“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” – William Wordsworth (The Tables Turned) The English Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The citation reads: Famous for its scenic landscape of mountains, lakes, houses, gardens and parks, the Lake District...
Wilfred Owen is regarded as the greatest of the First World War poets. His poems attempt to educate the innocent public about the horrors of the war and the cynicism of the politicians directing it. Although Owen strenuously opposed the war, he showed great gallantry...
Robert Browning is one of the greatest of all Victorian poets. He was born in London in 1812 and began writing poetry at an early age. He’s best remembered for Porphyria’s Lover (1842), My Last Duchess (1842), How They Brought the Good News from Ghent...
Anthony Trollope was a prolific Victorian novelist, best known for The Chronicles of Barsetshire (six novels, 1855-67) that describe the social affairs of the fictional county of Barsetshire. Two of the novels were splendidly adapted by the BBC as The Barchester Chronicles (1982), with the...
Geoffrey Chaucer was probably born in 1343 or 1344 in London. Today he’s remembered as the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and the “Father of English Literature”. In 1387 he started writing The Canterbury Tales, in which a disparate group of people tell stories...
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players .” – William Shakespeare (As You Like It) Shakespeare Basics William Shakespeare is an almost mythical figure, about whom we know remarkably little. What we do know, however, is what defines him as the...
Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 in Hanley, Staffordshire and is permanently linked with that area of England (popularly known as the Potteries). His most famous novel, Anna of the Five Towns (1902), draws on his experience of the Potteries. Other noteworthy books include The...
Noel Coward demonstrated his razor-sharp wit in more than fifty plays, plus songs, essays and three volumes of autobiography. Many of his plays are still in the popular repertoire, including Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1933) and Blithe Spirit (1941). Private...
WH Auden was one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century. He’s probably best known for The Age of Anxiety (1947), a long poem about the struggle to find meaning in an industrialized world. Auden’s popularity has increased in recent years, as evidenced by...
John Ruskin was born in London in 1819. His home from 1871 until his death in 1900 was Brantwood on Coniston Water in the Lake District. This lovely house is filled with paintings, furniture and Ruskin’s personal treasures. In the nearby village of Coniston there’s...