Day 6 in Cornwall: Purely Pickwick

Listener mail is warmly welcomed 🙋‍♀️ Good evening. This is a photograph of the Leather Bottle Inn in Cobham, Kent, one of Charles Dickens’ favourite public houses, and features in tonight’s episode. I don’t like what the managers have done inside though and is what is now too common: a canteen style layout of tables for easy serving and plenty of diners; rather than a multitude of different seating areas, which is essential to give a pub its true English traditional charm. However, at least all is kept safe and not destroyed, such as the magnificent fireplace, so perhaps a future landlord will take it back to its former glory. Not my favourite of chapters, but Dickens does have a liking for ghoulish stories, as did his contemporaries. To counter all the romance and pure morals of the era? The fascination with insanity, crime against women and children, and the spirit world, was definitely a fashion of the times. I think I will continue with Anthony Trollope once we finish Barchester Towers. I find him easy to read and his observations are acute and style charming. But I must try to sleep now. I will only publish one more episode from Cornwall. This week has been just what was needed, to put a semi-colon between the mild, early autumn of house-clearing madness, and bitterly cold and windy late autumn 🍂, with sibling relations much better, money more liquid and the feeling, finally, of hope. Thank you for your part in keeping me afloat in the water. Love of family, fondness of friends, and kindness of strangers. All is possible with these things; nothing is possible without. I hope you are surviving too and maybe having a WONDERFUL autumn. Let me know, either way. Ask for a poem or reading. Share your joys or woes. Reach out, comme vous voulez 🫖🙋‍♀️📚 Support the show Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached over 90,000 downloads. I suggest you don’t try to listen in order, unless you’re very committed. Dip in and out, choosing an episode based on the title information. Whether you are interested in history, literature, poetry or one-to-one chatting, I try to give you something that will interest you. This is a podcast for the curious, the kind and - possibly - the suffering or lonely. Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏 Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, it’s ad-free. Gretel loves the world and history, architecture, literature and people. And so is determined to walk this path with light footsteps and with humour and warmth. Let’s gather up the beautiful things and ponder them in our hearts. Top 10 in Global Rankings according to Listen Notes. I would be so grateful if you would spare the time to give me a kind review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 😬☺️🥴 Previous guests include historian Tom Holland; Sir Richard Eyre; Actors Guy Henry and Enzo Cilenti; Art historian Philip Mould; Writer David Willem; Author Nicola Cornick; Historian (and ...