Author

Extract

From 1831 Andersen began to travel widely in Europe and soon realised that his reputation as a writer of fairy stories, plays and novels was more firmly established abroad than in his native Denmark...

With an Irish background, but educated in Kent where she lived as a child, and where she later retired, Elizabeth Bowen was best known for her novels ‘The Death of the Heart’ (1938), ‘The Heat of the Day’ (1949), and her short stories, many of them inspired by the war...

The hero of the novel, Hannay, is trying to stop German spies from returning to Germany with important information...

He never alluded to Broadstairs in his writings yet he spent part of 1824 in the town, possibly visiting Dickens...

S...

It was Broadstairs which provided the inspiration for its title...

Dickens entertained extensively at Broadstairs and was often inviting his friends to stay...

Mr and Mrs Dickens entertained a great deal in Broadstairs...

Ballard was the landlord of the Albion Hotel, where Dickens and his family frequently stayed...

Dickens was obviously enjoying the summer in Broadstairs when he wrote this letter entreating his friend Mark Lemon and his wife to come visit the family in Broadstairs...

By 1849 Dickens knew Broadstairs very well...

Dickens knew Broadstairs sufficiently well to expect certain things there...

However he is left with the only other alternative, which was to use the roads – a far less comfortable and easy way of travelling...

The weather being stormy Dickens ‘has no other choice but to return by land’ and seems to regret not being able to make use of the steam-boats...

Unfortunately for Dickens, the town gained in popularity in the mid-nineteenth century especially during the summer months...

By the time this letter was written (1843) Dickens knew Broadstairs well and had come to establish certain routines there as this letter delightfully depicts in which Dickens christens himself Boz, his early pseudonym...

In this letter to his friend Macready, Dickens ‘solemnly declares’ his affection for Broadstairs and proclaims it to be ‘the finest feature in all creation’...

By 1849, when this letter was written, Dickens was well acquainted with Broadstairs and with its unpredictable weather...

Dickens gives a delightful portrayal of Broadstairs in this letter to his friend Miss Allan...

Although the fictitious donkey-chaser, Miss Betsey Trotwood, lived in Dover, her real-life equivalent, Miss Pearson Strong, lived in Broadstairs along Victoria Parade...

Fond of Broadstairs as he was, Dickens was however not oblivious to the dramatic weather that it could host, nor to the fact that it was chosen by many (including himself) as a place of pure air and therefore beneficial to the health...

The situation must indeed have been unbearable as it nearly drove Dickens from the town he cherished so much as he mentions in this letter to John Forster...

Dickens was very fond of Broadstairs and this is no doubt due in part to the fact that he used it as a convalescence retreat...

In a succession of letters to friends, she described her delight in her holiday surroundings...

Although of the two Weedon had the most fruitful literary career, the Grossmith brothers joined forces to write The Diary of Nobody (1896) the comical account of an office worker, Charles Pooter, who overestimates his sense of humour and has an exaggerated idea of his own importance, much to the amusement of those around him...

Pooter’s description of the town, mentioning the cliffs and the Parade, is such that the Weedon brothers must have known it themselves...

His status and reputation were such that he got to the stage where he wielded political influence and turned into a prominent public figure, to the extent that he thought he had a place in the Versailles Peace talks at the end of the First World War...

However being physically and emotionally more delicate than his brothers, he did not join the army but proceeded to study and win several literary prizes...

Munro saw his responsibility as a poet as being of high importance and consequently, despite his reserved disposition, set out to advance the cause of poetry in England...

He status and reputation were such that he got to the stage where he wielded political influence and turned into a prominent public figure, to the extent that he thought he had a place in the Versailles Peace talks at the end of the First World War...

It later became a boys’ school and is now divided into private residences...

‘Let no man henceforth ever trifle with Fate so far as to actually seek boredom...

At the age of five, the poet and novelist Stevie Smith was diagnosed with tubercular peritonitis...

Arthur Waite came to Britain from New York as a child...

Wilde stayed at the Albion Hotel in Broadstairs in July 1883 before giving lectures at Margate and Ramsgate...