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Take a tour of England's literary hot spots

If not for London and the Queen's done-to-death Buckingham nest, you can always visit England for the charming literary haunts it has to offer. One doesn't need to be a lover of English literature to want to see Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's home, two hours from London.

Tourism in the Warwickshire countryside, along the river Avon, is geared towards the Bard and has five beautifully preserved houses linked to him. The market town has tours, cafes, memorabilia, books and stationery galore, and a weekly local market that's a real crowd-puller. Check www.stratford-upon-avon.co.uk.

About an hour from London is Chawton in Hampshire. It was in a 17th-century house in this village that Jane Austen penned some of her best works. The Jane Austen House Museum is remarkably well preserved and a short walk away is her church and an old library.

Across the road from her house is a charming little tea room called Cassandra's Cup, named after her sister, on whom a lot of her characters are based.

And then, literature meets play. Dickens' World, something of a theme park in Chatham, is one hour away and southeast of London in Kent. A haunted house, a Great Expectations boat ride, a lantern show that illustrates Dickens's travels across the globe, and a very quaint-looking pub: this place takes literature to another level. Visit www.dickensworld.co.uk. Dickens' House Museum in London also makes for an interesting visit and a few walks around the Southwark area in the city follow in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, his life and works.

Follow this up with a drink at the place where poet John Dryden was supposedly nearly killed, the 300-year-old Lamb and Flag Pub in Covent Garden in London. It's full of old-world charm and has seen Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Amis, and the Bloomsbury Group among its customers.

And what is today one of London's most popular open spaces, the green and willow-filled Hampstead Heath, has much literary history to recount. Celebrated poets Shelley and Keats famously strolled together here, and some writers, including D H Lawrence, lived in the area.

Testifying to its literary fame, a sculpture titled "The Writer" "" a giant table and chair, 30 ft tall "" was installed in the park in 2005. Designed by Italian artist Giancarlo Neri, it was intended to be "a monument to the loneliness of writing".