A richly illustrated guide to the literature and landscape of Norfolk
One of the places featured in Literary Norfolk
'Where the regal red poppies are born' - Beeston Hill, Sheringham, at the heart of the 'Poppy-Land' discovered by travel journalist and 'Poet of the Seaside' Clement Scott in 1883.
Enjoy what Jane Austen's Emma (1816) describes as 'the best of all sea-bathing places' at Cromer. Sail ashore with seventeenth-century 'Water Poet' John Taylor, follow in the footsteps of Poppyland pioneer Clement Scott - high along the cliff tops towards Sidestrand and 'The Garden of Sleep' - or brace yourself for a dip into the ocean with poet A C Swinburne. But beware of the giant black dog prowling the darkness so familiar to readers of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Rest at Judith Saxton's Harbour Hill (1991), reminisce with prolific Victorian author Compton Mackenzie, or share Cromer's 'atrophied charm' with travel writer Paul Theroux. While Felbrigg entertains Oscar Wilde, listen with Lilias Rider Haggard for the bells beneath the waves at Eccles - a 'tide-drenched' place seen by poet Anthony Thwaite as 'adhering thickly to the sea'. Look out from the top of Happisburgh church tower - across to the 'desolate' headland of P D James' Devices and Desires (1989). Pause for a moment at Mundesley where 'Castaway' poet William Cowper awaits the final 'stifling wave'. Share the heath and woodland of Sheringham with poet Stephen Spender or try tracking down the parish of 'St Just-near-Trunch', home to Norfolk's redoubtable folk hero Sid Kipper.
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