Browse below our selection of articles and features about famous British authors, poets and playwrights:
Jane Austen
Jane Austen’s appeal never fades. Maybe that’s why each year thousands of visitors continue to flock to Winchester in Hampshire to get closer to the ‘real’ Jane Austen…
Robert “Rabbie” Burns
Robert Burns is the best loved Scottish poet, admired not only for his verse and great love-songs, but also for his character and wit, his high spirits, ‘kirk-defying’, hard drinking and womanising!
Caedmon the first English poet
Caedmon is recognised as the first English poet composing his Hymn in Old English at Whitby Abbey in the 7th century.
Charlotte Bronte
The eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood. Her novel ‘Jane Eyre’ is widely considered a classic…
Lord Byron
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know’. That is how Lady Caroline Lamb described her lover, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron and one of the greatest Romantic poets in English literature…
William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee – the world’s worst poet?
Only a true word master could have thought of conveying the shock of The Tay Bridge Disaster to the people of Dundee with immortal lines like:
And the cry rang out all round the town,
Good heavens! The Tay Bridge has blown down…
William Shakespeare
The most famous of all English playwrights was born in 1564 and died on St Georges Day, in 1616. His birthday is (usually!) celebrated on 23rd April in Stratford-upon-Avon…
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, Scottish author, playwright and poet, creator of the modern historical novel – and responsible for the rise in popularity of tartan and Scotland as a tourist destination…
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The English poet Alfred Tennyson was born on 6th August 1809. He is the author of the famous poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, Poet Laureate, and one of the most quoted poets after Shakespeare…
Wilfred Owen
Tragically killed in action in France just days before the end of World War One, Wilfred Owen has become one of the nation’s best loved war poets…
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in the Uplands suburb of Swansea, South Wales on 27 October 1914, and whilst arguably the most famous Welsh poet of all time, paradoxically his literary work is written entirely in English…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The creator of the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson. These books would make a permanent impact on the genre of crime fiction….
William Blake
William Blake was a man of many talents: an engraver, poet, writer, painter and mystic….
The Mysterious Disappearance of Agatha Christie
Read about the curious disappearance of the world’s most famous mystery writer – Agatha Christie.
