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The English Counties Challenge


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1 hour ago, Madeleine said:

I've put the Essex Serpent as my Essex book, as there aren't that many books set there unless they're about witches or gangsters!  So it made a nice change to read about something different for once.

 

Another one that would fit there, I think, if you wanted to avoid witches and gangsters (!) is Secret Water - the Arthur Ransome book.  This was possibly my favourite in the Swallows and Amazons series when I first read them.

 

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  • 5 years later...

Hello, i will try this challenge 

 

 

After seeing a link to another challenge for the US, poppyshake and I thought it would be fun to do the same thing for English Counties.  The idea is to read the most famous book from each county.  Below is a list of all the current counties in England with the most famous book(s) for each one, as we have discussed on this thread.

1. Bedfordshire - My Uncle Silas by H. E. Bates
2. Berkshire - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
3. Bristol - The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young
4. Buckinghamshire - The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
5. Cambridgeshire - The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
6. Cheshire - Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
7. City of London - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
8. Cornwall - Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
9. Cumbria - Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome [alt. The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg]
10. Derbyshire - Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
11. Devon - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie or The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
12. Dorset - Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
13. County Durham - Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
14. East Riding of Yorkshire - South Riding by Winifred Holtby
15. East Sussex - Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne
16. Essex - The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
17. Gloucestershire - Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
18. Greater London* - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
19. Greater Manchester - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
20. Hampshire - Watership Down by Richard Adams
21. Herefordshire - On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
22. Hertfordshire - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
23. Isle of Wight - England, England by Julian Barnes [alt. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (this book is only briefly set on the Isle of Wight but that particular section is famously associated with it)]
24. Kent - The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates
25. Lancashire - Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
26. Leicestershire - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
27. Lincolnshire - The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
28. Merseyside - An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
29. Norfolk - The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
30. North Yorkshire - Dracula by Bram Stoker [alt. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot]
31. Northamptonshire - Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
32. Northumberland - The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin
33. Nottinghamshire - Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
34. Oxfordshire - The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
35. Rutland - Set In Stone by Robert Goddard
36. Shropshire - Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse
37. Somerset - Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
38. South Yorkshire - A Kestral For A Knave by Barry Hines
39. Staffordshire - The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
40. Suffolk - The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
41. Surrey - Emma by Jane Austen or The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
42. Tyne and Wear - Another World by Pat Barker
43. Warwickshire - Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes
44. West Midlands - Middlemarch by George Eliot
45. West Sussex - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
46. West Yorkshire - Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
47. Wiltshire - Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
48. Worcestershire - The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
 
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/7/2023 at 9:00 PM, Clara Rosager said:

Hello, i will try this challenge 

 

 

It's really good fun - I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Good luck, and do let us know how you get on (I moved on to a United States version!).

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