A visit to the Brontes
When I read the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth I had a yearning to visit the Wordsworth homes in the Lake...
A sunny spot to read
I fell in love with this room when I saw this sunlit painting. The Victorian artist has captured a perfect...
In quest of lost libraries
For me the world of books and libraries has a shadow world of those lost or destroyed. Surely someone could...
Basilicata bibliomotocarro
Antonio La Cava, a retired school teacher, converted a quintessential Italian vehicle, the three-wheeler micro-van, into a travelling library.
For...
A café in Porto
I have never been to this café but would love to spend a morning there writing postcards and reading newspapers....
A writer’s retreat
We first noticed it when it was still a construction site, but even on a grimly dank and overcast day,...
The perfect spot, finally
From the multiple versions described by his wife, it seems it took many years and experiments for John Steinbeck to...
A chapel for study – the reading room of the Oriental Institute
After a visit to the Oriental Institute museum in Chicago, I did a pit stop at...
All you need is love
Another description by Steinbeck's widow of yet another of his writing spaces, which comprised mostly rooms but some other curious...
A sensible sort of room
The boy slips out of a deadly dull afternoon tea in which two ladies are talking about clothing. He finds...
When did you begin?
Recently I read an old penny-paperback of The Grapes of Wrath. I was about three-quarters of the way through when...
Visit to the Leeds Library
By luck, a short visit to Leeds coincided with a monthly guided tour of the Leeds Library, one of the...
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