Sissinghurst: a writer’s garden

This tiny island has long been considered a magical, haunted place steeped as it is in lore, myth, and mysterious history.

Many of Jane Austen’s novels were written in this house in the tiny village of Chawton in East Hampshire, where you can step back in time … and into the pages of her life.

Ruined castles, picnics on the moor, secret tunnels, smugglers’ caves, buried treasure. Yes, Enid Blyton introduced me to all of these too many years ago. When I visited the real-life places that inspired her novels, I couldn’t help but be inspired too!

Geraldine Brooks novel of the plague, A YEAR OF WONDERS was inspired by an amazing event in a real-life village in Derbyshire.