Monthly Archives: January 2014

Post 9 Dogs of Genius August 2013 In the dog-days of August all academics should be on the beach rather than in the research library. It is the silly season, and its silliness may suitably tinge even the serious business … Continue reading →

Post 8 Travels in the Library July 2013 These last two weeks, I have been hunkered down in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, reading. To my right, coat, bag, phone, and a pile of eighteenth … Continue reading →

Post 7 Petrarch in Love Once again, off in pursuit of Petrarch. This time, not to Italy but the south of France.  Petrarch got about a fair bit – born in Arezzo, mostly brought up in Avignon, studying in Montpellier … Continue reading →

Post 4 Corelli-day April 27 2013 I’m floating in a jet-black shiny gondola, reclined on black velvet cushions and guarded on both sides by brass horses with curled fish-tails, embellished with black tassels.  Behind me there’s a gondolier in traditional … Continue reading →

Post 3 Shakespeare’s Birthday  April 20th 2013 From Shakespeare’s Verona to Shakespeare’s Stratford. Today it’s the Birthday Procession, to mark the Bard’s 449th Birthday, and so I’m togged up in my doctoral gown and picking up a bouquet of flowers … Continue reading →

Post 4 Petrarch’s Cat To a place sacred to another pair of lovers — Arquà Petrarca – a village set in the hills above Padua. Here Petrarch — whose sonnets celebrating his love for Laura are the source of the … Continue reading →

Post 3 Juliet’s House English demand also seems to have driven the development of ‘Juliet’s House’ as a tourist attraction. The poet Samuel Rogers wrote in his bestselling Italy: A Poem (1822-8) ‘Are those the distant turrets of Verona?/And shall … Continue reading →

Post 2 Juliet’s tomb To Shakespeare’s ‘fair Verona’. I’ve been invited to speak on Shakespeare tourism as part of a conference on Romeo and Juliet. In between sessions, I hurry off to places that early nineteenth-century English travellers passing through … Continue reading →

Literary Tourist on the Loose   This blog is all about adventures to places with literary associations. I published a book called The Literary Tourist in 2006 about the history of interest in writer’s graves, houses, and landscapes in Britain. … Continue reading →