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What Book Inspired You to Visit the Location Where It Was Set?
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Many books have put Glastonbury at the top of my dream-of-visiting list. I have not, on any of my trips to Wales/England, been able to persuade anyone to go with me - maybe next time ..
We visited Cawdor Castle, in Scotland, but not as a destination. ("Glamis thou art, and Cawdor. And shalt be what art promised," says the Lady Macbeth to her husband.) That was in 1982 when the "statley 'omes" in Britain were facing challenges regarding the new taxing system. Many lorldly families opened their homes to tourist types like we are, for a fee. Cawdor himself got involved in the tours, writing the blurbs telling visitors what was what. In one room the sign said, "And here you will see a Jacobean chair. And there you will see a 20th century TV." I remember a friendly man in his sixties greeting us as he briskly walked on the other side of the rope. Thought he was an employee. Found out later 'twas his lordship 'imself!
Dorothy L Sayers makes Oxford irresistible in Gaudy Night. Certain children's books made me want to visit places. For example, Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine series, which is set mostly near the Long Mynd in Shropshire, and other places nearby such as Craven Arms, Church Stretton, etc.. His books included hand-drawn maps which one could manage to super-impose on real maps!He also set books in Rye and Romney Marsh. I found other books set on the Marsh, such as those by Monica Edwards, and found the whole area fascinating. There is also the Endel trilogy by Lucilla Andrews using the pen names Joanna Marcus and Diana Gordon which are very evocative of the Marsh and confirmed my desire to go there - A few days in Endel , Marsh Blood and The Sinister Side.
Mary Stewart's books make me want to go everywhere they're set - Corfu for This Rough Magic, Roman France for Madam, Will You Talk?, Crete for The Moonspinners, Greece for My Brother Michael, and the Lebanon for The Gabriel Hounds.
I can't remember the first book which made me want to see Skye, but Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight was one of them.
I think most of my travelling has been inspired by books. Also, when I know I'm going somewhere I always look for novels set there (in addition to guide books) - I find I get a real feel for what somewhere is like (or what it used to be like) that way. Daunt books in Marylebone High Street London used to be superb for this (I haven't been for a while, so it probably still is): it had a section for each place, with maps, guide books, histories, and novels all gathered together.
The Ellis Peters books also set me off on a visit to Shrewsbury which I enjoyed very much. It's such a pretty town.During my first visit to London I had a book called Georgette Heyer's Regency England on hand which had maps of all the areas in London where her books were set. I found some bits of London I would never otherwise have found. On the same trip, I made a stop at 84 Charing Cross Road since that is one of my all time favourite books.
Helene Hanff's Apple of My Eye was my main guide to New York. I love New York and enjoy Linda Fairstein's books since I recognise many of the settings. We also had to go and find Spenser's office in Boston based on the books by Robert B Parker.
My poor husband got dragged all over Rome and Florence based on The Agony and the Ecstasy. We've been to all kinds of random places mentioned in books over the years. My husband collects cricket grounds so as long as I can find a ground he hasn't collected yet, I'm normally safe.
The most obscure trip is set for end of November. Based on inspiration provide byThe Singing Line, we'll be driving from Darwin to Adelaide.
I was in Daunt books in June and it is still fabulous.
Carolien - glad to hear Daunt is still going strong! There is another excellent book for exploring London (I've read the book but haven't been to London to try it out), Walking Jane Austen's London by Louise Allen. It has nuggets of information about 18th and early 19th century London, such as the location of Gunters ice-cream shop. Louise Allen also wrote Walks Through Regency London, which I don't have.Was the book you used Georgette Heyer's Regency England by Teresa Chris? It looks excellent!
And this has reminded me that I first went to Bath because I loved both Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, and greatly enjoyed retracing the walks taken by their heroines, as well as going back even further in time to the Romans.
Isn't it great to have a spouse who is a good sport? I've lost count of the times mine had asked why we are visiting a certain place. :)
Hj wrote: "Carolien - glad to hear Daunt is still going strong! There is another excellent book for exploring London (I've read the book but haven't been to London to try it out), Walking Jane Austen's Londo..."It is the Teresa Chris and it was excellent. It also contains sections on Bath and Brighton which I also used at the appropriate moments.
One of my best book experiences ever followed when I had read A Body in the Bathhouse and went into the Guildhall in London where the remains of the Roman amphitheatre can be seen. It felt like touching a piece of history. It's also a reason why I love the Roman sections in the Museum of London - the fact that you can see the actual walls is wonderful. There are the remains of various Roman houses in the vicinity of Chichester and Arundel which we have also visited following in the footsteps of Falco. Those tend to go hand in hand with visits to Arundel to watch Sussex play cricket.
York is another place that creates that feeling of touching history. I still want to visit Wood Green which was the inspiration for Thrush Green in the Miss Read books.
We visited the Roman excavations in Dover on a Day trip during a visit to Rye. As an American, I can become overwhelmed, in a positive way, by the concept of events happening more than five hundred years ago. The remains of the WWII hospital buried in the White Cliffs were "touchable".
I took a Nile cruise after reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. It was incredible.
Boy, are you guys making me want to travel. I, too, stopped by the New Forest when I was in England. It was so imposing and they had lots of copies of the book for sale.@Helen, I went to Glastonbury and it was wonderful. There are no hotels and it's just B&B's. It has a real "hippie" (for lack of a better word)feel to it. I went to wrecked abbey and saw the supposed burial place of Arthur. They also have a garden named after Joseph, Jesus' father where the chalice is supposedly.
One of my favorite places in England. You can go by yourself. I did and I think I enjoyed it more because I got to do what I wanted.
In Bath, I went to the Austen house and had tea. I had so much fun at their museum.
To me, there is nothing better than seeing the places you've only read about. It makes that place even more special.
At the risk of picking nits, the Joseph at Glastonbury is Joseph of Arimethyia, the man who provided the tomb in which Jesus' body was placed when he was taken from the cross. Tradition has it that Joseph then brought the Grail, rumored to be the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper to England.
Carolien wrote: "One of my best book experiences ever followed when I had read A Body in the Bathhouse and went into the Guildhall in London where the remains of the Roman amphitheatre can be seen. It felt like touching a piece of history. It's also a reason why I love the Roman sections in the Museum of London - the fact that you can see the actual walls is wonderful. There are the remains of various Roman houses in the vicinity of Chichester and Arundel which we have also visited following in the footsteps of Falco...."I love Falco and Romans, too, and want to go to the Mendips to see (if I can) where The Silver Pigs takes place.
My best Falco moments - going to Palmyra and Petra, as he does in Last Act in Palmyra. Petra is one of my all-time favourite places in the world, just amazing.
Portia wrote: "At the risk of picking nits, the Joseph at Glastonbury is Joseph of Arimethyia, the man who provided the tomb in which Jesus' body was placed when he was taken from the cross. Tradition has it tha..."Thank you, Portia. I get mixed up with all those names that are the same. I have trouble telling my Johns apart too.
Hj wrote: "Carolien wrote: "One of my best book experiences ever followed when I had read A Body in the Bathhouse and went into the Guildhall in London where the remains of the Roman amphitheatre can be seen...."I've heard Petra is amazing. I'll add it to my bucket list.
The Ladies' John usually has an icon in a skirt on the door. Tee hee ;-)
Also, Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury and stuck his staff into the ground, when it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn. This is a form of Common Hawthorn, which unlike ordinary hawthorn trees flowers twice a year, the first time in winter and the second time in spring. The trees in the Glastonbury area have been propagated by grafting since ancient times.
@HJ I did not know that. Thanks.@Portia, LOL
HJ, I didn't know that either. That remind me of the story of the Christmas Rose. Are the stories related?
Susan, I've heard that about Petra as well (and of course, Appointment with Death by Christie) is set partially in Petra!
Petra must have been amazing. I'd love to go there at some point.The other place on my bucket list is Kashmir and Simla based on MM Kaye's books especially her autobiographies, The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England. I've been to India and loved it, but not yet to those places.
Carolien wrote: "Petra must have been amazing. I'd love to go there at some point.The other place on my bucket list is Kashmir and Simla based on MM Kaye's books especially her autobiographies, The Sun in the Mor..."
I agree with you! Although the MM Kaye which I've read set in Kashmir is Death in Kashmir: A Mystery. She's another author (like Mary Stewart) whose locations from her "Death in" series I'd love to visit, although they've probably changed beyond recognition now. The Andaman Islands sound so lovely in Death in the Andamans.
Was India like any of the books you've read about it?
Petra is wonderful. When you go, get up as early in the morning as you possibly can - it takes a while to get through the siq to the entrance, and it gets unbearably hot in Petra (partly because the sun bounces back off the rocks). And go for more than one day, if you can. That way you won't feel you must keep going and cram it all in - instead you can enjoy the atmosphere, explore a bit, leave just as the hordes arrive and spend the rest of the day recuperating by your hotel pool.
MM Kaye was married to a diplomat and the "Death in" books are all set in locations where her husband was posted during his career. She lived in all kinds of exotic places. Her autobiography is written in four books and absolutely wonderful. I loved India - my husband had been previously and enjoyed it, but I had my reservations prior to the trip. We were in the more popular bits - Delhi, Jaipur and Calcutta and I enjoyed it very much. We had a brilliant guide in Calcutta which made it such an interesting experience. I'd love to go back.
It's also an example of how your enjoyment of books can change once you had been to a place. I only read Q & A after our return from India and found I could picture many of the scenes much better having been there myself. I also only started reading Lisa Scottoline's books after we had been to Philadelphia, but found I enjoyed the books very much, because I had a picture in my mind of parts of the city.
The advice on Petra sounds very sane! The Financial Times had an article recently on a kind of walking/horse riding tour that one could do to go to Petra and it sounded very tempting (as long as one doesn't do it at the height of summer!).
I have to admit to being a bit wary of going to India. It sounds so crowded and chaotic. I'll look up that FT article. I can't think how one could walk or ride there - it's in a mountainous area in the middle of a desert!
ETA It foes sound lovely, but I think you'd need to be very fit and choose your time of year carefully. I went in late spring and it was already very hot.
Re: India We read this in another GoodReads group. Amazing. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
I've heard of that book, Portia. You recommend it then?
Oh, hi, Susan. Geez, whar've I bin for the last 16 hrs!!??I'm on my iPhone now, so I'll run on later, BUT, BTBF shows all the ugliness of the lives of people who literally live behind signs advertising Beautiful Forevers, a housing development for the well-to-do in Mumbai. Katherine Boo writes like a novelist, so every once in a while when I remembered this is a true story, it only brought the awfulness closer. I read it with a book group that was really involved and that was a good idea for me.
PS For anyone interested in reading BTBF, please read the reviews posted by other members of GoodReads. Everyone pretty much agrees that these people live terrible lives.
Last summer I spent a couple of nights in the ' Casa Di Montalbano', which is used as the home of Inspector Montalbano in the series by Andrea Camilleri.It was every bit as idyllic as seen on screen, built right on the sea shore with a balcony overhanging the sand. It's in the small village of Punta Secca and just round the corner is a shop called Gli Arancini Di Montalbano ( the title of one of the books) where they sell the most delicious arancini ever.
I didn't go to Sicily for this reason ,but it was a great bonus to my trip.
Hj wrote: "I have to admit to being a bit wary of going to India. It sounds so crowded and chaotic. I'll look up that FT article. I can't think how one could walk or ride there - it's in a mountainous ar..."
I found the FT article http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7e0541...
We had individual guides with us in India which I think helped, but you also need to relax and just go with the flow at times.
The Sicily house sounds wonderful. I recently read The Enchanted April which is set in this idyllic Italian castle and this place sounds like a very good alternative!
I read Kate Mosse's Labyrinth during a camper-van trip round France. It made the visit to Carcassonne extra special!
When Spouse and I went to Paris to celebrate our 25th, we went in search of 7 rue Monsieur, where Nancy Mitford lived. We found it, but could not see much through the locked gate. However, the search took us through a section of Paris we would not have visited otherwise. We met helpful Parisians (no, really, that isn't always an oxymoron) and discovered beautiful little (tiny) parks full of blooming roses.
Sylvia wrote: "Last summer I spent a couple of nights in the ' Casa Di Montalbano', which is used as the home of Inspector Montalbano in the series by Andrea Camilleri.It was every bit as idyllic as seen on scre..."
I have seen a TV series called Montalbano. Do you know if it is based on those books? I have never heard of Montalbano before and now my curiousity is piqued.
Yes the TV series is based on the books. must admit I saw the TV series first, then read the books, or some of them at least. Apparently Camilleri is still churning them out at the age of 86!
Well, I am going to record them as they come on at like 2am where I am. Thanks for the recommendation.
Anybody planning to watch "Burton and Taylor" on BBC America tonight? We're taping it to watch w/o commercials later. I've also ordered "Cleopatra" from Netflix. Ah, the pre-Beatles 1960s.
SORRY! I should have posted that on the TV thread. My bad :P
Susan, let me know what you think after you watch it, since you can't tell me what you think if you haven't watched it :P
English Mysteries Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Enchanted April (other topics)Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (other topics)
Q & A (other topics)
Death in the Andamans (other topics)
Death in Kashmir (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Lisa Scottoline (other topics)Louise Allen (other topics)
Teresa Chris (other topics)
A few years later, I read The Forest, and made it the centerpeice of another trip. Magic, magic, magic!