Image above: Nancy Mitford; Rose Cottage, Strand on the Green, where she lived
Torin Douglas, Director of the Chiswick Book Festival, has made it his mission to research Chiswick’s literary history.
Chiswick can lay claim to two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (and one nominee) plus one Booker Prize winner, three Oscar winners (and two nominees), a Poet Laureate and several writers who merit blue plaques. All of which prompted the Observer to comment: ‘Chiswick may be the UK’s most literary location’.
Images above: Alexander Pope portrait, studio of Michael Dahl; Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough; WB Yeats; portraits courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
Inspired by the Art & Artists walking trail, put together by Karen Liebreich and Sarah Cruz, Torin has published a Books & Writers trail.
The Books & Writers trail takes in the house at Strand on the Green where Nancy Mitford, author of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate lived, the flat where Harold Pinter wrote The Caretaker and the home of EM Forster, author of A Passage to India, A Room with a View and Howard’s End. There are 21 locations on the trail, all over Chiswick.
Images above: Arlington Park Mansions, where EM Forster lived; portrait of EM Forster by Dora Carrington (1920), courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
Authors: Nancy Mitford, Harold Pinter, EM Forster, Patrick Hamilton, Dame Iris Murdoch, JG Ballard, Alain Fournier, Ralph Griffiths, Anthony Burgess, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, WB Yeats, Sergius Stepniak, Sir John Betjeman, GK Chesterton, Alun Owen, Alexander Pope, WN Thackeray, Ugo Foscolo, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Robert Bolt, John Osborne.
This is a walk that you can do at your leisure; just download the map to print it out and follow it.
DOWNLOAD HERE: Books & Writers – Chiswick walking trail map
Images above: Iris Murdoch; photograph by Godfrey Argent, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery; house where she grew up at 4 Eastbourne Road, W4
Explore the cultural history of Chiswick online and on foot.
Explore Chiswick’s cultural history
SEE ALSO: Our This is Chiswick feature on Nancy Mitford in Chsiwick
SEE ALSO: Our This is Chiswick feature on EM Forster in Chiswick
SEE ALSO: Our This is Chiswick feature on Iris Murdoch in Chiswick
SEE ALSO: Our This is Chiswick feature on Alexander Pope in Chiswick
See our events listings of all the events happening in Chiswick here:
chiswickcalendar.co.uk/whats-on-in-chiswick
Support The Chiswick Calendar
Support The Chiswick CalendarThe Chiswick Calendar CIC is a community resource. We publish a weekly newsletter and update the website with local news and information daily. We are editorially independent.
Please support us by buying us the equivalent of a monthly cup of coffee (or more, if you insist). Click here to support us.
To subscribe to the weekly newsletter, go here.
