Gently elbowing my way through a horde of excited, chattering schoolchildren, I found a small, unassuming writing table in a corner of the dining room. No larger than an occasional table for a pot plant, perhaps, yet here was the very place where Jane Austen sat with her quill pen and wove irresistible tales of the English landed gentry. At this table she completed Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and more. In 2017, Visit England’s Year of Literary Heroes, special events were held around the country to celebrate writers from Arthur Ransome to Arnold Bennett and characters from Harry Potter to Sherlock Holmes. The bicentenary of Jane Austen’s death, in 1817, played a central part. Most people associate Austen with the city of Bath but the school group and I came in search of her in the village of Chawton, where she lived from 1809 until shortly before her death in Winchester in 1817. The journey is one I’d gladly undertake any time (perhaps in summer next time, for Regency Week, an annual celebration of Austen’s life, held in late June). The lanes approaching the village are hugged by woodland and gently undulating crop fields. Now, in late autumn, the quietude was disturbed only by skittering dry leaves and I could almost imagine Miss Austen somewhere up ahead, riding in a little carriage. It was hard to believe that Basingstoke and Winchester lie less than 20 miles distant, and the M3 at such close range.
HARVEY MILLS © VISIT WINCHESTER