Warwickshire has a habit of producing people who change the world. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and he has influenced English literature ever since. George Eliot, one of the greatest novelists in the English language, grew up in the fields and villages of north Warwickshire, drawing on the landscape and its people to create Middlemarch, a book still read with fresh eyes more than 150 years after it was written. The 16th century Polesworth Circle - a gathering of poets and writers that drew in Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson and quite possibly Shakespeare himself - placed this county at the centre of Elizabethan literary life. Warwickshire didn't just inspire great writing. It created the conditions for it.
That creative energy didn't stop there. The county is home to art collections of genuine national significance, theatres that attract audiences from across the world, and historic buildings whose stories are woven into the fabric of English history - many of them bound up directly with Shakespeare and the writers, patrons and players who moved in his orbit. From the Royal Shakespeare Company's stages on the banks of the Avon to the quiet grandeur of the collections held in the county's museums and galleries, there is more here than most visitors expect.
Whether you come for Shakespeare's birthplace or George Eliot's Middlemarch, for the art or the architecture, for a performance or simply to walk in landscapes that have shaped some of the finest minds in English literature, Warwickshire rewards the curious. Explore the Warwickshire’s cultural offer below.
