Pottering poetically: Following in the footsteps of our hike-loving literary giants in Somerset’s beautiful Quantock Hills and across Exmoor (via a few good pubs, of course) Coleridge and Wordsworth spent time galumphing around the Quantock Hills in Somerset in the 18th century The Daily Mail’s Ed Cumming traced the Romantic poets’ steps on a four-day, … Read more
This golden spot on the Welsh side of the border with England has been called the birthplace of British tourism. Staying at Gliffaes, an ultra-comfy country house hotel in the Usk Valley, I persuade the owner, James Suter, to take me on to the leads of the roof. He points to the Brecon Beacons on … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK RADICAL WORDSWORTH by Jonathan Bate (William Collins, £25, 608 pp) The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge spent Christmas Day 1806 with his close friend William Wordsworth, together with Wordsworth’s wife Mary, her sister Sara Hutchinson and Wordsworth’s own sister, Dorothy. Two days later, Coleridge bolted from the house. Taking refuge in the … Read more