The great country house of Penshurst and its estate was referred to in the entry on Ben Jonson, whose poem praising the comforts of the place, and the generosity of its owner, was probably written a few decades after the birth of Philip Sidney there in November, 1554. Sidney, who Read more…
The film director, artist and author Derek Jarman (1942-1994) was born in Northwood, Middlesex, but after discovering he was HIV positive in 1986 he moved to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness. On his death there in 1994, he was buried in the graveyard of St Clement’s Church, Old Romney. A gay right’s Read more…
As Jane Spencer in her introduction to Aphra Behn’s plays for Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1995) makes clear, the writer’s `colourful and mysterious life has swallowed up attention at the expense of her writing.’ Born circa 1640, records of her life while she was living it are sparse, patchy and Read more…
If anyone knows something about Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) it is likely to be about the way he died – by being murdered. They may know less about other aspects of his life and his immense achievements. Canterbury tries to rectify this by making much of its being the place where Read more…
For a writer whose work became progressively more minimalist and sparse of references even to his native Dublin, or the environment in Paris where he lived from the late 1920s till his death in 1989, Samuel Beckett’s use in his 1962-3 short theatre piece, `Play’ of the names of two Read more…
Father of English Poetry, as he was crowned a couple of hundred years after his death, Geoffrey Chaucer’s imprint on the physical and literary world of Kent is immense. Born probably in 1340, and dying in 1400, his career included service to King’s, administrator for customs, travels abroad on government Read more…
The great lexicographer, essayist, critic, editor and poet Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, educated at Oxford, and thereafter spent his professional life in London. One of his houses there, in Pump Court close to Fleet Street and The Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of hi favourite watering holes, Read more…
Penhurst Place in the western part of Kent is one of the country’s great and most complete Medieval buildings. Even in the words of as harsh a judge as John Newman in the Pevsner `Buildings of England’ series, the place wins this accolade: `There is no finer or more complete Read more…
The British poet Thom Gunn (1929-2004) spent most of his adult life in California, where be moved in 1954 to be close to his partner Mike Kitay. It is this more adventurous environment in which he produced his work after his first book of poetry came out in 1953. However, Read more…
In the 1930s, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was reportedly the world’s highest paid writer, feted in Hollywood, Europe and able to sell vast quantities of his work in the UK. Born in the British Embassy in Paris, where his father was the embassy lawyer, his mother tragically died of tuberculosis Read more…