JRR Tolkien is famous for his fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). The latter – published in three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King – is one of the best-selling...
William Morris, born in London in 1834, was a popular poet and novelist, helping to establish the modern fantasy genre with works such as The Well at the World’s End (1896). These days he’s better known for his pioneering work in wallpaper and textile design...
John Keats’ life spanned only 25 years (1795-1821) during which he wrote some of England’s best loved Romantic poetry. His most memorable works include On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (1816) and Bright Star, The Eve of St Agnes, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode...
DH Lawrence was born in 1885 in the bleak coal mining town of Eastwood, near Nottingham. His childhood home is now the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum: worth a visit on your next literary tour of England. Lawrence wrote a total of twelve novels – including...
Who can resist Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends from Hundred Acre Wood? AA Milne wrote just two sets of Pooh stories: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) plus two collections of children’s poems: When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are...
Elizabeth Gaskell spent her formative years in Knutsford (15 miles south of Manchester) where she’s commemorated by the Gaskell Memorial Tower in the town center. Knutsford was the inspiration for Cranford (1851-53) in her novel of the same name, lovingly dramatized in the BBC’s 2007-10 mini-series...
Charles Darwin wrote numerous books based on his travels and studies, but he is surely best remembered for The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin was born in the lovely town of Shrewsbury in 1809 and lived there...
Henry James was born in 1843 in New York City. As a young man he traveled extensively in Europe, eventually settling in London in 1869 and becoming a British subject in 1915 (less than a year before his death at the age of 72). Lamb...
T E Lawrence is best known for his exploits in Arabia during the First World War, which he vividly describes in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). In the opinion of Winston Churchill: "It ranks with the greatest books ever written in the English language....
It’s seventy years since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell’s ominously prophetic masterwork. As an allegory for our present stressful times, it’s amazingly insightful. Some of the book’s most frightening notions are even with us in reality: Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’, for example, foreshadows the...