BOOKPATHS

England; New England, U.S.; Virginia, U.S.

With Halloween approaching, Laura Miller recalls “three hauntingly unforgettable literary houses.”

Houses can be bought and sold, but if nothing else, the current housing crisis teaches us the danger of treating a house as a mere commodity. Literature is full of reminders that houses have souls, a fact characters forget at their own peril. In some novels, the house is as much a force as any of the people in the story. When that happens, the human characters had better beware. – from NPR Website

The Quantock Hills, the Brendon Hills and Exmoor, England

Follow in the footsteps of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

Walk 36 miles through the stunning Somerset countryside of the Quantock Hills, the Brendon Hills and Exmoor, a landscape that inspired Coleridge to produce some of his best known work. – from The Coleridge Way Website

England

Boyd Tonkin talks with the 2009 Booker Prize winner, Hilary Mantel.

As its legion of admirers know, Wolf Hall both inhabits and reinvents a familiar tranche of English history. Its zest and velocity combines a profound inwardness with the period and people and an outsider's, or newcomer's eye. Born in Derbyshire (in 1952), a law student at Sheffield and the LSE and a social worker for a while, Mantel has in her fiction given a subversive shake to deeply English themes and motifs. – from “Hilary Mantel: ‘I am Sympathetic to Politicians,’” by Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

London, England

Audrey Niffenegger talks about her latest novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, “on location at Highgate Cemetery in London.”

Broughton, England

William Fiennes talks about his memoir, The Music Room.

'The Music Room' is at its heart Mr. Fiennes’s memoir of his brother, who died at the age of 41 in 2001 and was a towering presence, by turns charismatic and infuriating, charming and foolish, sweet and aggressive, swaggering and filled with doubt. But it is also about family responsibility — the responsibility of caring for a troubled child and for a glorious house rich with history and freighted with duty — and about the loneliness, interlaced with joy, of growing up with a great deal of time on your hands in a magical place that is yours but not yours.  – from “Recalling a Home That Really Is a Castle,” by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England

You’re invited to join The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum and Bookshop in celebrating Dr. Johnson’s 300th birthday today and throughout the year.   The town of Lichfield will also join in the celebration with the Samuel Johnson Project.  National events are also planned; events can be viewed on the Tercentenary Website.

D. H. Lawrence Heritage, Eastwood, Nottingham, England

Step into the setting of some of D. H. Lawrence’s most famous work, including Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in Eastwood, the mining town where he was born and grew to manhood, loathing the damage inflicted by coal mining on people and landscape.  Four houses where his family lived survive, including what is now the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum.  Other sites also recall Lawrence’s life, times, and inspiration.  Travel information can be found on the Broxtowe Borough Council website, including the Blue Line Trail, a map of Lawrence sites.

(Photograph from Broxtowe Borough Council website.)

England

Margaret Drabble chooses her “top 10 literary landscapes.”

Walking in the footsteps of great writers, and seeing landscapes and buildings through their eyes is one of the most enjoyable and sustaining of pleasures. Years ago, on a lecture tour in Mississippi, I insisted on seeing the land of Huckleberry Finn and William Faulkner. It was a powerful experience, never to be forgotten. But Britain remains my native landscape, and my top 10 are only a sample of the places I like best. – Margaret Drabble, The Guardian

Sherwood Forest, England

Liz Boulter visits Robin Hood’s forest.

The county's most famous resident is celebrated at venues throughout the forest, but the main attraction is the gently rolling woodland itself, at its most atmospheric in late summer, when the lush greens take on a few golden tints. – from “Great British Escapes…Sherwood Forest,” by Liz Boulter, The Guardian

England

Sebastian Faulks talks about A Week in December, his new novel that “gazes long and hard into the heart and mind of Britain today – and comes back to conclude that there’s almost nobody at home.”