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Superior Accommodation in Castles , Manors , Tudor Thatched Cottages , Old Coaching Inns , Georgian Rectories and Private Period Homes.
A peaceful church in Surrey, the final resting place of the composer Frederick Delius.
Clients can follow in the footsteps of Christopher Robin by playing 'Poohsticks' in A. A. Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh' country. We go to Rochester in search of the locations and the characters Dickens immortalised in his novels and take lunch in the original 'Leather Bottle Inn' at Cobham which Dickens himself often visited and wrote about in his 'Pickwick Papers'.
Sissinghurst Castle in Kent is a beautiful moated Tudor manor house and is associated with Edward Gibbon and Vita Sackville-West. We visit Frances Hodgson Burne 's original 'Secret Garden'. Tenterden, a large Kent village is associated with William Caxton. Smallhythe Place, a 16th c. half-timbered house, is a museum devoted to the famous actress Dame Ellen Terry. Beautiful Rye was the home from 1898-1916 of the American author Henry James.
We visit Batemans, a 17th c. stone mansion at Burwash in Sussex, the home for 35 years of Rudyard Kipling. Christ's Hospital Public School is near Horsham. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, was an Old Blue. We visit the home of John Galsworthy, author of 'The Forsyte Saga'. Petworth House in Sussex is a treasure house surrounded by a 2,000 acre deer park. In a pre y market town we visit the locations associated with H. G. Wells.
A pre y Hampshire village which restores gypsy caravans, was the home of the famous naturalist, Gilbert White. Chawton and Winchester feature in the short, brilliant life of the novelist, Jane Austen. In a quiet churchyard in The New Forest lies Lewis Carroll's Alice and nearby is the grave of the world famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Oxford's Dreaming Spires reveal an association with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy Maths Don at Christ Church, be er known as Lewis Carroll. Other Colleges have associations withttpercy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. Other places have associations with Kenneth Grahame, Geoffrey Chaucer and Jerome K. Jerome.
Stratford upon Avon is Shakespeare. The church where he was baptised and buried. The grammar school where he was educated, the building where he was born, Harvard House and The Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Nearby is Wilmcote village where his mother, Mary Arden, lived and Sho ery, where his wife, Anne Hathaway, lived.
The counties of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire have delightful villages associated with the poets John Milton and Thomas Gray who wrote his 'Elegy wri en in a Country Churchyard' and with Isaak Walton who wrote his book on fishing in 1653 which took 40 years to complete.
Alternative itinerary below . . .
Sheaffer pens commissioned Michael Osborne to provide a prize in their writing competition in Penworld Magazine. A special itinerary was produced for the recipient which we present to you as an alternative below.
8 The Alternative Classic Literature Tour: 7-10 Days
We visit the locations of Stratford upon Avon - Oxford - Marlow - Henley - The Cotswolds - Marlborough - Burford - Chawton - Midhurst - Burwash - Rye - Winchelsea - Romney Marsh - Rochester - Sussex - Kent and many, many more secret locations. These places are associated with Kenneth Grahame - Shelley - Pope - Thomas Gray - Milton - E.H. Shepard - Mrs Ward - Shakespeare - Churchill - John Buchan - Rev. Francis Wi s - Oscar Wilde - CS Lewis - JRR Tolkein - Southey - Coleridge - Lewis Carroll - George Orwell - Evelyn Waugh - TE Lawrence - Wordsworth - The Mitfords - Falkner - Mackenzie - William Morris - Thomas Hughes - Thomas Love Peacock - Jane Austen - HG Wells - Keats - Hilaire Belloc - Conrad Aiken - Kipling - Henry James - Russell Thorndyke - Ford Maddox Ford - Frances Hodgson Burne and Charles Dickens.