Back in the ninth century AD King Alfred the Great made Winchester the capital of England. The city remained influential through the medieval period, thanks to its cathedral and royal connections, before eventually being eclipsed by London. Even today it remains a beautiful and historic city. It also holds a special place in the hearts of many lovers of English literature, mine included, as the final resting place of Jane Austen.
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It would be hard to visit Dorset without at some point coming across the name of novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. He is inexplicably linked to the county, so many places in which featured in his novels. On a recent visit to the county I found links to Hardy everywhere.
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'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.' With this sentence Karen Blixen opens her account of life on a coffee plantation just outside Nairobi. It was the 1920s, and this was British East Africa, not Kenya - part of the (by then fading) British Empire. The book presents a vivid, if at times uncomfortable, picture of African colonial life and the relationships between colonists and native inhabitants.
