth watching the film A Cock and Bull Story to get a sense of it).

If you read the Green Knowe books as a child, the real-life house looks wonderful, although I haven't been there myself: Greenknowe Lucy Boston Open Gardens Hemingford Grey Cambridge

Oxford obviously - Alice in Wonderland and the Philip Pullman books, if you like them.

I absolutely love this kind of trip and there are so many places I want to visit!

There's also a book "London Literary Walks", which I've really enjoyed doing.

If you're up North for Haworth, you could also go to Elizabeth Gaskell's house in Manchester

Omg I grew up in N Yorks and I didn't know Shandy Hall was real!!!! I am definitely putting that one on my list!
I love that book!

If you love Tristram Shandy, you'll love Shandy Hall @Ladylangstrand Limited opening hours because people live there. It's really atmospheric. Sterne published the book first then bought the house and named it Shandy Hall. It's in a really pretty village too.

I haven’t read Tristan Shandy yet, but I can rectify that for a trip. I am committed.

if you are norfolking - the one based in Kings Lynn Crime books with the main character an archaeologist (!) can’t remember her name at the moment

It came to me…, Ellie Griffiths the Ruth Galloway ones

Visit some of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries, having researched who you’d particularly like to find. Also Blake, near Old St station iirc

Sylvia Plath grave in Yorkshire

Bloomsbury blue plaque walk and visit Gay’s the Word and Judd books

You could do Plath and Haworth in the same trip.

Whitby for Dracula! Atmospheric abbey. And just a fabulous place to visit too.
Haworth for the Brontes. Their tiny shoes and books they hand wrote as children. Do the walk to the Bronte Falls and see the wuthering landscapes too.
Anne Bronte's grave is in a stunning setting in Scarborough and a moving sight. People leave her gifts and pens.
Hebden Bridge you have all the Ted Hughes/ Sylvia Plath history to soak up and Plath's grave at Heptonstall. Also fabulous places to visit and where Happy Valley is set.

Come to glorious literary Yorkshire!

You can walk up to Top Withins on the Moors from Haworth, which is said to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. Plus, you walk past Bronte Falls, it's a fabulous walk. The Parsonage is, indeed, a great place to visit, we really enjoyed that!
I would love to visit the New Forest to see where The Children of the New Forest was set.
Sherwood Forest is a good one for Robin Hood myths too - the Roger Lancelyn Green retelling of them is particularly good.
If you're in Oxford, that's where the Inklings met very regularly, an informal literary group founded by C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien.

I was also going to say Devon and Dorset, mainly for Hardy.

But also, come up to West Yorkshire in the spring and enjoy the wild moorland beauty where the Brontes went striding; imagine Emily with her faithful Keeper, and listen to birdsong - lapwing, and curlew and skylark and cuckoo and golden plover; savour the wild beauty in which they found such inspiration.

Do that while you can as it is soon very likely all to be desecrated with the installation of the largest on land wind farm in Europe.

I live near by; I know those hills intimately, every crevice and curl of them, and what is very likely to come sickens my heart beyond measure.

As others have said, you also have Hughes and Plath in Heptonstall, Hebden and Mytholmroyd.

Lake District and Norfolk for Arthur Ransome.

If you fancy a trip to Europe, buy 'The Canary Coloured Cart' by Christina Hardyment

Beatrix Potter in the Lakes while you are there.

Knole for its Bloomsbury set connections.

Laugharne for Dylan Thomas

@AgualusasLover
Fab idea!

I highly recommend Agatha Christie’s actual house, Greenway, in Devon that she purchased when she started making money;

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/greenway

You could spend a day at Charleston in East Sussex (train from Victoria) hang out to all the Bloomsbury group and fabulous house to visit.

www.charleston.org.uk

You could also go across to Rodmell to Virginia Woolf’s house, too (although opens April 2025)

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/sussex/monks-house