literary tour of uk

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What were they like?

Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, George Orwell

Where did they live?

Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth

What inspired them?

Charles Dickens, JRR Tolkien, George Eliot, Ian Fleming

How are they remembered?

Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Daphne Du Maurier, George Bernard Shaw

Welcome to Literary Tours of England: the website that makes it easy (and fun) to visit your favourite literary sites from England’s rich history and heritage

Personalized Tours

Just tell us which writers interest you. We’ll do the work of preparing a personalized itinerary: your route to key sites associated with your chosen writers, plus nearby non-literary sites. We’ll give you tips about the best things to do when you get to each site. You have the option of taking your personalized itinerary and driving yourself (self-guided) or going on a private escorted tour with a local guide. See more …

Tailor-Made Tours

Six itineraries have been put together by our expert staff, covering key sites associated with some of England’s greatest writers and nearby non-literary sites. We’ll customize your chosen itinerary to reflect your personal tastes and preferences. You have the option of taking your personalized itinerary and driving yourself (self-guided) or going on a private escorted tour with a local guide. See more …

Book-And-Go Tours

Choose from six private tours pre-designed by our expert staff, covering key sites associated with some of England’s most popular writers and nearby non-literary sites: castles and abbeys, ancient monuments, historic houses, beautiful landscapes, picturesque villages, and film and TV locations. You can depend on your professional tour guide to bring every site vividly to life. See more …

Three years ago we found the website “Literary Tours of England” and started speaking with a lovely English gentleman, Stephen, who is the owner. He was patient and helpful, keeping in contact with us as our trip was delayed year after year due to Covid. Three years in the making, a customized tour became a spectacular trip. We met our tour guide, Mark, in Winchester and he became like a brother to us. We highly recommend Literary Tours of England! – Jana and Renee (California)

This summer i had the pleasure of “meeting” virginia woolf in her home thanks to stephen margrett and mark barrett of literary tours of england. i shared my childhood dream with stephen; he crafted an itinerary to ensure i lived it. not only did it include virginia woolf, but also my other artistic giants. mark was my companion from morning until supper every day, making wondrous every moment. stephen and mark gave me my wish tenfold. – anita (washington, dc), words are inadequate to express the unforgettable experience literary tours of england provided us on our customized guided tour. stephen was so easy to work with during the planning stage. our guide, mark, was nothing short of amazing. he made sure we saw everything we wanted to see and he gave us extra special experiences. he almost became a member of our family and we look forward to meeting again on our next literary tour of england – trisha and j (ohio), when i arrived in london i was met by two of the most charming people i have ever met. stephen and judy made sure that my tour was both educational and an adventure. it was planned with great attention to detail: everywhere and everything i wanted to see and do. throughout our journey there was lots of conversation and laughter: so much caring and great fun. i thank stephen and judy for making the trip the best of my life. – sheri (alberta), jane austen. thomas hardy. agatha christie. we loved visiting their homes. the tour also included a perfect mix of cathedrals, landscapes, castles and seascapes. yet we never felt rushed. what fun it was to drive along curvy pencil-thin roads flanked by tall hedges, ending in a pub that always made us feel welcome. many thanks to literary tours of england for an adventure of a lifetime – rick and sallie (arizona).

We recommend Literary Traveler : dedicated to the exploration of the literary imagination, and A Suitcase Full of Books : literature inspired travel.

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9 Stops on a Literary Tour of England and Scotland

Ferne Arfin

Plan a literary tour of Britain to visit the places that shaped your favorite authors' lives and inspired their stories. It's a great way to focus your UK trip and get off the usual tourist treadmill.

William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, JK Rowling, Jane Austen, and hundreds of others are part of the collective culture of the English speaking world. Their stories, in all sorts of formats - books, films, television series and even ebooks - entertain generation after generation. And seeing their birthplaces, schools, writing rooms, and final homes is always fascinating.

Most of the writers on this list have stood the test of time. Their work has been interpreted and reinterpreted in films, television, even radio, over and over. We read them in school because we had to and, later, enjoyed them simply because we wanted to.

To help you plan a tour that takes in at least some of your favorites, follow the links to learn more about each location or check this map of literary landmarks, for more stops on the literary trail.

JK Rowling and Harry Potter in Edinburgh

A sign in the window of the Elephant House  on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh proclaims it is Harry Potter's Birthplace. And it's true. It was in a back room here, with windows overlooking the city, that author JK Rowling spent fateful hours completing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ( called the Sorceror's Stone in the USA )  the first book in the series. It's still a cafe and you can still drop in for a cappuccino and a sandwich, a pizza or a plate of sausage and mash. But better not be in a hurry as you can expect to wait in a medium sized queue of fans. 

By the time she was writing the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , Rowling had moved on to the finer things in life. She booked one of the Grand Suites in Edinburgh's tony Balmoral Hotel . The JK Rowling Suite, now named for her, has her writing desk and a marble bust of Hermes signed by her. The doorknocker is a brass owl, in her honor. If you want to splash out, you can book it - but there's probably a waiting list.

Agatha Christie

The UK's "Queen of Crime", Agatha Christie, was born in Torquay on the English Riviera. Every year the resort celebrates the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple with a festival that features talks, walks, banquets, vintage dressing up and plays by the local theatrical society.

Christie was married to archaeologist Max Mallowan and during much of her married ​life she accompanied him on archaeological digs while writing her very English novels in the Middle East. From 1938 until her death in 1976, she spent most summers completing and editing her books at Greenway, her summer home overlooking the River Dart, just outside Torquay.

The house is now owned by the National Trust. When you visit, you can immerse yourself in the Christie mystique by exploring her collections and her lovely gardens, dining in her kitchen and even staying in a self-catering apartment at the top of the house .

Charles Dickens

Born in Portsmouth, where his father was a Naval Clerk, Dickens spent part of his childhood living near the Chatham Dockyards in Kent. Though he lived and wrote for part of his life in London, Kent is the county most associated with the author of A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit and dozens of other familiar stories. He spent many holidays in Broadstairs, still a pleasant town on the Kent seaside where the house that inspired Bleak House is now a B&B. He lived the last 14 years of his life at Gads Hill Place in Gravesend, now a private school that can be visited in groups, by arrangement.

• Dickens Birthplace Museum - A modest Portsmouth house not far from the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
• Chatham Historic Dockyard offers a glimpse of the world in which Dickens grew up.
• Rochester Walk in Dickens' Footsteps - a worthwhile day trip with dozens of locations for Dicken's later works.
• The Charles Dickens Museum The author's only surviving London home where he lived for two years while writing Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. Reopened in late 2012 after extensive renovations.
• Broadstairs in Kent was a favorite for summer holidays. Dickens wrote David Copperfield in the house that modeled for Bleak House , now a luxury B&B. Broadstairs has a Dickens Festival every June.
• Gads Hill Place Group visits to Dickens' final home can be arranged through Towncentric, Gravesend Visitor Centre, on +44 (0)1474 337600, [email protected].

Jane Austen

Though the Georgian city of Bath, with its Roman Baths and UNESCO World Heritage status, proudly claims Jane Austen as a favorite resident, Jane was actually unhappy there. One of the most widely read authors in the English language, she produced virtually nothing while in Bath and, perhaps as a possible means of escape, accepted a marriage proposal - though she rejected it less than 24 hours later.

Jane, her sister Cassandra and her mother, were happier in Chawton Cottage, a large cottage on the edge of her brother's Hampshire estate. She moved in in 1809 and published four of her most famous novels while living there - Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were also written while she lived there but published posthumously.

Chawton Cottage, now known as Jane Austen's House Museum , about an hour and a half south of London, is open to the public.

• Find out more about Bath a city Austen may not have liked but observed sharply in many of her novels.
• Visit the Jane Austen Centre in Bath
• Visit Jane Austen's House Museum , where the author reviewed her first copies of Pride and Prejudice about 200 years ago.

Famous Oxford Literary Figures

Oxford has produced famous high achievers in virtually every walk of life. Quite a few household names of English literature were Oxford students and academics. JRR Tolkien spent most of his adult life there - first as a professor of Anglo Saxon at Pembroke College and later as a professor of English Literature at Merton College. He wrote The Hobbit while at Pembroke.

C.S.Lewis, who spent time with Tolkien in The Inklings, an Oxford writers' group, also had a strong attachment to Oxford. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford for 29 years and though he moved to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1954, he maintained a house in Oxford all his life.

Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), Oscar Wilde, Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden, John Fowles (author of The French Lieutenants Woman and The Magus ), William Golding (author of Lord of the Flies ), and many more studied, taught or lived in Oxford.

More recently, Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones Diary graduated from St Anne's College Oxford.

Pick up the literary vibe in one of Oxford's literary pubs:

• The Eagle and Child on St. Giles, called by Tolkien and others "The Bird and Baby," was the meeting place of "The Inklings", the literary discussion group favored by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
• The Lamb & Flag the inn across the road, dates from 1695 and counted Graham Green as a regular.

William Shakespeare

The most famous writer in the English language - arguably the most famous writer in the world - is better known through his works than through his biographical details. Just about every aspect of his life, from his marriage to Anne Hathaway to the recipient of his sonnets to the actual authorship of his plays is open to discussion and subject to lively debate.

Fans in search of the Bard can visit his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, to explore:

• his birthplace
• his daughter's home, Hall's Croft
• his mother's place Mary Arden's House in nearby Wilmcote
• and Anne Hathaway's Cottage . Shakespeare's wife's house is probably the most famous thatched cottage in the world.
• Then see a play or two at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier was once the queen of atmospheric thrillers. Alfred Hitchcock turned to her again and again for inspiration, creating films of her novels Rebecca ("Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again") and Jamaica Inn as well as her short story The Birds . Nicholas Roeg created one of the steamiest sex scene in mainstream cinema in the 1970s film version of her story Don't Look Now , with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.

Fowey, in Cornwall, and the real Jamaica Inn , on Bodmin Moor, shaped her fantastic and dark imagination. Nowadays, the film versions of her work are more famous than she is. In a sad commentary on the fleeting nature of fame, Fowey, the town where she lived and wrote for 30 years has recently changed the name of its Daphne du Maurier Festival to the Fowey Festival of Words and Music.

William Wordsworth

If, like the 19th-century Romantic poet William Wordsworth, the sight of a field of golden daffodils has ever cheered your lonely hours, you'll want to visit Dove Cottage in Grasmere. Wordsworth lived there for eight years with his wife Mary and sister Dorothy. It was on a walk with Dorothy in the Lake District countryside nearby that he spotted the famous field of nodding flowers that inspired his poem, Lonely as a Cloud, known by most people simply as The Daffodils . While at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth was visited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other figures in the 19th-century Romantic movement. The modest cottage, now owned by the Wordsworth Trust, is open to the public on guided tours. It is part of a complex that includes a museum and a research center containing the poet's archives.

The Brontës

The Brontë sisters - Charlotte ( Jane Eyre ), Emily ( Wuthering Heights ) and Anne ( The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ) - their dissolute brother Branwell and their father, Anglo-Irish clergyman, Patrick, all lived and wrote in the Parsonage of the Yorkshire West Ridings village of Haworth.

The house, now open to the public as a museum, gives a sense of the claustrophobic and reclusive atmosphere the Brontës inhabited. No wonder their only escape was through the overwrought romanticism of their fevered imaginations.

Explore the nearby moors, windswept and lonely, to find Top Withins, said to be the inspiration for Heathcliffe's home, Wuthering Heights, and other landmarks from Emily Brontë's novel.

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Literary Tours of England

What's Included:  

• Accommodations, including private bath/shower.
• Breakfast, dinner and afternoon tea daily.
• Full time guide
• Transport to and from your events.
• All taxes (Value Added Tax V.A.T.)
• Train transfers are available from all major cities at an additional cost. Train tickets cannot be confirmed until 90 days before departure. Plan to arrive after 12 noon.

All prices are in US dollars , based on twin or triple occupancy. A few single rooms are available. Book early.

In the company of our knowledgeable leader journey to the Moors of Northern England to explore the Yorkshire home of the Brontë sisters at Haworth and the Lancashire home of the Pendle witches. Follow in the Brontës’ footsteps to the places which inspired Jane Eyre’s Lowood School and the story of the mad woman in the attic. The holiday is accompanied by a booklet of readings associated with the places we visit. Visit beautiful Bolton Abbey, and the Cathedral city of York and learn about the women who were tragically accused of witchcraft in 1612.

Jane Austen - her life and times

Explore some of the places associated with Jane Austen. Begin by visiting the house where she lived for the last 8 years of her life and where she wrote some of her most popular novels. Also visit Winchester, where she was buried.

• Listen to a reading from  Emma  whilst taking in stunning views from Box Hill
• Visit Jane Austen’s house at Chawton
• Tour the city of Winchester

Nestled at the foot of the South Downs, Abingworth Hall is ideally located for a short break or a longer holiday. A peaceful ambiance and excellent facilities make it a relaxing place to stay.

It is well-known that the novels of Thomas Hardy and later his poems are based on places in Dorset, where for example, Casterbridge is Dorchester and Budmouth is Weymouth. This photographing Thomas Hardy's Dorset holiday is a photographic pilgrimage to the county covering his whole life from his birthplace at Higher Bockhampton to Max Gate, his final residence in Dorchester, with easy short walks on landscapes that have inspired many scenarios in his novels.

Suitable for all levels of photographic experience.

Holiday highlights 

• Find out how to get the best results from your own camera
• Our professional photography leader will guide and encourage, in small groups of up to 12 guests
• Daily image review sessions offer constructive feedback throughout your holiday

Price includes

• High quality Full Board en-suite 3 nights accommodation and excellent food in our Country House
• Guidance and tuition from a knowledgeable tour’ leader, to ensure you get the most from your holiday
• All transport to photography locations, via mini-coach or other mode of transport e.g. boat
• Admissions to venues

Just Shakespeare

Immerse yourself in the world of William Shakespeare, arguably the greatest ever playwright. Journey to Stratford-upon-Avon to walk in his footsteps and explore the houses associated with him. See the place he was born and is buried. Visit the beautiful thatched cottage which once belonged to the family of his wife, Anne Hathaway and enjoy a play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Holiday highlights

• Walk in the footsteps of William Shakespeare
• Delve into this history of Shakespeare personal life
• Explore the associated houses of Shakespeare, and his wife thatched cottage
• Enjoy a play the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Hay on Wye has more bookstores than anywhere. It is a fitting site for the best literray festival in England, with talks by famous authors, readings and other literary events. For almost 30 years the Hay Festival has brought together writers from around the world to debate and share stories in the staggering beauty of the Welsh Borders.  

• Soak up the festival atmosphere with a like-minded group 
• Enhance your festival experience with talks and discussions from our knowledgeable leader 
• Free time to attend other events during the festival (book early to avoid disappointment!)
• High quality Full Board en-suite accommodation and excellent food in our Country House
• The services of our knowledgeable tour leader, ensuring you get the most from your holiday
• Coach transport to and from the festival
• Good quality tickets for performances and festival sessions
• Illustrated talks

Literary Whitby

Count Dracula, Ebenezer Scrooge, Sebastian Flyte, Tristram Shandy – Whitby has a rich literary heritage to discover. Explore the home of Caedmon, England’s first poet and inspiration for the gothic world of Bram Stoker. Travel to nearby Scarborough to visit the grave of Anne Brontë and discover the area’s connection with the Sitwells, Wilfred Owen and Wordworth, and visit beautiful Castle Howard, featured in the TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

• Whitby Abbey, inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula
• Shandy Hall, where Tristam Shandy lived and wrote
• Counting House Museum, Malton on which Dickens modelled Scrooge's Counting House in A Christmas Carol
• Special Offers for Solos  A great deal for single guests save on our twin for single occupancy bedrooms are often in demand. So if you haven't reserved your single room yet, why not guarantee your place? Discounts are available for children  when sharing with one or more adults in a family room: Under 4's FREE 4-17 years 50% off adult rate (20 May to 1 September) 4-17 years 60% off adult rate (All other dates)  Not all areas are available at other times of year.  Planning a group tour? Ask us for a quotation for a group  of any size. Great Britain travel the way you want, with the ultimate choice of hotels and sightseeing. Whether you just want a base for excursions, or are planning an extensive itinerary, we can provide exactly what you want. 
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Literary England: 42 Essential Book Destinations to Visit in the UK

Literary England almost seems like a parallel country of its own. The writings of Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beatrix Potter, Virginia Woolf and William Shakespeare have created their own imaginary landscape – adding extra romance, mischief and magic to our lives. But what of the real places that inspired them? In this post, we list the top book destinations and landmarks in England that bibliophiles need to see in their lifetime.

Each section is organised by area – starting in Northern England and moving South and you can find a link to the individual places via each heading. We have purposefully left off detailed information as this has changed frequently during the pandemic. Please check the official websites for the latest updates.

This post contains affiliate links which means that we may receive a small amount of commission at no cost to yourself if you buy a product through this page. Please see our disclosure here .

A Literary Map of Britain and Ireland

This lovely map of literary Britain and Ireland by Jen Grenell Illustration depicts a beautiful visual view of bookish places in the UK. You can find some of the locations listed in this post. To see more of Jen’s work, check out her Etsy page .

Planning a Tour of Literary England

Here are our five top tips if you’re planning to tour several literary locations in England.

• It’s generally best to travel via car rather than rely on public transport as many of the rural destinations lie off the main routes. If you visit a city, we recommmend parking at the park and ride stations outside the city centres. If you decide to travel by bus or train then opt for linking several cities (London, Oxford and Bath for instance).
• Book accommodation well in advance . Although there are fewer international tourists due to the pandemic, many more British travellers are flocking to popular spots, which means that quality rooms can be in short supply. If you decide to focus on one area, consider renting a self-catering place.

• Similarly, book tickets for literary houses and attractions early . Many are managed independently, but a good number are run by heritage organisations such as English Heritage and the National Trust. For an annual membership fee, you can visit as many properties as you like and also benefit from free parking. If you’re going to visit 5 or 6 places then it might make financial sense to join.
• Look out for special events while planning . We recently saw a production of Dracula at Whitby Abbey and this was free with our admission. These little extras can make a literary trip really speical.
• Build in downtime to read the literary classics associated with each literary landmark – perhaps set aside a day to walk, dream and journal.

The Lake District

For many, the Lake District embodies the ideal of literary England with its rugged fells, breathtaking lakes and woodland walks. The landscape has inspired many poets and authors, and luckily for the bookish tourist, a number of literary houses are open to the public today. It is well worth factoring some of these iconic locations into your itinerary.

Hill Top – Beatrix Potter’s House

Hill Top is a pretty little cottage nestled in the village of Sawrey and it inspired Beatrix Potter to write a number of her famous stories. Today it is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. Visits are via timed entry because of its small size. However, the garden is just as enchanting with a vegetable patch that Mr McGregor would’ve been proud of.

Brantwood – John Ruskin’s Coniston Retreat

Writer, art critic and philanthropist, John Ruskin lived at the 250 acre Brantwood estate between 1871 and 1900 The property has spectacular views across Coniston water to the fells and sits in the most beautiful gardens. Now open to the public, visitors can explore the house, gardens, art gallery and treasury (which contains Ruskin’s geological collection). There is also a Terrace restaurant (dogs on leads welcome) and you can book to stay in historic apartments both inside and outside the main house.

Swallows and Amazons – Coniston Water

Live out your childhood adventures and see the sites that Arthur Ransome included in his famous children’s book Swallows and Amazons by booking a cruise on the National Trust Steam Yacht Gondola (possibly the Captain Flint’s houseboat!). Highlights include Wild Cat Island (Peel Island), Octopus Lagoon and Holly Howe. Oodles of fun and back in time for tea.

Wordsworth – Grasmere

Wordsworth was justifiably smitten with Grasmere when he first visited in 1799. As soon as he saw Dove Cottage, he and his sister Dorothy decided to move there, and he wrote many of his poems while living in this cosy nook. During normal opening, you are able to visit the cottage, garden, recently expanded museum and cafe, which also cater for children.

Rydal Mount and Gardens

A Wordsworth journey wouldn’t be complete without a trip to see Rydal Mount and Gardens, the poet’s home in later years. Situated close to Dove Cottage, the property is grander with sweeping landscaped gardens. There is also a tearoom selling home-made cakes.

Sedbergh Book Town

Sedbergh Book Town is England’s Official Book Town and is located to the East of the Lake District. The town is still building its bookish reputation, but is worth a drive just to visit the enormous Westwood Books and see the hulking Howgill Fells. You can read our guide to Sedbergh here .

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Yorkshire covers a huge area with many different landscapes, although in the book world it is best known for its dramatic scenery and windswept uplands. Whitby Abbey is one of the major landmarks in England and its skeletal structure still epitomises the gothic aesthetic today.

Whitby – Dracula’s Landing Point

Whitby provided the iconic setting for Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula , and this dramatic coastal town crowned by the gothic Whitby Abbey is one of the top literary destinations in the world (English Heritage manage this site and there is a large pay and display car park nearby). Bram Stoker spent a few weeks exploring the sea port in 1890 and it is here that he gathered inspiration for his chilling tale. Although Whitby is a busy place these days, it still has a unique character and it’s possible to escape the crowds if you venture off the beaten path.

Other books that have featured Whitby include Possession by A.S.Byatt and Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell. The Offing by Benjamin Myers was set in nearby Robin Hood’s Bay.

Haworth – Home of the Brontë Sisters

Haworth is justifiably one of the most famous places of literary England. The moorlands that surround the town inspired the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne to write their classic novels, which include Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. You can book to tour the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where the family lived until their premature deaths and wander the scenic paths that wind above this pretty village. Find out more in our blog post on Brontë Country.

The Old Swan Hotel – Harrogate

At the height of her fame, Agatha Christie left her home in 1926 and disappeared without trace – sparking off a national manhunt. She was finally found after 11 days. It turned out that she’d been been signed in as a guest under the name ‘Mrs Teresa Neele’ from Cape Town at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel. You can still enjoy a stay at the (now called) Old Swan Hotel and experience the retreat for yourself. Crime-writing enthusiasts can boost their visit by combining the experience with a trip to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival takes place at the hotel every July.

Manchester has enjoyed a revival as an English literary location in recent years, recovering its former glory days when novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, dominated the Victorian bestseller scene from her house on 84 Plymouth Grove. Expect to see another cultural boom as publishing houses start to move their hubs to this thriving city,

Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

The writer Elizabeth Gaskell lived at 84 Plymouth Grove in Manchester with her family from 1850 until her death in 1865. Restored in 2014, visitors are encouraged to sit on the furniture (not original!) and enjoy Gaskell’s beloved home. The tearoom serves drinks and cake on vintage china. There is also a second-hand bookshop and a small garden.

John Rylands Library

Enriqueta Rylands founded the magnificent John Rylands Library in memory of her husband John Rylands, who died in 1888. The neo-gothic building is located in Central Manchester and holds holds one of the finest collections of rare books, manuscripts and archives in the world. Entry is free, but you need to book in advance.

The Peak District

Much of the Peak District remains untouched and the area is known for its country houses. Book lovers have a range of settings to lose themselves in – from the grandeur of Chatsworth House to the romantic grounds of Haddon Hall.

The Jane Eyre Trail

The Jane Eyre Trail is a 5.5 mile (8km) walk that winds through the dramatic landscape that’s said to have inspired Charlotte Brontë to write Jane Eyre. Starting at the Peak District village of Hathersage, the trail takes you past North Lees Hall, allegedly the template for Rochester’s Thornfield Hall (not open to the public) and up to Stanage Edge, a location that has appeared in films such as Pride and Prejudice. Discover more about the trail.

Haddon Hall

If you adore screen adaptations of classic novels, Haddon Hall is an absolute must for all fans in search of literary England. This picture-perfect manor house has appeared in 1986 movie, The Princess Bride featuring Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin, Zefferelli’s Jane Eyre , The Other Boleyn Girl featuring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman to name but a few. The Hall has a tearoom and exquisite gardens so you can spend all day living your fairytale dreams in this magical nook.

Chatsworth House

Arguably the number one tourist destination in the Peak District. The super-grand seat of the Cavendish family has been associated with Jane Austen’s Pemberley for a number of years and certainly it lives up to its glorious reputation. The late Dowager Duchess, Deborah Cavendish (nee Mitford) wrote a number of non-fiction books and was best friends with acclaimed travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor. The house is full equipped for visitors, with shops, cafes and restaurants as well as extensive grounds.

Lud’s Church

Not a church, but an otherworldly natural chasm hidden deep in the Peak District. Reputedly the site of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it’s hard to find unless you have the directions . A worthy quest if you want to see one of the strangest sites in the area.

If you’re looking to create a full literary itinerary, see our post on atmospheric bookish destinations in Derbyshire.

Stratford-Upon-Avon

Arguably Britain’s most influencial writer, William Shakespeare grew up and lived in Stratford-Upon-Avon, which is is now a hub for those wishing to learn more about his life and work.

Shakespeares’s Birthplace

Shakespeare’s Birthplace is the first place most visitors want to see when they arrive in Stratford Upon Avon. William Shakespeare was born here in 1564 and continued to live in the property with his wife Anne Hathaway and his three children, Susanna, Judith and Hamnet, were born under its roof.

Eventually the house passed out of the Shakespeare’s ownership, but was purchased as a heritage site after a successful public campaign in 1847. It is now managed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage

Equally as popular, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage belonged to the family of Shakespeare’s wife, Anne. The building was occupied by 13 generations of the family until it was bought by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and contains pieces of original furniture such as a courting settle that William Shakespeare will most certainly have sat upon.

Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Located by the River Avon, the 1018-seat theatre is the main venue for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s plays are regularly performed here.

‘The City of Dreaming Spires’, Oxford has inspired countless authors, most notably J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S.Lewis who wrote their fantasy classics while teaching here. The city is perfect for wanderers, thinkers and history buffs.

Oxford Botanical Garden and Arboretum

Many acclaimed authors have featured the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum in their novels. Visitors can follow a Literary Trail to discover more about these connections, which include Will and Lyra’s bench from the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman and the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The ‘Narnia Door’ – St. Mary’s Passage

When you approach the famous Radcliffe Camera (pictured from the High Street) via the narrow St.Mary’s Passage, you will pass a wooden door carved with a lion (it opens into Brasenose College). Stand back and you’ll notice two golden fauns on either side. Walk a little further towards Radcliffe Square to find an old-fashioned lamp-post. Although C.S.Lewis never said that this magical combination inspired his famous children’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , the similarities are striking and the author would have walked this route many times.

The Eagle and Child Pub

The famous meeting point for the Inklings writing group which inspired C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien to create their fantasy worlds. The pub is closed for renovations at present and is due to open in 2022.

The Story Museum

If you’re visiting Oxford with kids then the Story Museum is an ideal destination for book lovers. This recently re-vamped museum is dedicated to story for all ages and hold exhibitions, activities and author talks. There is a charge to enter.

Bath has long been associated with elegance and sophistication. The city has preserved much of its Regency architecture, making it a fantastic book destination from Jane Austen fans.

The Jane Austen Centre

Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806 when the city was at the height of its popularity. She worked on some of her earlier novels here and had an opportunity to observe society in full swing. The Jane Austen Centre recreates her Regency world, providing immersive experiences for visitors. It also holds an annual Jane Austen Festival .

It’s difficult to narrow down London literary locations. The UK’s capital city is packed with bookish connections and bibliophiles will find plenty to explore. We recommend starting at the breathtaking British Library, which offers a great overview of British literary history.

The British Library

Situated next to Kings Cross Station and open (free) to the public, the British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. With a collection of over 170 million items, the archive includes the Magna Carta and Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook. The entire stock physically occupies 746km of shelving – equivalent to the distance from London to Aberdeen. Inside you can find restaurants, cafes and shops.

The Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens

You can find the Peter Pan statue to the west of the Long Water, in the same spot as Peter lands his bird-nest boat in the story, ‘The Little White Bird.’ Peter Pan creator and local resident JM Barrie was inspired by Kensington Gardens. He commissioned Sir George Frampton to build the statue which has been a favourite feature of the gardens since 1912.

Shakespeare’s Globe

Situated on the bank of the Thames, this unusual building is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre where William Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. It is a truly fantastic experience to see the plays enacted in their original format. Standing ticket are £5, but book ahead to get the bargains!

The Sherlock Holmes Museum

Enter the home of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s genius detective is still as popular today as in the 1900s and this attraction in Central London is a must-see for Sherlock fans. Opened in 1990, the four-storey Georgian townhouse dates back to 1815 and is full of Victorian memorabilia, Sherlockian clues and a dedicated gift shop.

Keats House

The poet John Keats lived at Wentworth Place (its former name) for 17 months from December 1818, and wrote some of his best known poems here. He also met and proposed to Fanny Brawne during his time in Hampstead (the film Bright Star re-imagines this period in Keats’ life). The house is open to the public.

London Accommodation Map

This handy London accommodation map from Booking.com shows hotel availability across the city. Do check the latest reviews before you book.

Kent is a county of contrasts. Close to London, but also with an extensive coastline and lush countryside, it has acted as both retreat and muse to many English authors.

The Dickens House Museum

The Dickens House Museum  celebrates Charles Dickens’ long connection with Broadstairs and contains items that once belonged to the author, including letters written about Broadstairs, his writing box and mahogany sideboard. It is closed to the pubic at present.

Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Home to writers, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, Sissinghurst Castle has captured the imagination of bibliophiles and garden-lovers since it was first opened to the public in the 1960s. Now managed by the National Trust, this glorious estate has a restaurant and a shop. It also welcomes dogs.

Charles Darwin wrote ‘On the Origin of the Species’ at Down House, Kent where he lived and worked for 40 years. Visitors can see Charles Darwin’s study, which still has the same structure to this day. Every piece of furniture is original and some of the possessions date from his time on HMS Beagle. The house and garden is managed by English Heritage and the organisation hosts various exhibitions at the property.

East Sussex

As with Kent, many classic British authors have found solace in the pretty southern county of East Sussex – enjoying the rural and coastal life. All three properties listed in this section are managed by the National Trust and are open to the public.

Bateman’s – Rudyard Kipling’s Family Home

Rudyard Kipling bought this pretty Jacobean home in 1902 and lived in the property with his family until his death in 1936. While here, he wrote his famous poem “If—”. The National trust have preserved Kipling’s Study as it was left with cigarette burns and ink stains intact.

Monk’s House – Virginia Woolf

Leonard and Virginia Woolf regularly escaped London to spend time at the 16th century Monk’s House near Rodmell, East Sussex. The tiny cottage is filled with artworks by Virginia’s sister Vanessa Bell, who lived nearby with her companion Duncan Grant. Virginia wrote most of her major works in the writing lodge in the garden.

Lamb House – Henry James

Lamb House in Rye has housed many authors over the years including Rumer Godden and EF Benson although it is most often associated with Henry James who took out a 21 year lease on the building. H.G Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer (who later became Ford Madox Ford) all visited James during this time there.

The village of Chawton in Hampshire (near Winchester) is a must-see for Jane Austen fans. She lived here for the last 8 years of her life and wrote most of her classic novels during this time. We highly recommend a trip to Winchester too .

Jane Austen’s House

Jane lived in Chawton, a village close to Winchester, from 1809 to 1817 with her mother, sister Cassandra and close friend, Martha Lloyd.  The family moved into the cottage after their brother, Edward Knight, who had inherited nearby Chawton House. Nowadays, the House is run by a charity and is “the most treasured Austen site in the world.”

Read about our visit here.

Chawton House

Jane Austen called Chawton House the ‘Great House’. Only a short walk from Jane Austen’s House, it contains the research library for the   Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, 1600–1830. The gardens are extensive and there is a tearoom on site.

Find out more about what to expect at the house here.

In the southwest of England, Dorset is known for its dramatic coastline. No wonder that some of the most moving English literary classics have been based in this characterful landscape.

Hardy’s Cottage

Hardy was born at this traditional cob and thatch cottage in 1840. It has remained largely untouched over the centuries, making it easy to imagine the young author writing the literary classics Far from the Madding Crowd and Under the Greenwood Tree here.

Belmont – John Fowles’ Lyme Regis House

John Fowles, the author of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, lived at Belmont from 1968-2005. His writing room on the first floor overlooks the Cobb. It includes a writing desk and a large number of John Fowles books in the library. The house is not open to the public but stays can be booked via the Landmark Trust .

Devon has a gentle charm with softer lines than its neighbour, Cornwall. Popular as a holiday destination, it was a favourite for Agatha Christie who spent summers overlooking the glorious Dart Estuary.

Agatha Christie’s Devon retreat, Greenway, is both a museum and a holiday destination, having self-catering apartments and lodges onsite. The house contains her personal possessions (five generations of the family collected over 11,000 objects). For keen walkers, there are a number of routes to explore around the gardens and surrounding countryside.

Myth, magic and secrets abound in this remote part of England, making it a magnet for artists and writers. It’s best to travel out of season to experience the true spirit of Cornwall.

Tintagel Castle

Undoubtedly the most famous Arthurian site in the world, the ruins of Tintagel Castle sit upon a Cornish promontory overlooking the sea. Although the connection with King Arthur is still in dispute, the spectacular location has become a setting for many fantasy works, including Lord Alfred Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King . On the beach below the castle, visitors can explore Merlin’s Cave at low tide. The site is managed by English Heritage and pre-booking is advised during high season.

Jamaica Inn

If you’re travelling to the tip of Cornwall then chances are that you’ll pass the historic Jamaica Inn where Daphne du Maurier set her novel of the same name. Established as a coaching stop in 1750, this characterful hostelry has welcomed many weary wanderers. Daphne due Maurier stayed in Bedroom 3 in 1930 when she became lost while out riding on her horse, and this inspired her to write her dramatic tale. You can still stay here. There is also a Smuggling Museum and a restaurant on site.

Frenchman’s Creek

Frenchman’s Creek can be found just off the Helford River and also inspired Daphne du Maurier who honeymooned here in 1932. There are many ways to experience this enchanting spot. You can go on a kayaking tour , a circular walk or stay in this secluded Landmark Trust cottage.

A map of Literary England and the UK

Take your exploration of literary England to the next level with the Great British Literature Map ! It includes many British literary locations as well as independent bookshops – a fantastic treat for serious book lovers.

This wonderful. I am bookmarking this for lots of trips. Thanksxx

Enjoy your trips – we have travelled to many of these places and all utterly brilliant! xx

Great guide, Mel! So many charming places, and I saw so few of them. Hope you’re fine! Silvia

Thank you Silvia. We are good here – hope you are too. Been a busy summer but hoping to get back to blogging imminently! x

All good here too 🙂 It’s been a busy period for us too, as we’re building my redesigned website. It’s a massive effort, but well worth it! We’re almost there, and I can’t wait to start posting again! x

P.S. I’m not entirely sure, but it seems your RSS feed is not working: I’ve only recently started following you via RSS, but it seems like it’s not serving your latest posts.

I’m excited to see the new website. Let me know when it’s ready to view and thank you for letting me know about the RSS. I’ll look into it x

Beautiful! I saw that you talk about Dickens Museum in Broadstairs, can I suggest to add Dickens’ house (Dickens Museum) in London? Very interesting visit,

Thank you so much for the recommendation Andrea! I will check that out.

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A literary tour of the United Kingdom

From Bram Stoker's Whitby to the sprawling country pile that inspired Virginia Woolf's Orlando, this is the definitive staycation travel guide for book lovers. 

Imagine standing in the very room where Samuel Coleridge, as he furiously tried to write down Kubla Khan before it slipped from his opium-expanded mind, was interrupted by the now-infamous "person from Porlock". Or lying on the cigarette-burned "day bed" where Rudyard Kipling took his naps. What if you could visit the exact house on the remote Scottish isle where George Orwell rushed out  1984 , or visit the actual bookies where Renton dives into "the worst toilet in Scotland" in Trainspotting ? 

Well, actually, you can do all those things. In fact, the United Kingdom is littered with famous literary sites that book lovers can visit. From dramatic landscapes and buildings that have inspired some of literature's best-loved stories to the homes where writers wrote, here is our tour of the nation's most important literary locations. 

South West England

Hardy’s Cottage (Higher Bockhampton, Dorset)

This old-world cob and thatch cottage is where Thomas Hardy was born and spent the first 34 years of his life. Surrounded by dense woodland and gargling brooks, it was here that he wrote several works, including the novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd .

Staying there now, as visitors can, it's easy to see why the surrounding meadows never left Hardy's heart – to him a place of quiet, untamed beauty, uncorrupted by human hands. Behind it stretches a heath, which is even thought to have inspired his fictitious Egdon Heath, of which Hardy wrote in The Return of the Native : “Civilization was its enemy ... The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim."

Bateman’s (Etchingham, East Sussex)

Built in 1634, Rudyard Kipling spent the last 34 years of his life here. It's where he and wife Carrie brought up their children, Elsie and John, and where he wrote some of his best-loved works, including If— and Puck of Pook's Hill.

Kipling was said to be seduced by the legend that this area of Sussex was the last place in England inhabited by fairies before they upped and left forever. You can now visit the house, that feels almost as if Kipling might stride in any moment. His study is especially evocative, complete with his ink-stained desk and day bed, that still bears his mark, in the form of cigarette burns that dot the cushioned sofa.

Bath Assembly Rooms (Bath, Somerset)

Jane Austen used Bath's glorious Assembly Rooms in two of her novels – Persuasion and Northanger Abbey . In both novels, these ornate ballrooms are where our respective heroines, Anne Elliot and Catherine Morland, attend dances in the hope of snaring eligible men of means. They are also where Jane Austen attended a number of society balls herself, occasions that, no doubt, inspired some of her most memorable will-they-won't-they scenes.

Located on Terrace Walk, just off the banks of the Avon River, they are now a place to take tea, drink soul-cleansing spring water and admire the awesome beauty of the largest eighteenth-century room in Bath, resplendant with its spectacular Whitefriars crystal chandeliers.

Greenway (near Galmpton, Devon)

Agatha Christie famously described her forest-nestled holiday home as “the loveliest place in the world”. Many of her works, including Towards Zero , Dead Man’s Folly and Five Little Pigs were inspired by the house and its sumptuous gardens.

Of first seeing the house, Christie wrote in her autobiography: “[How] very beautiful the house and grounds were … with woods sweeping down to the Dart below, and a lot of fine shrubs and trees – the ideal house, a dream house.”

Coleridge Cottage (Nether Stowey, Somerset)

Recently restored to look just like it did when Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel , among other immortal works, this cottage in the Somerset wilds oozes literary history. It's where he described the "thin blue flame" on "my low-burnt fire" in the poem Frost at Midnight , and where he and old pal William Wordsworth drank by candlelight and founded the Romantic Movement .

It was here too that, in an opium-induced slumber, Coleridge scribbled down the first lines of Kubla Khan , before being so mysteriously interrupted by that “person from Porlock” - the most infamous vibe-killer in literary history.

Jamaica Inn (Launceston, Cornwall)

Not far from the picturesque fishing town of Fowey, it was along this wind-worn stretch of Cornish coast that Daphne du Maurier set many of her most famous novels, from The Birds to Rebecca and, of course, Jamaica Inn . “Jamaica Inn stands today, hospitable and kindly,” she wrote. “In the following story of adventure I have pictured it as it might have been over a hundred and twenty years ago.”

By that she meant a smuggler's den of vice where the clock ticks “like a dying man who cannot catch his breath”, the wooden sign creaks “like an animal in pain”, and the wind outside howls like ‘a chorus from the dead’. She was said to have been inspired to write Jamaica Inn in 1930 after she and a friend got lost in fog while riding on the surrounding moors, before the local rector regaled the pair with tales of local ghosts and smugglers' yarns that night.

South East England

Ashdown Forest (Sussex)

A. A. Milne bought Crotchford Farm, in Ashdown Forest, in 1925 as a family holiday home. It was amid the ancient wood's distinctive heathlands, gorse and bracken, and clumps of pine trees that he watched the imaginary adventures of his son Christopher Robin, who later said it was “identical” to Winnie the Pooh 's Hundred Acre Wood.

You can still visit the footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway in Posingford Wood where the father and son invented Poohsticks, as well as all the other sites where Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and gang lived, loved and ate honey.

Oxford University (Oxford)

Oxford is a city dripping with literary associations, from C. S. Lewis to Evelyn Waugh . But few have featured the university's iconic grounds with such fondness as Phillip Pullman in His Dark Materials . The Bodleian Library, the Botanic Gardens, even Blackwell's iconic bookshop appear in the trilogy.

And while the fictional Jordan College doesn't exist, it is said to be based on Exeter College, Pullman's alma mater: “Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for some yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone.”

Knole house and garden (Sevenoaks, Kent)

This was the labyrinthine ancestral home of Vita Sackville-West , best friend, muse and lover of Virginia Woolf . And it was here that Woolf wrote Orlando , her ode to gender fluidity and love-letter to Sackville-West. Orlando's original manuscript is still there today, inscribed with the words, 'Vita from Virginia'.

And it was within these oak-panelled walls (it is said to have 365 rooms and 52 staircases), that Woolf and Sackville-West began their ten-year affair under the watchful eyes of the pile's vast collection of priceless portraits of the great and good of English history. “You made me cry with your passages about Knole, you wretch,” Sackville-West later wrote to Woolf after reading Orlando , which is partly set at Knole.

Chawton (Hampshire)

This, according to its website, is the “most treasured Austen site in the world”. Jane Austen 's brother, Edward, inherited Chawton House from distant relatives. He immediately offered the bailiff’s residence, five minutes’ walk from Chawton House, to his mother and sisters, Jane and Cassandra.

It was there that Jane spent the last eight years of her life and published all her novels: Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , Emma , Northanger Abbey and Persuasion . Now a museum, it holds a cornucopia of Austen-related artefacts, including letters, jewellery, furniture and the table at which she wrote most of her books.

North East England

Whitby (North Yorkshire)

“An immense dog sprang up on deck from below … Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones – 'thruff-steens' or 'through-stones,' as they call them in the Whitby vernacular – actually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness.”

Looking across the harbour toward East Cliff, you can see the 199 steps up which Dracula , in dog form, tore to St Mary's church. Bram Stoker knew it well, having stayed in the Royal Hotel while writing his famous novel. The book bleeds with references to the ancient seaport and fishing village where much of the the 1897 classic Gothic novel is set.

Whiteley Bay (Tyne and Wear)

Whitely Bay, in the words of Ann Cleeves, is “a faded seaside town on the coast east of Newcastle. Once a “place of wild partying,” now, she said last year, “there are still a few deco houses on the road that leads to St Mary’s Island and perhaps they triggered my imagination.”

Now Cleeves' hometown, it was here that she set many of her Vera books (now a TV series). In other words, it's the perfect place for a hard-boiled female detective to ply her hard-learned trade. The lighthouse on St Mary's no longer guides ships in, but its towering silhouette remains an eerie symbol of the seaside town, and a major character in Cleeves' latest novel, The Seagull .

Bradford (West Yorkshire)

Bradford's magnificent old Wool Exchange is now a Waterstones bookshop. But it's also where A. A. Dhand places a murdered corpse at the start of his 2018 thriller City of Sinners (the victim was hanged over a ledge below the hammer-beam roof, suspended between two towering granite pillars).

Harry Virdee, the “heavy-handed” detective caught between his duty as a copper and his identity as a British Sikh, is Dhand's greatest creation, and the gritty streets of Bradford are his patch. As bodies pile up, he must catch the killers in a city torn apart by violence, exploitation and racial tension. His books, in a way though, are love letters to a once-great city left to fade.

North West England

Hill Top (near Hawkshead, Cumbria)

In 1905, Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top, a quaint little cottage near Hawkshead in Cumbria, with the proceeds from her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit . It became the inspiration for all her other “ little white books " and her spiritual home. And it's pretty much exactly as she left it when she died in 1943.

Visitors can wander the rooms, each filled with curios from the author's life. That includes her dolls house, the furnishing's of which will seem more than a little familiar to anyone who has read her classic story, The Tale Of Two Bad Mice .

Lyme Park (Disley, Cheshire)

It's been 25 years since Colin Firth emerged from the lake in front of Lyme Park in Cheshire in his soggy, nipple-clamping shirt, sending hearts aflutter up and down the country. And Lyme Park is where that smouldering scene was filmed. While that particular scene is not in Jane Austen's classic, the lavish country house on the edge of the Peak District was the setting for all the garden scenes of Pemberley, Mr. Darcy's plush estate in Pride and Prejudice .

“She had never seen a place where nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste," writes Austen when Elizabeth first lays eyes on Pemberley. "They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”

Haworth (near Bradford, West Yorkshire)

The Brontë sisters lived most of their short but fruitful lives in Howarth, the Pennine village where they grew up. It was where, in 1847, Charlotte published Jane Eyre , Anne published Agnes Grey and Emily published Wuthering Heights . They loved a walk, and visitors now can still stroll the pathways and moorlands that inspired their writing.

That includes Top Withens, a ruined, wind-swept farmhouse and supposed setting for Wuthering Heights . Describing it, Emily wrote: "One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun."

Wordsworth House and Garden (Cockermouth, Cumbria)

This is the house where the poet William Wordsworth spent his free-range childhood, and cultivated his love of nature. Now under the care of the National Trust, it's pretty much as the Wordsworths left it when William moved out in 1778 following the death of his mother.

The playroom is full of toys and clothes from the period, the Wordsworth Room is stuffed with curios, books and games while the garden is something close to an 18th-century time machine of veg, fruit, herbs and flowers, just as it would have been when a young William played there.

Central England

Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire)

No town in all of England is more synonymous with English literature than Stratford-upon-Avon. It's where William Shakespeare was born, and where he is buried. First, there's the half-timbered Tudor family home on Henley Street where The Bard entered the world in 1564. Then there's New Place, where he spent the last years of his life. There's also, a mile or so up the road, Ann Hathaway's cottage, the beautiful thatched farmhouse where Shakespeare's wife lived before her marriage. You can even visit the school where the playwrite took his first steps towards literary immortality. 

The National Theatre (Southbank)

Bernadine Evaristo 's Booker-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other opens with Amma making her way to the National Theatre for the opening night of her play The Last Amazon of Dahomey . “A few early morning barges cruise slowly by” as she walks towards the “Brutalist grey arts complex”.

“At least they try to enliven the bunker-like concrete with neon”, she thinks. It's an evocative scene in which she sees the Thames snake into the grey distance, framed by Waterloo Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral. Also it's dawn – the best time of any day to see London from the river while air is “still breezy before the city clogs up with heat and fumes”. The build up and the aftermath of Amma's play in the National are what bookend this wonderful novel. Opened in 1976, The National Theatre is itself a work of art, inside and out, and well worth a visit for the theatre, or just the views.

Waterloo Station (central London)

“One grim winter evening”, Moses Aloetta, in  Sam Selvon 's The Lonely Londoners jumps on “a number 46 bus at the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train.” Selvon's iconic 1953 chronicle of post-war Caribbean migration to Britain spends a lot of time in Waterloo. The station especially.

Far more than just a place of “arrivals” and “departures”, it is, for Selvon and his characters, a symbolic migrant gateway into the capital. And, despite having lived for years in London, it is also a place – for homesick “fellers” like Moses at least – that you “can’t get away from the habit of going to.”

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey (central London)

This, as A. A. Gill put it, is “the marbled hall of fame of Britishness” where you can stand on the bones of the nation's most revered figures of English letters. Chaucer , Dickens , Tennyson , Hardy , and Kipling are all buried there, alongside more than 50 other men and women packed beneath the great flagstones of Westminster Abbey.

Dozens of others, from Shakespeare to Austen, Wordsworth to Phillip Larkin are all commemorated there, too, in statue or commemorative stone. It is, in short, a place to rub shoulders with the ghosts of the greatest minds in British literature – a place so imprinted into British literary tradition that its very name conjures near mythic implication.

Baker Street (central London)

No trip to Britain is complete without stalking the gas-lit streets of Victorian London, and turning your magnifying glass to Baker Street, the home of Sherlock Holmes . Of course, there is no 221B Baker Street. There never was, not even in Arthur Conan-Doyle 's day.

Though, there is now a museum dedicated to the famous sleuth at 239 (the closest address to 221B used to be occupied by the Abbey National bank, which was forced to employ a full-time secretary in the 1930s to answer the hundreds of letters sent by fans to the address every year). As for the fictional flat itself, it's been painstakingly recreated by the museum, which was granted special permission by the City of Westminster to bear the address 221B.

St Mary’s Church (Willesden, north west London)

Few novels have such a profound sense of place than Zadie Smith 's 2012 novel NW . The place in question is Willesden, north-west London. And nowhere in the book is more beautifully described than the ancient St. Mary's Church, by the A107 roundabout.

“Out of time, out of place,” writes Smith when Leah and Nat visit early in the story with their children. “A force field of serenity surrounds it. A cherry tree at the east window. A low encircling brick wall marks the ancient boundary, no more a defence than a ring of daisies. The family vaults have their doors kicked in. Many brightly tagged gravestones.”

The 700-year-old church is home to the famous ‘Black Madonna’ of Willesden, which once attracted large numbers of pilgrims. Since the original was destroyed in the Reformation, it was replaced by a limewood statue - mentioned by Zadie Smith – that's both beautiful and imposing and well worth a visit.

Brick Lane (London's East End)

“You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved.”

Brick Lane , by Monica Ali , is about a young Bangladeshi woman who exchanges her village home for a flat in the East End of London after being forced into an arranged marriage. A story of love, fate and cultural conflict, the story unfolds mostly in the streets and buildings around Brick Lane, the heart of London's Bangladeshi community. Brick Lane is known also for its many curry houses and vintage clothes shops, as well as its a bustling weekend market.

Leith, Edinburgh

Irvine Welsh 's Leith was the stomping ground of junkies, prostitutes, psychos, bigots and social security scam artists living on what's left of their wits in the 1993 cult classic  Trainspotting . And while the 'worst toilet in Scotland' – into which protagonist Renton dives to retrieve the heroin suppository he's just evacuated from his guts – may have involved a little artistic license, the bookies in which it rotted was very real.

And many of the other locations described by Welsh are still visitable too, if a little less watch-your-back bleak nowadays. Leith is no longer the den of vice depicted by Welsh. In fact, it now boasts two Michelin-starred restaurants, while Leith Walk is the most diverse districts in the country, as well as one of the most populated. As Renton never quite said, “Choose life. Choose Leith.”

Loch Katrine, Glasgow

One of Scotland's most beguiling lochs (in a very crowded field), the eight-mile-long freshwater loch is most famous as the beloved setting of Sir Walter Scott’ s 1810 poem The Lady of the Lake .

Here's how Scott describes “the silver strand”, through the eyes of a mysterious knight, struck by the beauty of a young woman rowing towards him: “A little skiff shot to the bay, / That round the promontory steep / Led its deep line in graceful sweep, / Eddying, in almost viewless wave, / The weeping willow twig to rave, / And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, / The beach of pebbles bright as snow".

Wigtown (Dumfries and Galloway)

Otherwise known as "Scotland's National Book Town", Wigtown, in the southern uplands, has one of the highest concentration of second-hand bookshops in the country (one for every 50 people) and is home to the second largest book festival in Scotland. It is also home to The Open Book bookshop, where visitors can go on the “first ever bookshop holiday”, renting the apartments upstairs while running the shop below (with the help of local volunteers, of course).

Inverness (North East Scotland)

Diana Gabaldon 's Outlander books have fuelled a visitor boom for the Highlands since the first was published in 1991, rooted in the very real history and culture of northern Scotland. The towering Castle Leod at Strathpeffer is thought to be the inspiration for Castle Leoch, the fictional seat of Clan MacKenzie in the time-travelling saga.

Then there's the ancient Clava Cairns burial ground, thought to have inspired Craigh Na Dun that spirits Claire back in time to 1743 war-torn Scotland. There's Culloden Battlefield, and, of course, Loch Ness, where Claire first spots the mysterious “water horse”.

Jura island (Inner Hebrides)

When George Orwell squirrelled himself away in a remote Scottish farmhouse, called Barnhill, to rush out what would become the definitive novel of the 20th century (also known as  1984 ), he needed silence and space. It had to be, as he described it, “in an extremely un-get-atable place”.

And it still is today, requiring two ferries, a 20-mile drive and then a four-mile walk along a dirt track. But by Big Brother's roving eye it is worth the trek if you've the shoes for it. Red deer roam freely about the island (outnumbering people by 25 to one), and golden eagles patrol the sky.

With its untamed natural beauty, soaring mountains, moss-blanketed corries, crags and knobbly fields of peat, it is one of the very few spots on the British Isles that feels untouched by the hands of man.

Laugharne (Carmarthenshire)

“The strangest town in Wales” was how the poet Dylan Thomas described the estuary town of Laugharne, south Wales. Which makes sense, given its people were what inspired his most-famous radio drama, Under Milk Wood , about a day in the life of the small fishing village, Llareggub (read it backwards).

It is a place where, in his words, “the sea lolls, laps and idles in, with fishes sleeping in its lap”, and where on a moonless night the sky is “starless, Bible-black”. Thomas lived there, on and off, for 20 years. He may now be gone, but his memory lives on happily every after.

Hay-on-Wye (on the border of England and Wales)

Home to some 20 specialist bookshops (mostly second-hand), Hay-on-Wye has long been known as the UK's “town of books". It is both the National Book Town of Wales and the site of the annual Hay Festival of literature (or, as former US president Bill Clinton once dubbed it, "The Woodstock of the mind"). As such, it has become a place of pilgrimage for book lovers from all over the world.

The Black Mountains (Mid-Wales)

J. R. R. Tolkien once described Welsh as “the senior language of the men of Britain.” He so loved the language that it inspired many of his place names and characters in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit . And in the imposing Black Mountains, in Wales' Brecon Beacons, his imagination saw Mordor.

He is believed to have stayed in the village of Talybont-on-Usk in the 1940s, while working on parts of The Lord of The Rings , and is thought to have named the fictional hobbit village of Crickhollow after nearby Crickhowell.

Northern Ireland

Homeplace (Bellaghy, County Derry)

Opened in 2016, this arts and literary centre in the village of Bellaghy celebrates the life, literature and inspirations of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel prize-winning poet who died in 2013 and is buried in the nearby church graveyard.

Heaney grew up in Bellaghy, and the centre – a former RUC police station – showcases all sorts of artefacts from his life, from his his childhood leather satchel to dozens of family photographs to the desk he wrote at in his attic study (which he called his “hutch”). There are video recordings, too, from neighbours, world leaders and cultural figures, and a viewing platform from which visitors can look out across the Derry countryside that inspired so much of his work.

Mourne Mountains (County Down)

“I yearn to see County Down in the snow,” C. S. Lewis once said of his homeland. “One almost expects to see a march of dwarfs dashing past. How I long to break into a world where such things were true.” So he created Narnia , a world of umbrella-carrying fawns, ice queens and talking lions, accessible only through the wardrobe of an old house.

Having spent all his childhood there, he returned to the area every year, and the dominating Mourne Mountains, with its dramatic peaks and sweeping valleys, became the setting for his finest creation.

Cave Hill (Belfast)

If you tilt your head enough and squint, Cave Hill, in north Belfast, looks a bit like a sleeping giant. You can almost imagine him – or her – rumbling to life, tearing up the moss and soil to wreak whatever havoc awoken giants make in 2020.

At least, locals believe that's what Jonathan Swift imagined when he saw the imposing rock on one of his visits. They say it so peaked his imagination that it inspired him to write Gulliver's Travels , about a sailor who awakes after a shipwreck to find he's been captured by an island of tiny people.

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Literary England (Best destinations for book lovers)

By: Author Tracy Collins

Posted on Last updated: August 18, 2022

Enjoy a tour of literary England! Our guide to the best destinations and literary places to visit in England is perfect for book lovers who would like to discover the home and history behind some of the most famous English literary works (both classic and modern)

If you have an interest in visiting some of the most famous literary locations in England associated with writers such as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and Beatrix Potter (to name just a few) you have come to the right place! 

In this article take a tour around literary England and discover the areas, cities, towns and villages associated with some of the most famous and loved authors (from the classic to modern-day). We have included links to practical information and articles about each destination plus any recommended tours with a literary focus.

Lake District

Stratford-upon-avon – shakespeare, east sussex – aa milne, bath – jane austen, dorset – thomas hardy, canterbury – chaucer, read your way around the uk.

Let’s take a literary tour of England from north to south

Beatrix potter.

Beatrix Potter was a famous children’s writer and illustrator, with some of her much-loved works including  The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, and  Jemima Puddle-Duck.

The writer fell in love with the Lake District holidaying at Wray Castle as a youngster. The magnificent castle is still open today. 

Avid fans can visit the writer’s former home Hill Top (now in the care of the National Trust ). Fun fact: She bought the farm in 1905 with the profits from her first book.

Potter penned many of her enchanting tales in Hill Top and the charming home remains just as it was during her lifetime. The nearby Buckle Yeat Guest House also featured in several stories.

Located in Hawkshead , the Beatrix Potter Gallery was once the office of the writer’s husband. Today, it is home to a delightful collection of Potter’s original illustrations and drawings. The Armitt Museum in Ambleside contains even more Beatrix Potter memorabilia. 

Visit Tarn Hows, an area of splendid natural beauty, once owned by Potter. 

Bowness-on-Windermere is home to the fabulous World of Beatrix Potter. Especially popular with kids, the attraction brings Potter’s marvellous tales to life. 

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth, once Poet Laureate, is another big literary name associated with the Lake District. 

The renowned poet was born in Cockermouth Cumbria. Visit the fine Georgian building of Wordsworth House for a glimpse into his early years. 

See the outside of Ann Tyson’s Cottage in Hawkshead, where Wordsworth lodged while at school, and step back in time at the Museum of the Old Grammar School, where Wordsworth received his early education.

Visit his former homes of Dove Cottage and Allan Bank, both in Grasmere, as well as the Old Rectory and nearby Rydal Mount (open to visitors).

Sit in quiet contemplation amid the springtime daffodils in Dora’s Field, once owned by Wordsworth and named after his daughter. You can also pay your respects to the great poet in St Oswald’s Church. 

Haworth – Bronte Sisters

Yorkshire also has literary connections with the Brontë Sisters.

See where the famous literary sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—were born at the Brontë Birthplace, Thornton. A blue plaque marks the spot. 

A must-visit for Brontë fans is the village of Haworth near Bradford in West Yorkshire. This is where the sisters grew up and where they gained much inspiration for their renowned novels. 

Stroll along the unchanged cobbled streets and visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, housed in the home where the sisters spent most of their lives and penned many of their books including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights . The museum contains personal effects, letters, manuscripts, and other fascinating Bronte memorabilia. 

Next door, visit the church where the sisters’ father was minister and pay your respects at the Brontë family tomb.

Nearby, Ponden Hall was the inspiration for Thrushcross Hall in  Wuthering Heights  (Emily Brontë), while Oakwell Hall inspired Fieldhead in  Shirley  (Charlotte Brontë).

Whitby – Bram Stoker

Irish author Bram Stoker holidayed in the seaside town of Whitby , gaining ideas for his famous Gothic horror:  Dracula . 

Visit 6 Royal Crescent, where Stoker stayed, and learn more about the writer’s associations with Whitby at the spooky Dracula Experience. 

Explore the atmospheric ruins of the 11th-century Whitby Abbey and stroll through the eerie graveyard of St. Mary’s Church, both of which are featured in the famous horror. Even the 199 steps up to the church were mentioned in the book. You can hunt for the grave of Mr Swales, which inspired the name of Dracula’s first victim.

Warwickshire’s town of Stratford-upon-Avon will always be famous for being the birthplace of one of England’s most legendary playwrights: William Shakespeare.

The West Midland’s town has a trio of top attractions associated with the Bard: Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, and Shakespeare’s New Place. 

Step inside the gorgeous 16th-century half-timbered building of Shakespeare’s birthplace to see where the playwright spent the first 24 years of his life. Costumed guides and period furnishings take you back in time.

Stroll through the walled garden, peek inside Shakespeare’s father’s glove-making workshop, and find further fascinating collections in the adjacent Shakespeare Centre. 

The quaint cottage where Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway spent her childhood is also a must-visit.

Shakespeare’s New Place was bought on the back of riches made from the world of theatre. Sadly, the building is no more. The land has, however, been transformed into a magical modern interpretation of the Bard’s life and works. 

Catch a play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and pay your respects at Holy Trinity Church. (Visiting London? Head to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre)

The city of Oxford is one of the most literary places to visit in England with numerous authors having worked at the university. Let’s take a literary tour of the city!

JRR Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien CBE is one of England’s most famous writers, known particularly for his fantasy fiction works.

He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and there’s a commemorative bust in the chapel. Tolkien served in World War One, then returned to Oxford, first working at the Oxford English Dictionary. 

He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College between 1925 and 1945. During this period, Tolkien’s world of middle-earth came to life as he wrote  The Hobbit  and the first two books of  The Lord of the Rings.  

From 1945 to 1959, Tolkien taught English Language and Literature at Merton College. He died in Oxford in 1973, and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. 

Along with the cemetery and university buildings, there are other sites associated with Tolkien around Oxford.

You can view many of Tolkien’s original manuscripts and drawings in the handsome Bodleian Library, while Radcliffe Camera is said to have been the inspiration for the Temple of Morgoth.    

Stroll through the Botanic Gardens, as Tolkien used to do, see the curious collection of inscribed rings in the Ashmolean Museum, and stand in front of 20 Northmoor Road, one of Tolkien’s former homes.

Call into the Eagle and Child and have a drink in the very same pub where Tolkien and other members of a literary group—The Inklings—used to meet. 

Speaking of the Inklings, that leads onto the next literary figure associated with Oxford: C.S. Lewis.

Once a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and a fellow member of The Inklings, C.S. Lewis was the mastermind behind  The Chronicles of Narnia. Other works include  The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters , and non-fictional religious works. 

Born in Belfast , C.S. Lewis moved to Oxford in 1917 to study at University College. He joined the Officers’ Training Corp soon after, which led to him joining the army and serving in World War One. He lived in the Radcliffe Quad during this brief time at the university.  

After the war, Lewis went back to Oxford and completed his studies. He became a tutor of Philosophy at University College and later taught English Literature at Magdalen College. 

During World War Two Lewis served in the Home Guard in Oxford. At the same time, he spoke widely on religious issues and also became the first President of the Oxford Socratic Club. 

Lewis is buried at Holy Trinity Church in Oxfordshire. 

Stop by the King’s Arms and White Horse public houses to see where The Inklings met when The Eagle and Child ran out of beer. 

See where Lewis stayed, on the corner of Mansfield Road and Holywell Street, and where he gave a wartime sermon at The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (of Alice in Wonderland fame) is another author with links to the prestigious Oxford University.

Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a graduate of and later lecturer at Christ Church. 

During his years in Oxford, he became friends with the Dean of Christ Church and his children. He delighted one of the Dean’s daughters, Alice, with wonderful tales, which she begged him to write down. He later expanded this to become the much-loved children’s classic,  Alice in Wonderland . 

Fans can pay homage in the Great Hall of Christ Church, where there’s a stained-glass window and portrait in Dodgson’s (/Carroll’s) honour. The library contains several photographs and notes made by the writer, and his former living quarters at the college are now the graduate common room. 

Philip Pullman

There’s yet another fantasy writer with links to Oxford: Philip Pullman .

Born in Norwich, Pullman spent most of his early years living in Wales. He went to Exeter College in Oxford in 1965 and remained in Oxfordshire after graduation. 

He wrote an adult’s fantasy fiction novel in 1978,  Galatea , which was followed by the children’s book  Count Karlstein  in the early 80s. 

The award-winning author started writing full-time in 1996 and popular works include the trilogy of  His Dark Materials  and  The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ , a fictitious biography of Jesus Christ. The shorter book,  Lyra’s Oxford , features the protagonist of His Dark Materials . 

He lectured at Westminster College and became a Fellow at Oxford Brookes University.   

You can visit several places around Oxford connected to Pullman and his stories. Major sites include Pitt Rivers Museum, where Lyra discovered hole-ridden skulls, The Covered Market, where Lyra liked to hang out, and Bodley’s Library.  

East Sussex has associations with a favourite children’s storybook character: Winnie the Pooh .

The brainchild of Alan Alexander Milne (A. A. Milne), the loveable bear had many adventures with his animal friends, including Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet, along with their human pal, Christopher Robin (named after Milne’s son—Christopher Robin Milne). 

Born in London and educated in Cambridge , A. A. Milne served in both World Wars before moving to East Sussex with his wife and child. 

He bought Cotchford Farm as a weekend retreat, a private home today, close to the stunning Ashdown Forest. The magical forest was the inspiration for Hundred Acre Wood, and the area is often referred to as Pooh Country.  

Stroll through the nature-filled woodland and visit Gill’s Lap, the inspiration for Galleon’s Leap. Snap a picture on the bridge that crosses the stream in Posingford Wood—it’s where Poohsticks was first played!

You can also pop into the charming café of Pooh Corner and browse their collection of books and souvenirs. 

If visiting Ashdown Forest and playing Pooh sticks is on your UK bucket list we recommend John England Tours who offers private driver guided Pooh Sticks tour!

Jane Austen, one of England’s greatest female writers from the late 1700s and early 1800s, spent several years living in Bath, Somerset. 

Writing from a young age, Austen had already laid the groundwork for several novels before her move to the English city of Bath at the start of the 19th century. Works included Elinor and Marianne (which became Sense and Sensibility), First Impressions (which became Pride and Prejudice), and Susan (which became Northanger Abbey). 

Though Jane Austen’s time in Bath was fairly unproductive from a writing point of view, she certainly gained inspiration there for future works and changes to existing manuscripts. 

She lived in several places around the city, including Trim Street, Queen Square, The Paragon, and Gay Street. A plaque marks one former home: 4 Sydney Place.  

Austen’s books were largely published after her Bath years, and later works included  Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. 

The obvious starting point in Bath for Austen fans is The Jane Austen Centre. Located in a gorgeous Georgian townhouse on Gay Street, the museum shows what life would have been like when Austen lived in the city. You can even dress up in period Regency attire and sip an Austen-named beverage in the upstairs elegant Regency Tea Rooms. Afterwards, visit the memorial to Austen in the lovely Parade Gardens.  

Follow in the footsteps of Jane Austen along Pulteney Place and around The Circus, relax in Sydney Gardens, take tea in The Pump Rooms (as mentioned in  Northanger Abbey ), and admire the handsome Assembly Rooms (mentioned in  Northanger Abbey  and  Persuasion ). 

If you want to immerse yourself even more in Austen’s Bath, don’t miss the annual ten-day Jane Austen Festival, held each September. Read more – Best places to stay in Bath

Good to know – Jane is buried at Winchester cathedral so if you visit the city do visit her final resting place.

Dorset in the south west of England is famous for the splendid Jurassic Coast . It’s also where Thomas Hardy was born, author of famous works including Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and  The Mayor of Casterbridge, to name just a few.  

Born near Dorchester, Hardy trained as an architect before moving to London. Disenchanted with big-city life, he returned to Dorset to focus on his writing in the seaside town of Weymouth . 

Visit Hardy’s Cottage, where he was born, and Max Gate, the home where he lived for many years and subsequently died. 

The small parish church in Stinsford will also be of interest to Hardy fans; the author was christened here and his heart was buried here alongside his first wife. (The rest of his cremated remains were interred in Poets’ Corner at London’s Westminster Abbey. ) 

Daphne Du Maurier

Cornwall has connections to several famous writers. 

Born in London, Daphne Du Maurier’s love affair with Cornwall began at a young age, when she holidayed in the Cornish village of Bodinnick. Du Maurier wrote her first novel, The Loving Spirit, at Ferryside.

Du Maurier later bought a house near Fowey—Menabilly—where she lived for a quarter of a century. Menabilly was the inspiration for Manderley in Rebecca. She later lived in a house called Kilmarth, which inspired House on the Strand. 

None of Du Maurier’s former homes are open to visitors, though you can visit many places where the writer drew inspiration for works like  Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn, The Birds, and  My Cousin Rachel.

Perhaps the ultimate destination for lovers of Du Maurier’s works is Jamaica Inn on the brooding Bodmin Moor. Once a notorious smuggling inn, it is now home to the world’s only museum dedicated to the writer. 

Winston Graham

Winston Graham moved to Cornwall at the age of 17. He spent many years living in Perranporth, during which time he focused on his childhood dream of becoming a writer. 

Author of titles like  The House with the Stained Glass Windows, The Walking Stick, and  Marnie, Graham is probably most well-known for his Poldark series . The books, set around Cornwall, were later turned into a popular TV series.

Discover the wild landscapes, picturesque beaches, charming villages , and historic hotspots that inspired Graham’s writing, and hear tales of smugglers and pirates.

Top places to add to your Poldark-themed vacation include Porthgwarra, Bodmin Moor, Kynance Cove, St. Agnes Head, Porthcurno, Holywell, Padstow, Predannack Wollas, and Charlestown.

Rosamund Pilcher

Particularly famous for romance novels, including  Coming Home, Sleeping Tiger, The Shell Seekers, and  Under Gemini , Rosamunde Pilcher was born in 1924 in Lelant.

Many of Pilcher’s novels contain nostalgic memories of growing up in Cornwall. 

Several places around Cornwall have been used in TV adaptations of Pilcher’s works, including St. Michael’s Mount , Prideaux Place, Gwithian Beach, Wenford Railway, Newquay, Mousehole, Penzance, and Pencarrow House.

Torquay – Agatha Christie

Devon , home of the English Riviera, is also known for one of England’s most acclaimed mystery writers: Agatha Christie.

One of the world’s best-selling authors, Christie is especially known for her characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. 

Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in the seaside town of Torquay . Today, Torquay Museum has a gallery entirely dedicated to her life and works. 

An avid reader and writer from a young age, Christie lived in many different places before returning to her roots and obtaining a summer retreat in Devon. Greenway House sits on the River Dart and you can peek inside the rooms once used by the mistress of suspense.

Walk around the gorgeous Burgh Island, the setting for  And Then There Were None , and soak up the lavish air of the Burgh Island Hotel where the writer once stayed. Take a stroll to Elberry Cove, which featured in  The ABC Murders , follow the Christie-inspired Torquay Mystery Mile, and see the deadly flora in Torre Abbey’s Poisonous Gardens, again, inspired by the famous author.

Marvel at Kents Caverns, the inspiration for Hampsley Cavern in  The Man in the Brown Suit , and book a stay at the Imperial Hotel, which inspired the Majestic Hotel as featured in three of Christie’s novels. 

Often described as the Father of English Literature, Geoffrey Chaucer is most famous for  The Canterbury Tales . The collection contains more than 20 stories about pilgrims visiting Canterbury, Kent, to pay their respects at the Shrine of Thomas Becket, the ill-fated Archbishop.

Little is known about Chaucer’s life, though it is believed that he was born at some time in the 1340s and that The Canterbury Tales were written towards the end of his life. 

Although it’s not clear whether Chaucer actually visited Canterbury himself, a trip to the city is a must for any fan.

Visit the shrine that inspired his tales at the stunning Canterbury Cathedral, and get even more of a history fix at St. Augustine’s Abbey and St. Martin’s Church.

About an hour away, you can pay your respects at Chaucer’s final resting place at Poet’s Corner at London’s Westminster Abbey . 

Literary legacies are plentiful in the English capital.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens—one of the best writers from the Victorian era—takes readers back in time to experience the grim realities of London life in the 19th century. As well as being set in the city, many of his works give detailed social commentary about the city and its people. 

Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and largely raised in Kent, Dickens’ family moved to London when he was eleven years old. He enjoyed a pleasant childhood, with a few years of private education, before being exposed to the other side of life.

With his father sent to debtors’ prison, Dickens had to give up his education to work in a factory to support himself. 

His first-hand experience of poverty, squalor, bed working conditions, and socio-economic disparities, contrasted with his idyllic early life, provided plenty of inspiration for his works. 

To learn more about the man, the writer, his life, and his vast influence, a visit to the Charles Dickens Museum in Clerkenwell is essential. You can also see a number of his personal items on display, including his writing desk, and the museum features period décor and furnishings. It’s housed in 48 Doughty Street, one of Charles Dickens’ former homes, and is where he penned Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, and The Pickwick Papers.

It’s all but impossible to explore London without venturing into a place featured in Dickens’ works. For example,  Great Expectations  mentioned 50 different places around London,  Little Dorrit  mentioned 63, and  David Copperfield  mentioned 79. None of his works feature a greater diversity of London places, however, than  Barnaby Rudge , which clocks up more than 100 different locations!

Starting points include: Seven Dials, the Strand, the Houses of Parliament, The Old Bailey, Covent Garden , Lincoln’s Inn Fields, The Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the former site of the notorious Newgate Prison. See The Old Curiosity Shop, immortalised in the tale of the same name.  

Shakespeare

Turning to one of England’s best playwrights of all time, William Shakespeare spent many of his working years in London. 

Records show that the Bard lived in the Bishopsgate area, The Liberty of the Clink, and Silver Street in St. Paul’s. 

Shakespeare purchased The Gatehouse in Blackfriars, though he never actually lived there. Today a pub—The Cockpit—stands on the site. 

Don’t miss visiting Shakespeare’s Globe, a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, the playhouse for which Shakespeare wrote his plays. 

You’ll find a memorial to Shakespeare in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Joanne Rowling, more commonly known as J. K. Rowling, was born in Gloucestershire, educated in Exeter, and has lived in many places, including Manchester, Edinburgh , London, and Portugal.

One of the most famous characters of all time, Harry Potter, was born in London … in a flat in Clapham Junction. 

Many London landmarks are mentioned in the Harry Potter series of books, and there are even more locations throughout the city that were used as filming locations for the subsequent movies. 

Although focused more on the movies than on the storybooks, no list of Harry Potter things to do in London would be complete without including The Warner Bros. Studio London, where you can go behind the scenes. 

Other top spots include Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station , Harry Potter sculptures at Leicester Square, Leadenhall Market, St Pancras Station, and Piccadilly Circus. 

Visit Trafalgar Square, where the movie premiered, and see where a snake first spoke to the young wizard at London Zoo. 

Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, 10 Downing Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Australia House, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Claremont Square, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye , and Horse Guards Avenue are more places to add to your HP-themed itinerary. 

Arthur Conan Doyle

From wizards to detectives, London was home to fictional crime-cracking hero, Sherlock Holmes.

Creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, was born in Scotland and moved to London in 1891. He initially planned to continue his medical career, but instead focused on writing.

He became known following  A Study in Scarlet  and  The Sign of the Four , which first introduced Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr Watson. 

Conan Doyle became a full-time writer while living at London’s 12 Tennison Road; a blue plaque marks the building.

One of the most important London attractions related to Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes is the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Located at 221B Baker Street, it was the home of the fictional super sleuth.

Travel back in time to the gas-lit alleyways and Victorian surroundings featured in the novels, and see plenty of memorabilia related to the stories and their creator.

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Bookmark a trip to these fascinating literary locations

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1. Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters, tops must-see locations list

2. uk’s top literary cities, 3. edinburgh: a city of storytelling, 4. unesco cities of literature, 5. the british library in london, 6. stratford-upon-avon: the birthplace of shakespeare, 7. harry potter’s platform 9¾ at king’s cross station, 8. penzance and the edge of the world bookshop, 9. gladstone’s library, 10. jane austen in bath, 11. hotels with libraries, 12. literary inspired weekends in england.

The rise in popularity of staycations has “reinforced something books have been teaching us for centuries”, said Olivia Emily on Country & Town House . “You don’t have to travel far to feel like you’re in another world.”

55 books for your must-read bucket list 31 of the best novels of 2023 – book reviews

As somewhere that has produced some of the “most celebrated literary figures throughout history”, the UK has long been “one of the top literary destinations in the world”, said Malavika Kumar on Travel.Earth . William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jane Austen are just a few of the literary giants who have entertained generations of readers – and they can be celebrated in towns and cities across the country.

From the home of the Brontë sisters to Harry Potter ’s Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station, here’s some of Britain’s most popular locations to bookmark for your next literary trip.

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To mark the launch of the Kindle Storyteller Award in August 2022, Amazon released results of a survey of 2,000 British “book buffs” which revealed the 35 most iconic literary locations in the UK, said The Mirror . Top of the list was the Yorkshire village of Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters, while Shakespeare’s Globe in London and Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, were second and third respectively.

Top 35 literary locations

• Haworth – home of the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne
• Shakespeare’s Globe, London
• Jane Austen’s Chawton cottage
• 221B Baker Street – home of Sherlock Holmes and the Sherlock Holmes museum
• The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, regularly visited by JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis
• Sherwood Forest
• Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
• Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon
• British Library, London
• Dove Cottage in Grasmere, Lake District – home of William Wordsworth
• Hilltop House in Near Sawrey, Lake District – home of Beatrix Potter
• Whitby – setting for Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula
• Pooh Sticks Bridge, Buckhurst Park Estate, East Sussex – associated with A.A. Milne
• Anne Hathaway’s cottage, Stratford-upon-Avon
• Chatsworth House, named in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• Charles Dickens’ birthplace museum, Portsmouth
• The Jane Eyre trail, Peak District
• Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey
• Greenway, Agatha Christie’s Devon retreat
• Roald Dahl’s Gipsy House, Great Missenden
• Keats’ House, London
• Thomas Hardy’s birthplace, and Max Gate House, Dorset
• Sedbergh book town, Lake District
• Abbotsford, near Selkirk, Scotland, made famous by Walter Scott
• Dylan Thomas boathouse, Laugharne, Wales
• John Rylands library, Manchester
• 48 Doughty Street, Charles Dickens’ home
• John Milton’s cottage, Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire
• D.H. Lawrence birthplace and Hagg’s Farm, Nottingham
• Elizabeth Gaskell’s house, Manchester
• Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex – associated with Henry James
• Bateman’s, East Sussex, home of Rudyard Kipling
• Shelley Lodge, Marlow, home of Mary Shelley
• Woolwich, and central London, famously associated with Bernardine Evaristo
• Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, home of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Looking at the Goodreads lists of novels that are set in the UK, South Western Railway analysed more than 1,000 books to reveal the top ten literary hotspots. It may come as no surprise that London is the most popular setting to be used in books. More than 400 novels in the research used the city as the basis for adventures and escapades. From solving mysteries in Sherlock Holmes to navigating life as a single woman in Bridget Jones’s Diary , the capital is home to many much-loved characters.

Edinburgh is the second most popular backdrop for novels in the UK, with nearly 40 books set here. The Scottish city is home to many of Ian Rankin’s books and plays a key role in the life of his famous character Inspector Rebus . Mystery is the top genre for this city, with other novels such as Mortal Arts by Anna Lee Huber and One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson located here too.

Brighton and Hove takes the bronze, and just like Edinburgh, it’s mystery and crime that populates this vibrant city. Home to the popular character Superintendent Roy Grace in the series of books by Peter James, the city is also the backdrop for Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock and Sara Sheridan’s Brighton Belle .

The top ten literary hotspots in the UK

* Average book rating and top genre for each setting are based on Goodreads data

southwesternrailway.com

In 2004 Edinburgh was designated as the world’s first Unesco City of Literature. The Scottish capital is the birthplace and home to world-famous writers, poets and playwrights such as Arthur Conan Doyle ( Sherlock Holmes ), Ian Rankin ( Inspector Rebus ), Irvine Welsh ( Trainspotting ) and Val McDermid ( Kate Brannigan ).

But “long before” achieving its Unesco designation, Scotland’s literary greats were “drawing their liquid inspiration in its pubs, cafés, museums, and bookshops”, said Emer Ní Chíobháin on Culture Trip . Major events include the world-renowned Edinburgh International Book Festival and there are many must-visit attractions including the Scottish Poetry Library , Scottish Storytelling Centre , The Writers’ Museum , and the National Library of Scotland , which is home to more than 24 million printed items.

Whether you “love the scent of old books”, or the “crisp never-been-read feel” of a new book, there’s bound to be a book shop in Edinburgh that’s “right up your street”, said Forever Edinburgh . Bookshops for your Edinburgh bucket list include McNaughtan’s Books, Typewronger Books, Elvis Shakespeare, and Topping and Company Booksellers.

Visitors should also explore the city by going on one of the many literary tours. Options include The Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour and The Edinburgh Book Lovers’ Tour .

A weekend in Edinburgh

Norwich, Nottingham, Manchester and Exeter

Edinburgh is not the only UK city on Unesco’s literature list . The Scottish capital has been joined by Norwich (designated in 2012), Nottingham (2015), Manchester (2017), and Exeter (2019).

Not just a city of “astounding literary talent”, Norwich is also a “city of firsts”, said the Cities of Literature website. The first book written by a woman in the English language came from the pen of Julian of Norwich in 1395 ( Revelations of Divine Love ) and in the 16th century the first poem in blank verse was written by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

Nottingham is a city “with a story to tell”. It’s long been home to a “strong spirit of rebellions and trailblazers” – from Robin Hood to D.H. Lawrence – and it’s “built on culture”, with two universities, 18 public libraries and a host of bookshops.

Literature and free speech have been “forces for change” throughout Manchester ’s history. The UK’s first free public library was opened in Manchester in 1653 and libraries “continue to be a vital part” of the city’s cultural provision and provide hubs of activity for all ages.

Exeter has a “rich literary scene that continues to grow”. It’s home to The Devon & Exeter Institution, an independent library that boasts the earliest known professional woman librarian, and Exeter Library, one of the busiest libraries in Great Britain in terms of visits and issues.

citiesoflit.com

London, England

If you do a quick Google search you will find pages and pages of literary attractions and tours in London. However, if you are going to choose one place to visit then make time to go to The British Library in St Pancras.

The UK’s national library is home to more than 170 million collection items – from the Magna Carta and Jane Austen’s notebooks to lyrics handwritten by the Beatles. Treasures of the British Library is free for visitors and tells the remarkable stories of more than 2,000 years of human experience. There’s also a range of free and paid-for events and exhibitions for visitors to enjoy.

Warwickshire, England

In what is a “feat of transformation” worthy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , in the past 20 years or so the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon has “morphed” from a “cunning tourist trap” selling all things Shakespeare into “somewhere you’d actually like to go for a long weekend”, said Sophie Campbell on Condé Nast Traveller . The birthplace of “the Great Man”, there are many “key” William Shakespeare sites to visit here – “not to mention the actual plays, of course”, courtesy of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Whether you are “a lover of all things literary”, a “culture vulture”, or just “adore immersing yourself in history”, there is no denying that Stratford-upon-Avon “ticks all the boxes”, said Bolthole Retreats .

The town also hosts a literary festival which has “blossomed” into an “annual shindig” that attracts “big-name authors, poets and illustrators”, said Condé Nast Traveller.

A weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon

One of the most popular literary destinations to visit in the UK is Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station in London, said Malavika Kumar on Travel.Earth . Marking the “secret platform to the Hogwarts Express”, Platform 9¾ is not found between platforms nine and ten, however, but on the western departures concourse. “A luggage trolley, complete with trunk and owl cage sticks out of the wall while fans wait in line for that perfect photo op.”

If you’re a fan of J.K. Rowling’s bestselling books and popular film series, then a visit to Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter should also be high on your wish list.

kingscross.co.uk

Cornwall, England

The harbourside town of Penzance in Cornwall is rich in literary history, with many famous figures having firm roots there.

Maria Branwell, mother of the famed Brontë sisters, was born in Penzance in 1783 before moving to Yorkshire, while renowned poet Alfred Tennyson used to holiday in Penzance before sailing across to the Scilly Isles with fellow writer Francis Turner Palgrave. Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas was also familiar with the Cornish town, marrying Caitlin Macnamara at the Penzance Registry Office in 1937.

Positioned as a great destination for book lovers and home to an annual literary festival , Penzance continues to attract bibliophiles from Cornwall and beyond. The aptly named Edge of the World Bookshop is Penzance’s leading independent bookshop and is filled with an array of classic, quirky and local Cornish titles in every genre.

edgeoftheworldbookshop.co.uk

Flintshire, North Wales

Gladstone’s Library is the UK’s only “residential library” and features 26 bedrooms, an on-site restaurant, reading rooms, guest lounge and a collection of more than 150,000 items.

This is a “bibliophile’s dream”, said Daniella Saunders in Country & Town House . And an “ideal spot for those who don’t intend to leave the library once the lights go out”.

All bedrooms have private bathroom facilities, free Wi-Fi access, tea and coffee making facilities, a hairdryer and a radio. However, there are no TVs in the bedrooms – this is to “preserve the ethos of study and reflection”.

gladstoneslibrary.org

Somerset, England

Home to English writer Jane Austen between 1801 and 1806, two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion , were set in Bath, said Meehika Barua in Elle . In fact, this ancient Somerset city is pretty much the “go-to location” for many period films and series, including hit TV drama Bridgerton .

Celebrating Bath’s most famous resident and offering a snapshot of life during Regency times, the Jane Austen Centre is a place “any Jane-ite should visit at least once”, said An Historian About Town . The guides, who are dressed in Regency costume, are “more than just regular employees” – they “truly love what they do”. Every year there’s a Jane Austen Festival held in Bath and in 2023 it will be from 8-17 September. Strictly Jane Austen Tours also offers visitors the chance to walk in the novelist’s footsteps.

A weekend in Bath

Is there “anything better than escaping with a good book?”, Red Online asks. Maybe one thing… escaping to a hotel that has a library.

One of the best places for “retreat-seeking book lovers” is the Library Suite at the five-star Connaught Hotel in London. Created by architect Michael Blair, the suite is split over two levels and features a master bedroom, second bedroom, sitting room and shelves littered with a huge variety of books. It’s “pure bliss”.

The Standard hotel in London, once home to the Camden Council library, boasts its own Library Lounge and resident librarian, said Country & Town House . “No ordinary hotel library, titles have been organised into an array of alternative and eccentric categories.”

If you like to read a tome with a tipple then head to the Library Bar at Stanbrook Abbey in Worcester. “Comprising cosy mismatched chairs, an old-world piano and of course plenty of books, this inviting library lends itself to the 16th century establishment’s traditional charm.”

England-wide

England’s literary landscapes and locations are “as diverse as the writers they stirred”, said the VisitEngland tourism board. “From organised trails to self-guided literary trips, there are chances for inspiration all over the country.”

Enjoy “splendiferous fun” at the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, follow in the footsteps of Jane Austen in Bath, discover Charles Dickens’s Broadstairs in Kent or explore the beautiful home and surroundings that inspired classic Brontë novels in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

visitengland.com

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Mike Starling is the digital features editor at The Week, where he writes content and edits the Arts & Life and Sport website sections and the Food & Drink and Travel newsletters. He started his career in 2001 in Gloucestershire as a sports reporter and sub-editor and has held various roles as a writer and editor at news, travel and B2B publications. He has spoken at a number of sports business conferences and also worked as a consultant creating sports travel content for tourism boards. International experience includes spells living and working in Dubai, UAE; Brisbane, Australia; and Beirut, Lebanon. 

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A Literary Tour of England

• See where Jane Austen lived and worked
• Visit the iconic Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare
• Be inspired, like many poets and writers, by the beauty of the Lake District

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International Flight

Begin your journey with an international flight to London, most likely overnight.

Arrival to London

Welcome to England! Your private driver will be waiting for you in arrivals with a sign carrying your name. If you're ;ooking to begin your trip in style or are carrying a lot of luggage, let us arrange an airside meet and greet for you, where our representative will meet you on the tarmac to whisk you through customs. A porter will be on hand to assist with your luggage.

Your journey to central London is approximately an hour, dependant on traffic conditions. On arrival to your hotel, relax, unpack and enjoy the rest of the day to explore the city.

Literary London

This morning, depart with your driver-guide for a full day tour of London. Enjoy a panoramic tour of the British capital as you take in key literary locations across the city. First up is Westminster Abbey, this 1,000-year-old building is London at its most iconic. Poet's Corner, where many of England's finest writers are buried, is of particular interest on this writer's tour. Look out for Chaucer and Dicken's tombs among those of many other writers, poets and playwrights.

Enjoy lunch on the Southbank before a privately guided tour of Shakespeare's Globe - an almost exact replica of the original theatre - with its exhibitions portraying the London in which Shakespeare lived and wrote. After your tour your driver-guide will take you to the British Library to learn more about its history, collections and architecture - look out for Jane Austen's writing desk on the tour.

Sherlock Holmes

Today enjoy another full day tour of London, beginning with a Sherlock Holmes tour of key sites from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books and the subsequent films and TV series, including a visit to 221B Baker Street, home of the fictional detective and now a museum dedicated to Sherlock Holmes. Then in the afternoon make your way to Camden Town and the Charles Dicken's museum located at 48 Doughty Street, the author's home and where he wrote Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby.

Jane Austen

This morning check out of your hotel and depart with your driver-guide for Jane Austen's House Museum in Hampshire, located an hour and half from London. The village of Chawton was Austen's home and where she wrote, revised and published all her major works. Her brother's home, Chawton House, is now an excellent museum. From here make the hour journey to Salisbury, a cathedral city with England's best-preserved copy of the Magna Carta. After your tour of the city, your driver-guide will transfer you to Bath for your overnight stay.

The mystical Stonehenge is located just outside Salisbury and can easily be added into the itinerary.

Bath is a beautiful Georgian City with many interesting sights and excursions. Take a walking tour with your guide to look at the famous Roman Baths, built in 60AD to make use of the thermally heated springs beneath the city, and the Abbey, which is considered to be the last of the great medieval churches of England. Ensure a visit to the Jane Austen Centre, because Bath was the backdrop to Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and Austen lived in the city for 5 years in the early 19th century.

Stratford-Upon-Avon

Check out of your Bath hotel and your driver-guide will transfer you two hours to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of playwright William Shakespeare. Stratford-upon-Avon is a town to meander around and explore for its rich blend of history and culture. There are plenty of Shakespeare landmarks to wander around, including his wife Anne Hathaway's Cottage. Staying on the Shakespeare theme, watching a play at the newly renovated Royal Shakespeare Company is a must.

After your tour of the town, your driver-guide will drive you to your next hotel, located half an hour away in the Cotswolds.

Most people know Oxford for its university, and rightly so. Over the past eight centuries the university's 'dreaming spires' have produced eminent authors, including C.S Lewis and Tolkien, alongside revered scientists, philosophers, archbishops, explorers and politicians. However the city of Oxford itself should not to be overlooked: it is a medieval city steeped in culture and history with a lively mix of restaurants, pubs and theatres adding to its alluring and vibrant buzz.

En route back to your hotel explore some of the famous Cotswolds villages such as Burford and Stow-on-the-Wold.

Peak District

Check out of your Cotswolds hotel and depart for the ravishing Peak District, just over two hours away. Enjoy a visit to Chatsworth House, a beautiful stately home with a significant art collection that has been used in many film adaptations including Pride & Prejudice and Death Comes to Pemberley. It is believed by many that Jane Austen may have based her idea of Pemberley on the house while she stayed in nearby Bakewell.

Bronte Parsonage Museum

The Bronte Parsonage Museum is the stop off today, on the way to the Lake District. The museum contains a huge amount of manuscripts, letters and early drafts of the Bronte sisters' novels. Enjoy lunch before you continue onto the Lake District.

Lake District

Day at leisure to enjoy the Lake District. We can arrange a guided walk or a journey on a traditional Victorian steam yacht gondola on Lake Coniston.

Wordsworth's Lakes

Today you will enjoy a full day guided tour as you explore the area that so inspired Wordsworth's famous poems. Beatrix Potter's one-time home, Hill Top, is in the nearby village of Hawkshead, and houses many of her drawings of family-friendly characters Peter Rabbit and friends.

Depart for London

Today depart from the Lake District to London; a journey of approximately five hours by car, or a non-stop train from Oxenholme to London Euston in less than three hours.

Flight Home

Your driver is on hand to transfer you to the airport for your onwards flight home.

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About The Tour

See the country of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stephenson and Thomas Hardy; places associated with Ruskin, Wordsworth, Vita Sackville-West and the Bloomsbury group including Virginia Woolf and D H Lawrence; the homes of the Brontes, George Bernard Shaw, Keats and Henry James and the castle in which Rudyard Kipling lived.

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Jane austen tour, wolf hall tour, james bond, secrets & spies, bloomsbury: literature, love & learning, our tour guide was incomparable ... we feel we had many, many experiences which would have been denied us had we tried to see england on our own or on a bus full of people..

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A Literary Tour of England: The Perfect Road Trip for Book Lovers

If you love books and travel, this literary tour of England could be the perfect trip for you!  Read on to learn about  a few of the towns, cities and regions in England that have inspired some of our greatest writers in history.

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Although I love exploring the great outdoors, there’s also nothing that gives me greater pleasure than getting lost in a good book.  I spent a large chunk of my early teenage years curled up in my bedroom either listening to music or reading books, and I went on to study English Literature at university because it meant that I could spend three years indulging one of my greatest passions.

And what better way to combine my love of exploring new places with my love of books than embarking on a road trip in order to discover some of England’s best literary locations?

After all, travelling by car is a much safer alternative at the moment to taking the bus or train.

You can rent a car from UK firm Enjoy Travel to explore all of the following locations.

Recommended stops on a literary tour of England

The order that you make these stops in really depends upon where you’re starting out.  If you’re London-based, it would make sense to start in Oxford or Bockhampton and if you’re Midlands-based, it would be a better option to head up to the Lake District first and finish up in Stratford-upon-Avon.

To do the destinations justice, you really need a minimum of two nights in each place (accounting for travel time on one of these days), so I would anticipate that this literary tour of England would take you 12 nights.  If you don’t have that much time, you can easily skip any one of the towns, cities and regions I’ve incorporated.  Alternatively, you may decide you only need one night somewhere instead of two, particularly with the shorter journeys where you have the option of arriving at your destination much earlier in the day.

Please note that, due to COVID-19, some of the tourist attractions mentioned in this post may currently be closed. Please check before visiting.

Lake District, Cumbria

As well as being famous for its immense lakes and rugged mountains, the Lake District is also very well known for its historic literary associations.

William Wordsworth lived in the region for 60 years (he died of pleurisy when he reached the ripe old age of 80 in 1850) and his appreciation for the beauty of nature – expressed so clearly in his works – was inspired by the landscapes through which he roamed.  His most famous poem, I Wandered Lonely a a Cloud , forms part of the English Literature syllabus in classes throughout the UK (I remember reading it myself somewhere in my early-mid teens) , and was famously inspired by the sight of daffodils on the shores of Ullswater Lake.

In 1820 Wordsworth wrote a Guide Through the District of the Lakes in the North of England , and it was this publication that sparked the advent of mass tourism to the area.  The Lake District National Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017 and currently receives approximately 15 million visitors every year!

In the summer months, you can visit Wordsworth House – the poet’s childhood home in Cockermouth – and Dove Cottage (Grasmere), where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy from 1799 until 1808.

Fast forward to the late 19th century and you’ll find another of the Lake District’s literary connections – Beatrix Potter.  Potter was born in 1866 and first visited the Lake District with her family when she was 16 years old.  For the next 21 years she took regular holidays to the region, and initially made money from her sketches of the landscapes and wildlife that inspired her, before writing a book – The Tale of Peter Rabbit – to accompany her drawings in 1902.

In 1903 she was able to buy some land in Near Sawrey, and subsequently purchased Hill Top Farm in 1905. Seven of her books are based in and around Hill Top and you can now visit the 17th century house, which is owned by the National Trust.

Search accommodation in the Lake District here

Whitby, yorkshire.

No literary tour of England would be complete without a visit to Whitby – the small fishing town on the north west coast of England that inspired one of the most famous Gothic novels in history.

I went through a bit of a Goth phase when I was younger, in so much that my wardrobe mostly consisted of black garments, I dyed my hair an intense shade of red-black, and I wore a lot of dark, plum-coloured lipstick.  Although I’ve never actually considered myself a Goth, I still prefer Halloween to Christmas and would be over the moon if you invited me to a Halloween fancy dress party one day.  But, I digress…

Of course, the novel I’m referring to is Bram Stoker’s Dracula   – a novel that brought the idea of an undead, blood-thirsty creature into popular culture.

The Victorian writer Bram (short for ‘Abraham’) Stoker first visited Whitby following a theatrical tour of Scotland with Henry Irving, and subsequently spent several holidays here.  He famously stayed at the Duke of York , at the bottom of the 199 steps.  In the 1897 novel, the author describes how Dracula, under the guise of a black hound, ran up these very steps after his boat was shipwrecked on the shores of the adjacent beach.

Other references to Whitby in Stoker’s novel include the town’s red-roofed buildings, the name of one of Dracula’s first victims (‘Swales’) on one of the tombstones in the graveyard of St. Mary’s Church, and the Gothic ruins of Whitby Abbey.

Every summer, a theatrical performance of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is staged at Whitby Abbey and there’s a twice yearly Goth music festival called the Whitby Goth Weekend.

Alternatively, you can sign up for the Dracula Experience – if you dare!

Fun fact : Stoker had originally planned to write a novel centred around a vampire called ‘Count Wampyr.’  However, whilst spending time in Whitby Library, he learned about Vlad the Impaler – the ruler of 15th-century Wallachia (now Romania), who was so-named because of the way he liked to dispense with his enemies.  He was responsible for killing 80,000 people and impaling 20,000 of them.  And that’s how he earned his nickname – ‘Dracula’ – meaning ‘son of the dragon and devil’ in the Wallachian dialect.

Search accommodation in Whitby here

Oxford, oxfordshire.

Oxford has long been the stomping ground of the literary elite and has inspired countless works of fiction over the years.

However, unless you’ve delved into the city’s literary history, you may only be aware of its recent association with Harry Potter.  Although J.K Rowling has no connections to Oxford (it was from the cafes of Edinburgh that she sat to write the first draft of The Philosopher’s Stone ), various locations in the city (primarily its university buildings) have been used as backdrops in the movie adaptations of the best-selling series of books.  If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll definitely want to head to the Bodleian Library, New College courtyard and the Christ Church College cloisters.

What you may not know is that long before J.K Rowling was even born, J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis were students at Oxford. Although they graduated in different years (Tolkien in 1915 and Lewis in 1920), they both went on to tutor at the university and ended up forming a close friendship in 1926, bonding through their mutual love of languages, poetry, myth and storytelling.

Both Tolkien and Lewis were members of a literary discussion group called The Inklings , who used the 17th century pub, The Eagle and Child as one of their regular meeting spots.  The establishment is still operating as a public house today.  Head inside and you’ll see, hanging above the fireplace, a handwritten note to the landlord that has been signed by members of The Inklings.

Fun fact :  Opposite the entrance to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on St Mary’s Passage is an ornate door.  It’s made of wood and etched with intricate carvings, and in the centre you’ll see the face of a wise lion.  This is said to be the inspiration for Lewis’ magical Narnia door.

Search accommodation in Oxford here

Bockhampton, dorset.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles was one of the novels I read at university (yes, I spent three years in the beautiful city of Chester studying for my English Literature degree) and it’s still in my bookcase now, because I enjoyed it so much that I hope to read it again someday.

Hardy’s Cottage – a cob and thatch structure built by Thomas Hardy’s great-grandfather – was where the author was born in 1840, and where he subsequently wrote many of his poems, novels and short stories.  It’s located just over three miles from the city of Dorchester , on the edge of Thorncombe Woods Nature Reserve.

Photo by Allan Harris via Flickr

Search accommodation in dorchester here, bath, somerset.

Although Bath is most well known for being home to “one of the greatest religious spas of the ancient world” ( Roman Baths website ), the city also had a very famous resident in the early 19th century.  Author Jane Austin lived in the thriving spa resort between the years of 1801 and 1806, and found inspiration for two of her six published novels here – Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Although I’m not really a fan of Jane Austin’s novels (a controversial thing for an English Literature student to say, perhaps?), there’s no denying that they are an important part of our literary history.  And for that reason, Bath is an  essential stop on any literary tour of England.  It’s also a beautiful city in its own right, filled with grand Georgian architecture, an abundance of green spaces and some picturesque canals.

If you’re pushed for time, I’ve put together a one day in Bath itinerary , with loads of helpful tips and ideas for exploring the city.  But don’t forget to head to the Jane Austin Centre, to learn more about the author’s life, or book yourself on a Jane Austin Photo Tour .

Search accommodation in Bath here

Stratford-upon-avon, warwickshire.

It would be almost criminal to embark upon a literary tour of England without making a stop in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Situated on the banks of the river Avon, the bustling market town of Stratford-upon-Avon is most famous for being the birthplace of one  of England’s literary greats – William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was born at his family home – the timber-framed Tudor building on Henley Street – in 1564.   Although he moved away from Stratford-upon-Avon somewhere around 1592, to work in London as an actor and dramatist, he had returned to town by 1613 and died there three years later.  He is buried at the Holy Trinity Church.

Now owned and managed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Shakespeare’s family home on Henley Street has been lovingly restored and refurbished and now contains a small museum and visitor centre dedicated to the life and works of this iconic poet and playwright.

While you’re in town you can also visit Shakespeare’s Schoolhouse (which is still part of the King Edward VI Grammar School), Anne Hathaway’s Cottage (the former home of Shakespeare’s wife) and the Grade I listed Holy Trinity Church, where the Shakespeare funerary monument is located.

If you enjoy live theatre then you can book tickets for a variety of Shakespeare performances year-round, at either the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Swan Theatre.

Search accommodation in Stratford-upon-Avon here

Have you visited any of these literary locations  are there any others that you think i should explore on a literary tour of england and which author are they famous for having inspired.

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Kiara Gallop

Hi I'm Kiara, the travel blogger and photographer behind Gallop Around The Globe. I can usually be found hiking up mountains, getting lost in the cobblestone streets of my favourite cities, making friends with a furry feline or two, photographing cacti, or grazing on olives and cheese.

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15 comments.

This is the exact itinerary I was looking for! I’m (hopefully) going to be going on a road trip in the UK soon, and I’m adding these locations to my itinerary! Thanks so much for sharing 😀

Love this sort of road trip, need to visit all those places.

What a great post. I’ve always wanted to go to Whitby as Dracula is over of my favorite books. And growing up in the Lake District we always visited some of these literary sites. Still more in the rest of the UK I need to visit

Snap! I’d love to visit Whitby for the same reason 🙂

This post is so fun and inspiring! It’d be so cool to do staycations in each of these places and read the relevant books in the relevant places while there 🙂 Would especially love to see Bockhampton and Whitby!

I totally agree! Not only would it invoke a greater sense of place to the novels but it would also help to bring the physical locations to life, by imagining the stories which unfolded there. I’d definitely love to read Dracula whilst gazing at Whitby Abbey during a thunderstorm at dusk, or sitting at the bottom of the 199 steps on an eerily quiet night in town….

Your photos are impressive! Thank you for showing this beauty, I am adding it to my long list hehe!

I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the majority of the photos – apart from the Bath and Oxford shots 🙂

The bookworm in me found this delightful! Definitely pinning this for my future London travels!

Love, love, love the idea of a literary road trip! Also love that you provided a map view 😛 The Dracula Experience sounds spooky but intriguing!

It does, doesn’t it? 🙂 I really want to go to Whitby now after writing this piece!

This would be an excellent addition to a London itinerary!

Hello there, I’m not from the Uk but planning a trip around England this september. How easy is it to get around by the local trains? Should i sent a car instead?

Hi there! It’s relatively easy to get around by train between cities and larger towns. You may find the trains a little less frequent to smaller towns and villages (sometimes it’s better to use a bus for these routes), but unless you’re going somewhere very rural, it’s usually possible to get there by public transport. You may want to check out my article on train travel in the UK: https://galloparoundtheglobe.com/money-saving-tips-for-travelling-around-britain-by-train/ and also bear in mind that there are train strikes happening at the moment. Check the National Rail website for updates!

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London Literary Tours

Theatrical walking tours about famous writers in Bloomsbury and St James's

Come on one of our tours of literary sites and delight in tales about some of London's most illustrious writers - like Virginia Woolf, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Noel Coward - brought to life in their own words, and with performances of excerpts from their novels, plays and poems.

Key features of our tours: • Limited to small groups • Two guides, Mike and Cindy, working as a double act • Performed extracts from novels, plays and poems • Writers ‘brought to life’ with quotations from their letters and diaries • Researched and created by guides 

THE BLOOMSBURY BLAST Starring Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot and friends

Available Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons

Characterised by grand garden squares and streets lined with bookshops, cafes and pubs, Bloomsbury is an area synonymous with  writers, commemorated in numerous plaques on the walls of their former residences.

On our Bloomsbury Blast you'll meet dazzling literary stars like Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, D H  Lawrence and E M Forster, and unique, experimental women like Charlotte Mew, Dorothy Richardson and Hilda Doolittle. Joined by a giant of world literature in Rabindranath Tagore, and movers and shakers like Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis we'll reveal a Bloomsbury buzzing with radical ideas, progressive movements and literary pioneers.

• The price is £25 per person and pre-booking is essential. Click on 'Book Tour' to see available dates.
• Private tours - on day and time of your choosing - available by appointment.
• Discounts for student groups. 
• Can be purchased as a gift - see below. 

THE ST JAM ES'S JAUNT Where Mrs Dalloway meets James Bond

With its clubs, shops and galleries, and a library at its heart, swanky St James's has been a magnet for writers over centuries. Scenes have been set here, plays performed here, and masterpieces penned here.

Our St James’s Jaunt ranges from World War 1 to the Cold War, from the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon to the spy novels of Graham Greene and Ian Fleming. We celebrate brave, experimental women like Virginia Woolf, Nancy Cunard and Edith Sitwell, and we relish the biting wit of Noel Coward and Evelyn Waugh. The wry prognostications of Aldous Huxley and Rose Macaulay complete a picture of a St James’s bristling with intellect and intensity.

This tour is seamlessly crafted by the guides themselves who are passionate aficionados of the interwar literary landscape.  Not only do they recite and perform excerpts that transport you to the London of that era, in so doing Mike and Cindy offer insight into the socio-political climate of the time.  The warmth and charisma with which Mike and Cindy welcome us into this world nurtures a sense of connection and belonging irrespective of biblio-credentials, and when the tour concluded it felt like bidding adieu to family.

Róisín McGrogan

Never has learning been more fun!  Cindy and Mike were amazing guides, their knowledge is extraordinary and the passion they have for their subject is infectious.  Not only did they bring these incredible characters to life in the places they lived and worked, but they showed how their lives were interwoven and regaled us with scandalous stories of what they all got up to!  They gave me enough of a taste of the writers' work, at times moving and at others hilarious, to make me want to go out and read, read, read...

Gunna Finnsdottir

AND FOR YOUR FRIEND WHO LOVES BOOKS...

Simply click on either the gold 'Book Tour' button at the top of this page, or the floating 'Book Now' button at the bottom and you'll have the option to purchase a gift card.

The recipient(s) can then get in touch with us to come on a tour of their choice, on a date that works for them.

WHY NOT MAKE A GIFT OF ONE OF OUR TOURS?

Hi from Mike and Cindy

London Literary Tours exists to spread passion for brilliant writing on the streets of the city that we love and call home.

We follow in the footsteps of some of our greatest literary figures, tell scintillating stories about them peppered with extracts from diaries, letters and reviews, and perform extracts of their writing in places where they lived, loved, worked and unwound.

Regardless of what you've read or not read, there will be plenty for you to discover about both popular and lesser-known writers.

Expect to be wowed and have a good laugh along the way!

Poetry Matters How London writers featured on our literary walking tours valued poetry We love to relate how, in 1944, Edith Sitwell

Introducing Our Bloomsbury Tour Two years ago – as we came out of lockdown – we launched our St James’s Jaunt. Now we’re thrilled

Bookish Bonding It’s a wonderful thing that guests can arrive on one of our tours as strangers but leave as –well, friends.

“So many books, so little time."

“the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”, “literature sets up a vision which guides people to a better understanding of themselves and their world.”, “i have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”, “no entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”, “a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.”, “many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”, “a room without books is like a body without a soul.”, “books are the mirrors of the soul.”, “literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. life is the other way round.”, “a book is like a garden in the pocket.”, "being locked in a bookshop is a sort of fantasy of mine. a night of quiet surrounded by words.", "a good bookshop is just a genteel black hole that knows how to read.", "bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk.".

Literary Group Tours

Discover the UK through the eyes and words of some the world's greatest novelists, poets and playwrights. See the landscapes, cities and great houses which inspired their writings, follow in their footsteps and visit their homes. Tour the places used as locations in film or TV adaptations of their works.

Below are some sample themes and itineraries but if you can't see what you are looking for, please contact us. All our group tours are bespoke and we look forward to designing a customised literary itinerary to suit your requirements.

Agatha Christie Group Tour

Charles Dickens Group Tour

Enid Blyton Group Tour

Jane Austen Group Tour

The Brontës Group Tour

William Shakespeare Group Tour

Thomas Hardy Group Tour

Sherlock Group Tour

Chatsworth House & Gardens Group Tour

Literary Tour of the UK for Groups

What our clients say.

I was very fortunate to be on their 70th and 75th D-Day celebration tours. The service and attention to details was exceptional. It was very moving to go back.

As a Jane Austen enthusiast, this tour was perfect - and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath was just fabulous to see!

Words fail me...The Downton Abbey was a perfectly wonderful travel experience! We did not know we would be the ONLY guests at the Abbey. When we realised how truly exclusive our tour was we were speechless! Surreal being there and actually meeting Lady Carnarvon.

TRAVEL   |  WITH PURPOSE

Teach  |  with truth.

TRAVEL   WITH PURPOSE

Teach with truth, literary tours of scotland, england and geneva  with, a biblical worldview.

Tours are customized for you

Our tours are ideal for church groups, homeschool and high school students, book clubs and senior groups.