by Caroline Taggart, with a Foreword by Tracy Chevalier
Exploring gardens, monuments, museums and churches, with walks both urban and rural, this book will take you on an evocative tour of the UK's literary sites and landscapes. These are the real-life settings of fantastical worlds, the places that inspired our best-loved stories, and, of course, their authors' favourite writing spots. From the Brontë parsonage in Haworth to Zadie Smith's North London, from the Scottish birthplace of Thomas Carlyle to Ann Burns' Belfast, each landmark is brought to life by colour destination photographs and illustrations from the British Library's collection.
Start with Chaucer, Dickens and Larkin in Westiminster Abbey. Spend an afternoon at Colliers Wood Nature Reserve in Nottinghamshire and take in the lake D. H. Lawrence described as 'all grey and visionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista of trees and meadow'. Venture south to Cornwall and work your way up to the Scottish Highlands, taking detours to Northern Ireland in the west and Norfolk in the east. Wherever you are in the United Kingdom, you're never far from something associated with a good book.
Caroline Taggart worked in publishing for many years before being asked to write I Used to Know That, which became a Sunday Times bestseller. Since then she has written over thirty books, most of them about words and the English language, but also including Around Britain by Cake; The Book of English Place Names and The Book of London Place Names. Her most recent is 500 Beautiful Words You Should Know.
Hardback: 224 pages
Publisher: The British Library
ISBN: 9780712353243
Product Dimensions: 15.5 x 1.9 x 21.7 cm