Written in Stone: A Story of English Heritage Sites Told Through the Words of the Great Writers Book

Written in Stone takes a journey around England, visiting sites that have inspired the writers whose works shaped England's literary heritage. The sites vary enormously, from the Jacobean grandeur of Audley End in Essex to the mysterious Neolithic burial monument Wayland's Smithy, and have influenced writers in different ways - some have been the birthplace or home of writers, or places they have visited at significant moments in their creative lives, others have provided an atmosphere or a setting for a literary work and some have even become characters themselves. Certain authors are met frequently on the journey round England, such as Jane Austen and Chaucer, while others are encountered only in passing, but all their works are inspiring and many are of outstanding repute - Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, romantic lyric poems and some great realist novels. When we arrive at Whitby Abbey, Bram Stoker and Dracula are there before us; at Stonehenge we meet Hardy and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and a veritable round-table of historians, poets and novelists await us at Tintagel.