Exploring Britain “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, JANE AUSTEN
DID YOU KNOW?
J The hut in which Roald Dahld wrote, built of a single layer of bricks and located in his garden, was saved from near collapse by the team at The Roald Dahl Museum, who painstakingly re-constructed it, piece by piece, in the museum.
J The opening line of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (see previous page), was inspired by a dream she had while on holiday abroad, about the house upon which Manderley is based, Menabilly, near Fowey in Cornwall. The house later became her home.
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Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire
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Scott’s work gave the reading public a taste for fictional
adventures in a wild Gaelic landscape, which probably contributed to the success of some of the books written by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). In his Kidnapped, a young nobleman, David Balfour, is shipwrecked on the islet of Erraid, an outlying part of the Isle of Mull to which you can walk at low tide. To modern tourists the Scottish islands are among the most beautiful places anywhere in Britain. But when Stevenson visited as a young man this remote and wild place clearly made a great impression, which he recalled and used to great effect when describing Balfour’s plight. Today Erraid is privately owned by the Findhorn Foundation, who welcome visitors keen to escape the rush of the modern world. But Scotland’s favourite writer was inspired not by the
dramatic rugged beauty of the Highlands and islands, but by the people and places of rural Ayrshire. Robert Burns (1759-1796) was born in Alloway, not far from Glasgow, and grew up in a tenant farmer’s cottage which is now part of the Burns Birthplace Museum. His poems, many
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of which address deceptively ordinary subjects, have captivated millions around the world. For example, in To a Mouse, one of his most famous works, Burns begins by apologising to a fieldmouse for destroying her nest while ploughing, before going on to reflect on the advantages the mouse has over him. “Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!/The present only toucheth thee:/But Och! I backward cast my e’e,/On prospects drear!/An’ forward, tho I canna see,/I guess an’ fear!” In a way this encapsulates what great literature can do:
taking us away from the worries or boredom of daily life and into different, long-lost or wholly imagined worlds. Visiting the places that have fired the imaginations of so many British writers and that continue to do so, helps us to gain a deeper appreciation of their talent and the stories they leave behind for us to enjoy.
J There were six Bronte children altogether: five daughters and one son. The two eldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, died aged 11 and 10 in 1825 after falling ill at Cowan Bridge School, described in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (Lowood).
J Jane Austen almost died of typhus as a child. She and her sister Cassandra were later forced to leave boarding school when the family was in financial difficulties.
For more information on exploring the locations featured in this article and other places around the British Isles that have inspired literature, or to purchase all of the novels mentioned, visit the BRITAIN website at
www.britain-magazine.com
www.britain-magazine.com
PHOTO: © LOOP IMAGES/ANDY WILLIAMS
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