DAY 6: OF TWO WARS AND THE WARS WITHIN

Ftom 9:00 until 19:00 = 1914 to 1960

Introduction: This second to last day of our tour will take place in the years between the Victorian and the Postmodernist Periods. This time brings to mind the greats of our language: T.S Eliot, Yeats, Orwell, Forster, and (perhaps one of the most famous manic-depressives and suicides in literature) Virginia Woolf. In this period, we see what is easily recognisable as the ascendance of literature as we know it now. But we must forego the introduction to immediately delve into the lives of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway... and their premature deaths.
Locations: The Life and Death of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Our first location will be the Talland House, St Ives, Cornwall: Adeline Virginia Woolf spent every summer here until she was thirteen, and this is the place of her most vivid memories. So vivid, in fact, that the impressions and landscapes found here can also be found littered in her works (The Lighthouse, in particular.) After repeated sexual abuse by her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, and the deaths of both parents and a sister which led to two consequent nervous breakdowns, Virginia moved to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury: our second location. While she stayed there, she attended King's College, Cambridge. It was there that she found a group of friends, and one close friend in particular: a man called Leondard Woolf. She married him two years after meeting him, and they shared a close and intimate marriage. They even started a publishing company together. But the encouragement of her husband couldn't save this talented woman from her inner demons: her periodic depression and hypermania drove her to frequent breakdowns...and a lot of writing. Our final destination in her life will be her home in Rodmell, Sussex. It was here on the morning of 28 March 1941 that Virginia Woolf filled her overcoat pockets with stones, left a letter to her husband, and then drowned herself in the River Ouse. Here, while sitting on the green banks of the river, we can eat lunch and imagine the depths of despair into which this genius of literature plummeted.

Above: Virginia Woolf

Above: A map of the area that Virginia Woolf must've once explored

Above: Virginia and Leonard Woolf

2. The Life and Death of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) This writer was born in Oak Park, Illonois (Chicago): this upper-class, strictly Protestant suburb will be our first location. As a young boy, and all through his long life, Hemingway had an eye for adventure... always in some scrape or other. This spirit led him all over the globe: New York, Italy, Paris, Toronto, Chicago, Kansas City, Nairobi, Kenya, the Bahamas, Cuba, Spain and finally Idaho. So many locations that his presence was felt... so many memorials left where his heavy foot trod... why not visit all of 'em? We will go on a wild, wacky and wonderful worldwide tour of every strange place that Ernest Hemingway visited, wrote and got (greviously) injured! This will undoubtedly exhaust us... but perhaps we can handle one more location: where he committed suicide. Two days after being released from hospital after his first attempt, and five bouts of EST (Electroshock Therapy), he grabbed a gun from the cabinet in his home in Ketchum, Idaho and shot himself. So ended the eventful life of Ernest Hemingway: alcoholic, writer, American, adventurer, and sorely missed by his fans.

Above: Ernest Hemingway with his favourite shotgun that he used for hunting... and to kill himself.

DAY 4: QUOTH THE RAVEN, "NEVERMORE."

From 9:00 to 19:00 = 11798-1832 (Romantic Period)

Introduction: This explosive period in literature, which happens to be my favourite, was a direct and intense reaction to the "sensibility" and "rationalism" of the Age of Enlightenment. Writers in this period gloried in the beauty of wild, untamed and pure nature... and in the complexities of the human mind itself. Sometimes dark, always emotional and very evocative. Ah, this time period was passion: raw, painful and sometimes self-destructive passion. Everything in the arts, if it be musical or artistic or literary, was intense. And this intensity, which is most pronounced in the gifted, could push some over the edge...

Locations: The Life and Death of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) What Romantic tour would be complete without him! He is the perfect example of the tortured genius. Our first location will be where he was born in 1809: Carver Street, Boston, Massachusets (yes, he was American). His father abandoned the family when Poe was one, and his mother died of consumption (TB) when he was two. In this location, a museum for him (like in many places he lived in) has been built. The second location we visit will be the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, where Poe started studying languages in 1826. At that time, the university was in total chaos, with a high dropout rate. Poe's gambling debts and excessive drinking finally caught up with him: having no money for schooling, he left after attending for one year. It's here that we can grab lunch. Sadly, for the next location we must fast-forward over his troubled and anguished life (which included time in the army, lost love, family deaths, writing, more debt, disownment, court-martialling, more death, alcohilism, incest, popularity, two marriages and an engagement, and penury) to the streets of Baltimore. It was on those streets, in October of 1839, that Poe was found delirious and incoherent... and not in his own clothes. There is a memorial where he was found. Our last location in his life will be, strangely, where he died: Washington College Hospital on Broadway and Fayette Street. Many theories exist on the causes of death: suicide, murder, delerium tremens (caused by alcohol), heart disease, epilepsy, meningeal inflammmation and rabies. We can eat supper at the Raven's Perch along the same road that the great Edgar Allan Poe breathed his last, and discuss the links between the literature and art of the Romantic Period.

Above: Edgar Allan Poe suffered from Manic Depression

Above: Edgar Allan Poe's Birth Memorial

Above: The Memorial in Baltimore