A literary trail around Warwickshire

Stop 1: Barford

A Victorian author of a somewhat different stripe is linked to Stratford, and to the village of Barford to the north, as she went to school in both places. Elizabeth Gaskell shared a delight in Warwickshire's scenery with George Eliot and perhaps you will recognise the meadows and "old low grey church" of St Peter's at Barford which she recalled in her novella Lois the Witch.

Travel

• 3 miles, 8 minutes

Stop 2: Warwick Castle

Warwick CV34 6AU

At the grand medieval Warwick Castle you can find out all about Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and his notorious side-swapping role in the Wars of the Roses: a character memorably dramatised by Shakespeare as “Thou setter-up and plucker-down of kings” (Henry VI, Part III).

At the time of Shakespeare, Warwick Castle was granted to Sir Fulke Greville, a dramatist, prolific writer of sonnets and philosophical poems, author of 664-stanza A Treatise of Monarchy, and biographer (and friend) of Elizabethan court favourite Sir Philip Sidney. Greville would meet an ugly end – he was stabbed by his servant in 1628, giving rise to stories of his ghost haunting the castle’s Watergate Tower. You can view Greville’s tomb in the Chapter House of Warwick’s Collegiate Church of St Mary.

The streets around the market place and along Smith Street and Jury Street are well served with independent restaurants, cafés and traditional pubs, many in buildings with as much history as anything else you will see on the trail. Whether you want a relaxed pub lunch, a proper sit-down meal or something to take away and eat in the castle grounds, you will not be short of options.

Travel

• 2 miles, 8 minutes

Stop 3: Royal Leamington Spa

Charles Dickens visited Leamington on numerous occasions gathering characters and locations for his novels. Continuing north from Barford, at Royal Leamington Spa you can open scenes onto Dickens’ Dombey & Son, for it was to this elegant spa town that the author sent Paul Dombey to recuperate following the death of his son.

Dickens also came to Leamington on a reading tour in 1858 when he stayed at The Regent Hotel on The Parade, and there’s plenty to tempt you to linger in town too: from the spa heritage of the Royal Pump Rooms to wide boulevards, gardens and parks perfect for strolling.

If you haven’t already had lunch, a lunch stop here is no hardship. The Parade and the streets running off it - particularly Regent Street and Bath Street = are lined with independent restaurants, bistros and cafés covering every mood and budget. The town's food scene has real depth, from relaxed brunch spots to more considered dining, and the Pump Room Gardens make an ideal setting for a picnic on a fine day.

Travel

• 5 miles, 12 minutes

Stop 4: Kenilworth

Charles Dickens thought neighbouring Kenilworth “beautiful beyond expression” and an ideal spot for a lazy summer holiday, while Sir Walter Scott recalled the heydays of the castle to write his historical romance Kenilworth, published in 1821.

Exploring the mysterious circumstances of the death of Amy Robsart, wife of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Scott ‘s tale weaves in accounts of the queen’s 1575 royal progress to Kenilworth and the magnificent revels that Dudley laid on for her during her 19-day stay. Dudley even built a magnificent garden to impress Elizabeth, recreated in modern times so you can follow in the steps of fascinating fact as well as romantic fiction.

Travel

• 4 miles, 10 minutes

Stop 6: Stoneleigh Abbey

Someone else who enjoyed a visit to Kenilworth Castle was Jane Austen and her family, her mother recording that it “afforded us much entertainment”. Jane, her sister and mother were staying at nearby Stoneleigh Abbey – for 400 years the country seat of relatives – in the summer of 1806, and the abbey and its family intrigues soon worked their way into Jane’s fiction.

Join a guided tour of the Jacobean-cum-Baroque abbey and stroll the beautiful grounds to see how Jane re-imagined details of the house, woodland walks and the chapel in descriptions of Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park. Compare rooms, “all lofty and many large, and amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble gilding and carving.”

The real-life saga of Elizabeth Lord – her portrait hangs at Stoneleigh – also fired Jane’s imagination, and Elizabeth’s secret marriage, separation, family disapproval and final reconciliation became mirrored in the story of Anne Elliot in Persuasion.

Round off your visit to Stoneleigh with an Elizabeth Bennett tea (what else?) including sandwiches, scone and cake.

Stop 1: Rugby

The Collingwood Centre, Rugby School, Barby Road, Rugby, CV22 5DZ

Rugby, apart from the sport to which it gave its name, has been a hotbed for literary greats, not least of course Thomas Hughes who based Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) – “the first schoolboy novel” – on his own boyhood at Rugby School.

Tours of the historic public school and its museum reveal other creative alumni: Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, wartime poet Rupert Brooke, Arthur Ransome of Swallows and Amazon fame and, in modern times, novelist Salman Rushdie. Guided walking tours and public art around town also highlight Rugby’s little-known links to many famous writers.

Travel

• 18 miles, 25 minutes

Stop 2: Coventry

Talking of schooldays, poet Philip Larkin was born and raised in nearby Coventry – lines from his poem, ‘I remember, I remember’ about a train stop that jogs his memory of his boyhood are written on a plaque at Coventry Railway Station.

Look up Larkin’s haunts on a self-guided tour, including: the old cathedral where he was baptised, King Henry VIII School where he first had his writing published in the school magazine, and the 17th Century Golden Cross Inn where he sat reading books and drinking with friends.

It’s believed that George Eliot’s “Study of Provincial Life” Middlemarch is partly based on her experiences of Victorian Coventry, where she lived as a young woman in the 1840s before moving to London.

Coventry's food scene offers a varied choice for lunch. The Lower Precinct and Fargo Village - a creative quarter of independent traders, street food and café culture a short walk from the city centre - are both worth exploring. If you want to keep the literary theme going, the 17th century Golden Cross Inn, one of Larkin's old haunts, is as good a place as any to stop.

Travel

• 12 miles, 20 minutes

Stop 3: Arbury Estate

Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans on the Arbury Estate in 1819, where her father worked as a land agent, and Arbury Hall (normally open on bank holiday weekends, April to August) provided inspiration for the “castellated house of grey-tinted stone” Cheverel Manor in Mr Gilfil’s Love Story. Eliot’s childhood home, Griff House (now a Beefeater / Premier Inn), prompted descriptions of the Tullivers’ “trimly-kept, comfortable dwelling house” in The Mill on the Floss.

Today as ever, Eliot’s descriptions of “tree-studded hedgerows” and countryside captivate and refresh jaded spirits. Take time to pause along the Griff Arm of the Coventry Canal, recalled in Eliot’s Brother and Sister Sonnets: “The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers / The wondrous watery rings…”

Travel

• 8 miles, 15 minutes

Stop 4: Polesworth

Who would ever have guessed that the village of Polesworth, on a turn of the River Anker in north Warwickshire, was a focal point in the 16th century for some of the greatest poets of the age? In 1574 Sir Henry Goodere who owned the manor began The Polesworth Circle, the largest literary gathering outside of London at the time, and along came the likes of Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson and even William Shakespeare.

Drayton, who had been born at nearby Hartshill, wrote of “Clear Ancor, on whose silver-sanded shore / My soul-shrin’d saint, my fair Idea lies”, and declared his love through sonnets for Sir Henry’s daughter, sadly unrequited. John Donne also wrote his poem ‘Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward’ at Polesworth.

Building on this rich heritage, there’s now a Poetry Trail you can follow around Polesworth from the abbey, through the village and along the waterside. Specially written poems displayed on installations from benches to sculptures explore historic events and people, local mining, landscapes and regeneration. There’s Jane Holland’s modern take on ‘The River Anker’, “full-lipped, spilling / generous from its broad lap”, and Raymond Hendy’s ‘Memories of Pooley Mine’, “burrowed deep into my soul”.