Books Set in England

Bill Bryson’s books were my inspiration for starting this travel blog. He has a very sarcastic and dry sense of humor which is apparent in all his travel log novels. And he has a knack for travel mishaps. I particularly enjoy the novels in which he tours his adopted country of England.

In Notes from a Small Island Bryson travels all over England and entertainingly complains about nearly everywhere, excepting Dorset, the only place he cannot fault. During this trip he retraces the same path he took some twenty odd years before as a young man when he met the British girl that would become his wife.

In The Road to Little Dribbling Bryson takes a ruler to a map of England and draws a straight line from the southernmost point to the northernmost point of the country. He then attempts to travel following this line as closely as possible.

Purchase Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson via Amazon | Bookshop
Purchase The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson via Amazon | Bookshop

Read post: Author Footsteps: Bill Bryson was Right about Dorset
Read post: Finding Comfort Across the Globe: Bryson & The Roman Baths

Siblings John, Susan, Titty, and Roger are granted use of the small sailboat named Swallow while vacationing for the summer at Holly Hows Farm, a bed and breakfast in England’s Lake District. With permission from their mother, they take the boat and camp on a nearby island in the middle of the lake on which the B&B is situated. There they meet sisters Nancy and Peggy who spend their summers on the lake sailing in a small boat named Amazon. The two parties make friends and play at pirate war.

Author Arthur Ransom based his book Swallows and Amazons on the children of a family he met while staying at Bank Ground Farm on Coniston Lake in The Lake District.

Purchase Swallows and Amazons via Amazon | Bookshop

Winchester Great Hall has been the location of several real historical events related to the British monarchy. One of which was serving as Emperor Maud/Matilda’s residence during England’s civil war- known as the time when “Christ and His Saints Slept”. Sharon Kay Penman’s historical fiction novel of this name presents this period so vividly that you’ll feel you know Maud and her cousin Stephen, whom she fought for England’s crown, very well by the end of the book.

Winchester Great Hall is also the current location of “King Arthur’s round table,” a very real table top that has been painted (perhaps under the orders of King Henry VIII) in homage to King Arthur and his knights of the round table. It hangs on the wall of what’s left of Winchester’s once great hall.

Purchase When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman via Amazon | Bookshop
Purchase Le Mort d’Arthur by Thomas Malory via Amazon | Bookshop

Read Post: King Arthur’s Fake Table at Winchester

For more King Arthur, see Somerset

Penman presents a sympathetic view of King Richard III in The Sunne In Splendour. By the end of the book you’ll be hating Shakespeare for maligning the historical memory of Richard.

You may even want to start planning your own trip to Leicester to visit the cathedral where Richard III has been re-interred to pay your respects to the last Plantagenet king. And don’t miss the museum built over the car-park turned archeological dig where King Richard’s skeleton was found 500 years after the Tudor victors of the Battle of Bosworth unceremoniously dumped the former King’s body.

Purchase The Sunne In Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman via Amazon | Bookshop

Read Post: Leicester & Richard III: The King Under the Car Park

These two books are so fun! Imagine getting ready to attend one of Bath’s famous Jane Austen Festivals with your best friend, but end up stepping through time and helping Jane Austen herself out of a predicament! That is exactly what happens to Rose in The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen. In book two Rose again steps through time, but this time joins Jane and her sister Cassandra in Chawton.

If you’ve been to Bath and Chawton you’ll enjoy picturing in your head exactly where the events in the story are taking place. If you haven’t been yet, you’ll enjoy seeing the locations in the book in person when you do!

Purchase

The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen by Ada Bright & Cass Grafton via Amazon | Bookshop
The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen by Ada Bright & Cass Grafton via Amazon Kindle | Bookshop

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