Bespoke Literary Tours of England: AA Milne & Rudyard Kipling

Allow us to introduce you to our bespoke literary tours of England.  Private tours that are completely customisable.  An opportunity to visit locations where your favourite authors wrote, lived or sought inspiration.  We provide complete flexibility, door to door transport from your accommodation and nationwide transfers where required.

Let us take you through an itinerary that we created for some guests last year.  

Day 1 started and finished at our guests' accommodation in central London.   From there it was south to discover the landscape that inspired the stories of Winnie the Pooh.  We headed to Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.  6,500 acres of beautiful open heathland which became known as own to the world as the Hundred Acre Wood.  AA Milne and his son, Christopher Robin lived nearby and were great lovers of the outdoors,  It was the landscape of Ashdown Forest that inspired the adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  

We stopped by at the Enchanted Place.  This is a very poignant location in the book as it's where Christopher Robin sat down with Pooh and told him he was leaving to go to boarding school.  The plaque pictured above was unveiled by Christopher Robin Milne himself back in 1979.

Other spots include the Heffalump Trap, Gills Lap, Roo's Sandy Pit and even Eyesore's Sad and Gloomy Place.

No visit is complete without visiting the Poohsticks bridge for a game of you know what.  Close by you can find the homes of Piglet, Owl and the very special bear himself.  His post box is full of jars of honey left by well-meaning devotees.

We then headed to Pooh Corner in the nearby village of Hartfield where we had to try Pooh Toast and Hunny.

Then it was back to the road for the short journey to Bateman's, the beautiful home of Rudyard Kipling.

Built in the 17th century and surrounded by the landscape of the Sussex Weald, Bateman's was the home of Rudyard Kipling for over 30 years.  Born in India in 1865, Kipling became of the most celebrated authors of his generation and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.  Writer of classic works such as The Jungle Book, Kim, the Just So stories, Kipling moved into Bateman's in 1902.  It was while he lived here that he wrote Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, including the celebrated poem "If".

The house remains full of Kiplings belongings and artefacts, almost as if he has just popped out to the shops.

On display there is an edition of The Jungle Book signed by Kipling with a dedication that reads "This book belongs to Josephine Kipling for whom it was written by her father, May 1894."  Sadly Josephine passed away in 1899.  The fried of this loss influenced Kipling's later, darker works.  The Just So stories were created for her, in which he often referred to her as his Best Beloved.

This tour is available to be booked here ​https://www.liveforthehills.com/bookings.html