Where Wind in the Willows Began

Ellen and I love the little seacoast town of Fowey, Cornwall. We came here for Daphne du Maurier but soon discovered another wonderful writer who is also locally celebrated — Kenneth Grahame.

Kenneth was a regular, frequent visitor who loved to "mess about in boats." It was from Fowey that he wrote letters home to his young son, Alison, with tales about a mole and a badger and a water rat and a toad and . . . well, you know.

It's not hard to see why a writer-inside-the-suit-of-a-Secretary-of-the-Bank-of-England would want to escape to a place like this.

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Cornwall is Daphne Du Maurier Country

When I was a young adult, there were no Young Adult books. But dear to my teenaged heart were the moody, suspenseful novels of Daphne du Maurier. Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, Jamaica Inn.

They were set on the craggy, windswept coast of Cornwall and were thick with atmosphere. Ellen and I happily spent a few charmed days in the tiny town of Fowey, where Daphne lived and wrote.

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