Literary Suffolk
Opening like a Book; unforthcoming and Softer than
Norfolk.
CJS
'....I became overwhelmed by the feeling that the Suffolk
expanses I had walked the previous summer had now shrunk to
a single, blind insensate spot.'
W.G. Sebald The Rings of Saturn
Photographs of locations can be seen in my Literary Suffolk
Flickr album
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Acton
The writer Ronald Blythe
was born here in 1922 - the eldest of six children.
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Aldeburgh
In the Shell
Suffolk Guide Norman Scarfe describes it as 'an ugly,
delightful little seaside town'.
The poet George
Crabbe (1755-1832) lived here and was inspired to write the long poem
The Borough which was published in 1810. The poem,
written in heroic couplets, is composed of a series of 24
letters. The 22nd letter concerns Peter Grimes and became
the
blueprint for Benjamin Britten's opera. E.M. Forster said:
'remember Aldeburgh when you read this rather odd poet, for
he belongs to the grim little place and through it to
England'.
Ronald Blythe
wrote The Time by the Sea (2013) which documents
his time in the town from 1955-58 - when he moved in
Britten's circle and was friendly with E.M. Forster.
Two of M.R. James' ghost stories are set in Aldeburgh:
Rats and Vignette.
The beach
famously features a giant clam shell - made by the artist
Maggi Hambling which bears the inscription 'I hear those
voices that will not be drowned' - which is a quote from
Peter Grimes.
The ghost writer M.R. James was a
regular visitor to the town and his family owned Wyndham
House (situated just below the parish church).
Thomas
Hardy stayed in the town on several occasions too.
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Benacre Broad
This brackish broad lies just north of Covehithe on
the Suffolk Coast. There is a delightful description of it
in The Rings of Saturn.
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Blaxhall
The oral historian
George Ewart Evans (1909-88) moved to Blaxhall in 1948 when his wife
became the headmistress at the village school. (The school
is now a YHA.) And it was here that he started to talk to
his neighbours and absorb the local history that would inspire his books - the first
of which was Ask the Fellow Who Cut the Hay (1956).
He left the village in1956 and moved to Brooke in
Norfolk.
There is a small plaque attached to the
village sign in Blaxhall to commemorate Ewart Evans.
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Blundeston
In the novel by
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield is born
at the Rookery Blunderstone. It is not known whether Dickens
actually visited Bunderston - but his did visit
Great Yarmouth where much
of the novel is set.
'I was born at Blunderstone, in
Suffolk, or "thereby" as they say in Scotland. I was a
posthumous child. My father's eyes had closed upon the light
of this world six months when mine opened on it. There is
something strange to me even now, in the reflection that he
never saw me; and something stranger yet is the shadowy
remembrance that I have of my first childish associations
with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and the
indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone
there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm
and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house
- were almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes - bolted
and locked against it.'
W. G. Sebald passes Blundeston
Prison in The Rings of Saturn.
The poet
Thomas Gray was a vistor to the village.
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Blythburgh
Holy Trinity Church at Blythburgh dominates
the marshes here - a great Perpendicular building with
magnificent clerestory windows - which has inspired many
painters and writers.
Features at the
beginning of Unnatural Causes by P. D. James. The
poetry loving Commander Adam Dalgliesh stops at the church.
Baroness James had a holiday home in Suffolk and frequently
set her Dalgliesh stories here.
There
is a splendid poem by Peter Porter entitled
An Angel in Blythburgh Church about one of the
famous carved wooden angels.
Rodney Pybus, who lived in Sudbury, also wrote a poem about the Blythburgh angels entitled
I Don't Believe in Angels which appears in Aidan
Semmens' anthology of Suffolk poems By the North Sea. |
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Boulge
Boulge Hall was
demolished in 1956 but was once owned by the FitzGerald
family.
The
poet Edward Fitzgerald is buried in the churchyard here.
His epitaph is: 'It is He that hath made us and not we
ourselves' A.C. Swinburne's friend Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914)
wrote a sonnet entitled
Prayer to the Winds about the rose bushes planted by the grave.
The roses were originally from the grave of Omar Khayyam at
Naishapur.
W.G. Sebald visits the graveyard during his walking
tour of Suffolk in The Rings of Saturn. He observes
the 'hideous' FitzGerald family mausoleum - where Edward F chose not
to be interred.
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Bradfield St George
The novelist
Angus Wilson (1913-1991) lived in a cottage here at the northern edge
of Bradfield Woods. Wilson was also the co-founder of the
Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglian with
Malcolm Bradbury.
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Bramford
Edward Fitzgerald often stayed here with his friend Edward
Cowell - even after Cowell married Rev Charlesworth's
daughter. (Bramford lies three miles west of Ipswich.)
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Bredfield
Edward FitzGerald was born here at Bredfield House but it
was demolished after it was damaged in WW2. W.G. Sebald
visits the remains of the house during his tour of Suffolk
in The Rings of Saturn.
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Bungay
Bungay was home to the
novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) who was probably
best known for her Cazalet's Chronicles. Her
autobiography Slipstream dealt candidly with her
marriages and various affarirs. She was originally married
to the naturalist Sir Peter Scott and later to the novelist
Kingsley Amis.
Bungay also has a strong connection
with the legend of
Black Shuck
- the East Anglian hell hound - and there is an anonymous
poem which records its attack on the parish church.
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Bury St Edmunds
Charles Dickens
visited the town on several occasions and stayed at the
Angel Hotel. The hotel is mentioned in The Pickwick
Papers. Room 215 still contains the four
poster bed that Dickens slept in when he stayed.
Ruth Rendell's crime novel The Brimstone
Wedding is set in Bury St Edmunds.
The
rose garden in the Abbey Gardens was paid for by the sale of
John Tate Appleby's book Suffolk Summer (1948) -
which was an account of the county that he wote while he was
stationed here during the final years of WW2.
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Charsfield
Ronald Blythe moved
here in the late 1950s and it inspired his famous book
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village which was
published in 1969. The book is the result of
conversations that he had with the villagers here and, like
fellow Suffolk writer George Ewart Evans, he sought to
capture a life that was vanishing. However, George Ewart Evans criticised him because the
characters did not speak in Suffolk dialect.
A film
of the book was released in 1974 and was directed by Peter
Hall.
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Covehithe
The church here was
dismantled in 1672 but the tower was retained as a sea-mark.
J. S. Cotman painted a water-colour of the scene.
There is a lovely poem by Blake
Morrison about the coastal erosion that is occurring rapidly
here entitled simply:
Covehithe.
It is from his 2015 collection Shingle Street.
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Deben, River
There is an unusual
poem called
The River Deben by Stevie Smith in which she
imagines rowing up the river to Waldringfield accompanied by
death.
Death sits in the boat with me His face is
shrouded but he smiles I see The time is not yet, he will
not come so readily.
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Dunwich
Dunwich has inspired a
good deal of poetry. The poet A. C Swinburne
came here on a number of occasions in the 1870s with his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton and
was prompted to write his long poem
By the North Sea.
(In this extract he dwells upon the graves which have
become exposed by the action of the sea.) He
also wrote Where Dunwich Used to Be. All Saints
Church used to stand as a ruin on the cliffs until it
finally collapsed in 1914. Dunwich once had eight churches.
Another poem about the lost town is
Dunwich by
Bernard Barton.
W.G. Sebald visits Dunwich in The Rings of Saturn
(1995). He devotes a lot of time to Dunwich and
also provides biographical information about A.C. Swinburne. Sebald lived for many years in the old
rectory in Poringland.
The poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) visited Dunwich
in 1908 and wrote evocatively about it in a letter to his friend George
Bottomley which begins:
'Oh Dunwich is
beautiful.'
In 1722, Daniel Defoe visited Dunwich in
his A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain.
He noted: 'It is true, this town is manifestly decayed
by the invasion of the waters......and the still encroaching
ocean seems to threaten it with a fatal immersion in a few
more years.'
From Dunwich he proceeds to Southwold.
There is another poem about Dunwich in Blake Morrison's
collection Shingle Street.
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Great Livermore
Was home to the
famous ghost story writer M.R. James (1862-1936). Many of
his stories are set in Suffolk. Whistle and I'll Come to
You is set in Felixstowe and Aldeborough is the setting
for Rats and Vignette.
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Felixstowe
John Betjeman wrote a
poem inspired by St John's church in the town entitled
Felixstowe or the Last of Her Order.
Felixstowe is also the location for M R James' ghost story
Oh Whistle And I'll Come to You my Lad.
Felixstowe's Martello Tower also provides the location
James' A Warning to the Curious. |
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Framlingham
Poet Henry Howard,
Earl of Surrey (c 1517-1547) is buried
here. (He was
beheaded by Henry VIII.) Together with Sir Thomas Wyatt he pioneered the use of the
sonnet in English. |
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Hollesley Bay
As a teenager
Brendan Behan was imprisioned here and his experiences
inspired his book Borstal Boy (1958). In
particular, he succeeded in capturing the dialogue of his
fellow inmates. He also enjoyed swims in the River Ore and
harvesting fruit in the orchards. Behan had joined the IRA
at the age of 16 and embarked on a mission to blow up
Liverpool docks. He was arrested and found in possession of
explosives.
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Honington
The poet Robert Bloomfield was born here in 1766.
There is a plaque inside the church.
Honington Hall was also the holiday home of David
Croft who was the producer, director and co-writer of the
sitcom Dad's Army. The village was also used as a
location for some of the scenes in the series.
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Ipswich
The poet and novelist
Jean Ingelow lived in the town and there is a plaque
commemmorating her house. She wrote a beautiful poem about
the River Waveney.
In Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller travel to
Ipswich and stay in the The Great White Horse. Dickens
himself once stayed at the hotel.
In 1722 on his
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain -
Daniel Defoe found the town decayed due to the drop of the
coal trade between Newcastle and London. Sir Henry
Rider Haggard was educated at Ipswich Grammar School.
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Kessingland
Henry Rider Haggard
purchased a house here named The Grange in 1895 which he used as a place to
write. Rudyard Kipling often visited him here. The house
has now been demolished.
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Lavenham
During WW2 a young
American serviceman was stationed at Lavenham Airfield and
wrote a delightful portrait of the county called Suffolk
Summer which was published in 1948. The airman's name
was John Appleby and his book was an intimate account of his
journeys by bicycle and bus during the final years of the
conflict. However, the book was not directly about the war
but about the buildings, landscape and people of Suffolk.
Money from the sale of the book went towards establishing a
rose garden in the Abbey Gardens at Bury St Edmunds.
De Vere House in Lavenham was used as the film location for
Godric's Hollow - the fictional birthplace of Harry Potter.
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Long Melford
The poet Edmund
Blunden is buried here.
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Lowestoft
W. G. Sebald stays at the Albion Hotel in Lowestoft on his
journey through Norfolk and Suffolk in The Rings of
Saturn (1998). His tour took place in August 1992. In
the book there is a photograph of Lowestoft railway station.
Joseph Conrad disembarked here in 1878 - not speaking a
word of English. The town's Wetherspoons is named after him.
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Mellis
The
nature writer Roger Deakin lived in a moated farm house here
(Walnut Tree Farm). He is particularly remembered for his
book on wild swimming entitled Waterlog (1999).
In it, he travels round the country visiting wild
swimming locations - recording them in his deightfully
informative prose. He did much to promote the conservation
of rivers and waterways.
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Middleton
The critic, poet and translator Michael Hamburger is buried
in the churchyard
here. He lived in the village
until his death in 2007. He appears (as himself) in W.G.
Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn. Sebald (or the
narrator) visits him during his walking tour of Suffolk.
Hamburger used to translate work by Bertolt Brecht, Rainer
Maria Rilke and also by Sebald.
Hamburger was a fine
poet and composed a memorable poem entitled:
Winter Evenings, East Suffolk.
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Orford
The
novelist Maggie Haemmingway was born here in 1946.
She is known for her novel The Bridge
(1986) which is set
in Walberswick. (The novel was also turned into a film set
in Walberswick.)
In
The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald comes here and
climbs to the top of the castle to experience the view.
There is also a poem entitled Orford by Zoe
Skoulding which begins:
The castle safe in its
demesne (an oyster cradling seed pearls around a
f(r)iction) is ringed with small hills, looks out, not
in.
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Orford Ness
Is a large shingle spit which is attached to the
coast at Aldeburgh but then heads south to North Weir Point. This bleak stretch of the Suffolk coastline has
inspired a number of writers including the poet Alun Lewis
and Richard Cobbold.
Lewis wrote a poem while
stationed here during WW2 entitled
Dawn on the East Coast.
W.G.Sebald also
came here in The Rings of Saturn and there are
three photographs of the Ness in the book: one of a pontoon bridge and
two of the WW2 bomb-testing buildings.
He also startled a hare while he was here and there is a
vivid description in the book.
Orford Ness is a strange shingle landscape littered with
remnants from the war/cold war. There is also unexploded ordnance
- so it is important to stick to the paths. The Orford Ness lighthouse
stands
perilously close to the sea and won't be around for much
longer.
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Oulton Broad
George Borrow moved
into a cottage here in 1840. It was here that he wrote
The Bible in Spain, Lavengro and Romany
Rye. He used to write in the summer house of the
cottage. The cottage no longer exists.
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Pin Mill
Situated on the Orwell estuary
- has inspired a number of writers including Arthur Ransome:
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea (1937) and E Arnot
Robertson's novel Ordinary Families (1933). In
Ransome's book, the children get caught in a fog bank and
then lose their anchor and drift out into the North Sea. The
boat in the story is called The Goblin - which was based
closely on his own cutter the Nancy Blackett.
They end up sailing all the way to Flushing in the
Netherlands. Secret Water is another Ransome book
set on the River Orwell.
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Polstead
The crime writer Ruth Rendell lived in a farmhouse here for
many years. Her novel A Fatal Inversion is set in
Polstead and Nayland. Polstead is the place where the
infamous Murder in the Red Barn occurred - so provides a
fitting location for one of the queens of crime writing.
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Redisham
The novelist Adrian
Bell moved here from Stradishall. Redisham was fictionalised
in the novels as Grunsham Magna.
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Rendham
George Crabbe began to
write The Borough here in 1801.
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Saint Cross, South Elmham
The
poet Elizabeth Smarth is buried here. She was closely
associated with George Barker who lived for many years at
Itteringham in Norfolk.
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Seckford Hall
Near Woodbridge
was an inspiration for Enid Blyton.
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Shingle Street
Blake Morrison's
2015 collection of poems is named after this village which
lies at the mouth of Orford Ness between Orford and Bawdsey.
The first poem in the collection is entitled The Ballad
of Shingle Street and begins:
On Shingle Street
The summer's sweet,
W.G. Sebald also visited in
The Rings of Saturn describing it as: 'The most
abandoned spot in the entire region....which now consists of
just one wretched row of humble houses and cottages.'
The author of the Shell Guide to Suffolk, Norman Scarfe,
once lived at Shingle Street.
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Sizewell
Provided the
inspiration for P.D James' Devices and Desires.
There are also two poems about Sizewell - written by Andy
Brown and Deryn Rees-Jones (Midnight
Beach at Sizewell B) which appear in the Suffolk
poetry anthology entitled By the North Sea (2013).
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Somerleyton
W.G. Sebald gets off
the train here on his way to Lowestoft in The Rings of
Saturn. He visits Somerleyton Hall and observes the
bizarre minature railway in action.
I worked at the
Calf at Foot Dairy here and wrote the following poem:
At the Pace of Cattle.
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Southwold
When Daniel Defoe visited the town in 1722 during his A
Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain he was
impressed by the church which he described,as: 'well built,
and of impenetrable flint'.
George Orwell (aka Eric Arthur Blair) lived here with his family at
Montague House on the High Street from 1932 to 1941. (His sister ran a tea room in the town.) Orwell
didn't enjoy the genteel society of Southwold though. Orwell's novel
The Clergyman's Daughter (1935) is set in the fictional
Suffolk village of Knype Hill. The novel, which Orwell was
never entirely happy with, concerns a clergyman's daughter
who suffers from amnesia. Orwell took his penname from the
Suffolk river.
In
The Rings of Saturn W.G. Sebald visits the Sailor's
Reading Room which is his favourite place in the town. He
also sits on Gunhill Green.
Crime writer P.D. James
lived in Southwold for many years. Southwold is also a key
location in her Children of Men.
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Stradishall
Adrian Bell
abandoned a career in journalism to come here and learn how
to be a farmer. He would go on to write a trilogy of books
about Suffolk: Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1931) and
The
Cherry Tree (1932). His novels were not best sellers but he
evoked country life with unerring accuracy.
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Sutton Hoo
Located on the banks
of the River Deben, this is one of the most important Anglo
Saxon burial sites in the country. Most notably, it
contained the remains of an undisturbed ship burial dating
from the early 7th century and an amazing ceremonial helmet.
The site was first excavated in 1939.
There are a
number of (Heaneyesque) poems about Sutton Hoo - including
Hauling a Boat (Sutton Hoo) by Aidan Semmens and a
lovely sequence entitled Little Egypt by Pauline
Stanier. (Little Egypt is the local name for Sutton Hoo.)
It wasn't the pull of the tide I felt, but the pull
of men raising the funeral-ship on the far shore;
The old English poem Beowulf also evokes
something of the world of Sutton Hoo.
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Sweffling
George Crabbe was
rector here. There is also a sonnet about the churchyard
written by John Cowper Powys entitled
Sonnet Written in Sweffling Churchyard.
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Thelnetham
John Middleton Murry,
the author and farmer,
is buried here.
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Walberswick
Maggie Hemmingway's novel The Bridge
(1986) is set in Walberswick. It concerns the love affair between
the painter Philip Wilson Steer and a young woman and was
based, in turn, upon Steer's famous painting of the same
name. Set in the summer 1887 - it is a tale of forbidden
love. Hemmingway was born at Orford in 1946.
Virginia Woolf and Edward Thomas were both visitors.
There is an old rhyme which mentions the town:
Swoul and Dunwich and Walderswick All go in at one lousie
creek.
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Waveney, River
The Waveney
provides the border between Norfolk and Suffolk for a
considerable distance. There is a delightful poem about the
river written by Jean Ingelow
River Waveney.
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Woodbridge
Edward Fitzgerald
used to lodge on Market Hill in the town. He liked the
company of his 'Woobridge Wits'. He later moved to a
property on the edge of the town known as 'The Laird of
Little Grange' and Tennyson visited him here.
The
River Deben, which flows through Woodbridge, was the
isnpiration for a poem by Stevie Smith. (See River Deben)
W.G. Sebald stays at the Bull Inn during his tour of the
county in The Rings of Saturn.
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Yoxford
In The Rings of
Saturn W. G. Sebald gets off the bus here before heading
up the Roman Road towards Harleston.
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