Fun Things to Do

You can’t get away from book clubs these days. The phenomenon of people getting together to talk about the book they’ve just read is hugely popular.

Have you ever thought of going away as a book club together? Sounds like fun but a bit of a hassle? English Book Club Breaks will organise the whole thing for you. They are based in the lovely but little-known Pennine areas of Saddleworth and Marsden, and specialise in writers who have taken their inspiration from the cities and stunning landscapes of northern England.

Flexible Literary Breaks

Whether you’re an individual, a couple or a small group, English Book Club Breaks have ‘ready-made’ breaks based on classic northern writers like Elizabeth Gaskell or the Brontes. But if you’re a larger group (6 +) you might opt for a break based on a northern writer of your choice. You may have been reading novels by Beryl Bainbridge or Jane Rogers, a play by Shelagh Delaney or Alan Bennett or the poetry of Simon Armitage. English Book Club Breaks are flexible - they can tailor a holiday to suit you.

All you Need is a Love of Books

There’s a choice of accommodation. You choose to stay in a moorland hotel, a self-catering farm cottage or even a mill-owner’s mansion. As well as a relaxing and sociable break, book lovers will have a change of scene that brings new insights into literature – much more energising than just sifting through the Sunday papers’ recommended reads.

English Book Club Breaks will also be attractive to family historians. If you have discovered family roots in the north of England, standing in a Pennine cemetery, on a windswept moorland or in the yard of a Victorian mill vividly recreates the world of your ancestors, worlds which have also been immortalised in classic fiction.

And the Time Seems to be Right

Manchester, for instance, is promoting its important cultural and historical heritage. Elizabeth Gaskell’s house on Plymouth Grove is receiving an expensive facelift, while nearby Knutsford is preparing for the bicentary anniversary of her birth in 1810. In the last ten years, there have been no fewer than four major BBC adaptations of Gaskell’s novels – the most recent a second instalment of Cranford shown at Christmas 2009. Saddleworth is often chosen for its atmospheric locations in films such as Brassed Off and Yanks. It’s just been the turn of the bleakly beautiful Heights Church to feature in the most recent version of Wuthering Heights (2009). In addition, the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth re-opened in Spring 2009 after a major refurbishment.

At a time when, for both economic and ecological reasons, jetting off for a city break has lost much of its appeal, English Book Club Breaks offers an appealing and original alternative.

More Information
www.englishbookclubbreaks.com