Part armchair travel, part reference, this is a journey into Britain's impressive literary and architectural heritage and an exploration of how beloved authors drew inspiration from their homes

Britain’s wealth of historic houses is acknowledged and admired throughout the world, as is its reputation for producing some of the greatest novelists, poets and playwrights of all time. Many of these leading writers lived, worked, and found inspiration in a variety of houses the length and breadth of the land. Offering insight into the daily routines of popular authors, this book looks at several authors' homes, examining how their surroundings affected their works. Among the homes and gardens examined are Agatha Christie’s secluded West Country retreat, the Worcestershire country seat that became the model for a grandiose ancestral pile in Evelyn Waugh’s enduring novel, Brideshead Revisited, Enid Blyton’s much-loved cottage garden in the leafy Thames Valley, the ancient, timber-framed residence in Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare spent his boyhood, and the moated house and garden in East Sussex that inspired the evocative setting for a Sherlock Holmes story.