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

Stay at the Gladstones library - the only residential library in the uk

Lots of nice houses/libraries/galleries etc to visit in London.

But if you want a real indulgence/niche 'one-off' treat (because it is quite ££), you could go to the Aire baths. The one in London is in the basement of JM Barries house. You wait in the library beforehand and in the reception of the baths itself there is a first edition Peter Pan and some other Barrie ephemera and info.

It's kind of cool to take a hot bath in the basement of what was his house! It's near Embankment station.

(edited to add there are also cold baths and a plunge pool)

Word on the water.

citydays.com/places/word-on-the-water/

Wow @kindlyensure .I worked close by for many years and had no idea!

@Words - It looks like a town house from the outside - which kind of makes it more fun. There is a blue plaque and I think some other writers lived there too, so it does fit the bill for a literary London visit. I recommend!

(If you watched Black Doves, I am pretty sure the baths feature when Kiera Knightly and Ben Wishaw first go into The Clarke's house.)

Bath

Seconding Hay On Wye. Gorgeous place to curl up after a book shopping spree in one of the many lovely cafes. Full of very book-ish people 😂💜

That's such a great idea! This country has many faults, but its one big upside is its amazing literary heritage. I long to spend a week in the Lake District with Wordsworth's collected poems.

No doubt some of these have been mentioned, but

• See the Oxford college where Oscar Wilde studied
• Visit the Oxford pub where Tolkien read The Lord of the Rings out loud to C. S. Lewis.
• Do the Jane Austen tour of Bath
• Go to Yorkshire and Visit Ted Hughes' birth place and the Bronte's home
• See Shakespeare's house in Stratford Upon Avon
• Visit Poet's corner in Westminster Abbey
• See Thomas Hardy's birthplace (I have done this and recommend it)
• When it comes to London it's hard to know where to start. Oscar Wilde's house in Chelsea? Dr Johnson's old stomping ground? William Blake's? See the flat where Sylvia Plath died (I believe W B Yeats also lived in that same flat)
• Didn't Byron inherit some ancient castle or something? Is that still standing?
• Visit Eton College? You can see where Shelley carved his name into a wooden desk. Aldous Huxley actually taught George Orwell French at Eton, which has always intrigued me.
• Isn't there a Dickens museum in Kent?
• I've always wanted to visit the Anthony Burgess museum in Manchester
• Has anyone marked the spot where Chaucer's Tabard Inn is supposed to have stood? You know, the place the pilgrims set out from in The Canterbury Tales.
• Cambridge has an amazing literary heriatge, simply because of the great writers who studied there – Marlowe, Milton, Coleridge, Byron, Tennyson, A E Housman, Nabokov, etc.

Don’t go especially... but if in Birmingham you can visit Sarehole Mill which is where Tolkien set the Shire - his house is also nearby but no plaque as a private residence. His school KES is in Edgbaston.

@Dappy777 Yes, Byron inherited Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham, which can be visited. (Also, read In Ruins by Christopher Woodward for a list of places you'll want to visit, with a literary/historical/art connection. Newstead Abbey is one of them!)

Yes to all of @bibliomania 's suggestions. For Whitby as well as Dracula there's also Possession by ASByatt. Lyme Regis is perfect for Jane Austen, it's so clearly described in Persuasion.

Earlier this year we spoke in the 50 bookers thread about the children's author Cynthia Harnett. Her novel Stars of Fortune is set at Sulgrave Manor.

The Oxford in His Dark Materials is very recognisable, plus there's Jude the Obscure, Brideshead Revisited, Connie Willis's Doomsday Book and To say Nothing of the Dog, Barbara Pym's Compton Hodnett, plus the non-fiction Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. I could go on.

Stratford -Upon Avon - Shakespeare

Excellent ideas, Janina. (I once found a self-guided Barbara Pym tour around Oxford and tucked it away somewhere so safe I can no longer find it).

Edinburgh

JK Rowling- Elephant House cafe, George Heriot’s school and Greyfriars churchyard ( many HP character names in gravestones plus of course Greyfriars Bobby’s statue))

Alexander McCall Smith - similar areas to above plus New Town - Scotland Street etc

Maggie O’Farrell - Museum of Scotland

Irvine Welsh/ Ian Rankin - numerous pubs

Sir Walter Scott - Scott Monument plus quotes on walls Waverley Station

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle etc etc.,,,

Oh, I've also always wanted to go to Ely Cathedral because of Tom's Midnight Garden.

Glasgow has a few writers where the city is a major character, Alasdair Gray being the most obvious one.

Depends if you want to visit a place that is clearly described in a novel or if you want to do a pilgrimage to the home or grave of a writer. Or a bit of both.

I did Ely for exactly that reason. It’s a beauty. Couple it with a Cambridge trip.

freetoursbyfoot.com/literary-london-self-guided-tour/

@MadameBethune that's a great literary walk; thank you for posting. I'll definitely be doing that at some point when I'm down in London.

I love the idea of the Aire baths too @kindlyensure . I had no idea such a place existed. Not cheap though!

Good call.

I don't know if you like the Susan books by Jane Shaw, but they are set in Dulwich (not specifically named in the books). It's fun trying to work out which bit relates to where!

I really enjoyed Stratford Upon Avon. I was dragged on the bus tour with audio and surprisingly I enjoyed it! I was shocked tbh as not really my thing.

Rye in East Sussex is lovely for a short trip and there are a number of writers associated with the area. They used to have a festival in September.

When you go to Haworth, you can also visit Oakworth I think it is called, and the Railway Children railway line and station.

Border Books in Alnwick is well worth a visit.

Can you tell me more about this travesty? West Yorkshire is high on my list of places to come too for so many reasons including literary. I love the look of the scenery, that almost bleak moorland.
Which hills are you referring to because I love walking and I had no idea there may be a plan to damage the landscape. 🙁 . That’s horrific.
I have in mind basing myself somewhere to walk, to see Haworth and the vicarage, Railway children land, Anne Lister’s house, Ilkey. And some of the other towns - Halifax? Wakefield ? More research needed.
Do let me know more about this, if you wouldn’t mind - clearly I need to get there before.
and any recommendations welcome!
Thank you!