12 JAN – 16 JAN 2022
‘Georgian Hobart’: Meeting History Face to Face
This mini-tour offers talks and visits connected with Georgian Hobart. Explore quaint Battery Point on a guided walk, learn about the charming village of Richmond, and look around the historic, scenic and tragic Port Arthur. You will visit gracious Georgian homes and see some of the art of the era. There will be illustrated talks placing Hobart’s beginnings into their literary and historical contexts, and a fascinating look at those convicts who turned into authors. Follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin on his one and only visit to Tasmania in 1836, learn how he nearly died there, and see where he probably spent his 27th birthday. How did Marcus Clarke depict Tasmania in his Australian classic For the Term of His Natural Life, and in which places did he set his scenes?

11 OCT – 29 OCT 2024
Sicily: A Dimension of the Imagination 2024
Sicily was inhabited 10,000 years ago. Strategically located in the Mediterranean, it became a crossroads of history, a pawn of conquest and empire, and a melting pot for all who came to its shores. Palermo is said to be the most conquered city on earth! This tour gives you the opportunity to explore this seductively beautiful island from literary, historical and artistic angles. The land of the Cyclops has been praised by poets from Homer to Virgil and there have, over the centuries, been many visiting writers. From Cervantes to Truman Capote, Sicily has lured authors from other lands, and many of them have written evocatively about the ruins, food, rich culture and people. We will follow in the footsteps of many of these literary visitors, from Goethe to D.H. Lawrence, Cicero to Lawrence Durrell, Alexander Dumas to Peter Robb. Shakespeare set two plays on the island, although he never actually visited. View Sicily through the eyes of an intriguing range of great writers.

30 MAY – 17 JUN 2023
The Banks and Brae of Literary Scotland
This will be a cultural journey as well as a literary one, with visits to historic castles, to places of battle and massacre that have inspired ballads and songs, to sites connected with music such as Loch Lomond and the crossing to the Isle of Skye. We will look out for the legendary monster at Loch Ness, and will learn about the great architectural brothers Robert and William Adam. You will enjoy the contrasts of being in an elegant Georgian city one day and amidst wild scenery the next; you will visit grand homes and humble cottages; you will climb up a lighthouse, and search for otters. Libraries, those rich repositories of literature, are included, with private viewings of some of their treasures. In shops filled with literary memorabilia you can purchase or browse. Tartans and shortbread, banks and braes, whisky and wynds, bagpipes and haggis – all will add local colour and Scottishness to our journey.

19 JUL – 10 AUG 2023
Once upon a time in Scandinavia: A Literary Tour of Sweden, Denmark and Norway
The lands of fairy tales and fjords, Norse Gods and Vikings, have produced wonderful novels, plays and legends. This exciting new tour will explore classic Scandinavian authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, but will also include more modern authors such as Astrid Lindgren, famed for Pippi Longstocking, Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame, Nobel Prize winning authors Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset and the Nobel Prize Museum itself.