If only that dang kid didn’t have to be there.
Awww… Opie was one of the more likable TV kids.
Yes!
It’s based on a real house, owned by the author. It was built in 1125 as a Norman manor house, and is said to be the oldest continually inhabited private house in England. The oldest part has walls 3 feet thick and narrow Romanesque windows, but it’s actually not very big.
The Children of Green Knowe is the only example of a happy ghost story I’ve ever come across. It’s deeply moving in parts, and unforgettable.
That looks like exactly what I’m in the mood for right now.
setting of my favorite book , Watership Down
Where else but Blandings Castle?
For those not familiar, Blandings Castle is the idyllic home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, the fictional character in the hilarious P.G. Wodehouse Blandings series of novels and short stories. For a general impression, think Downton Abbey. Emsworth is blessed with good health and comfortable wealth, but is plagued by minor annoyances like his domineering authoritative sister Constance, his brother the Hon. Galahad Threepwood who is constantly getting into trouble but adept at getting both himself and Emsworth out of the binds they keep getting into, and a constant parade of visitors including pretty girls and crazed young men in pursuit of them. Other recurring characters are the rotund butler Beach, and (on and off) one Rupert Baxter, aka “the Efficient Baxter”, whom Constance insists on hiring as Emsworth’s private secretary to organize his life and duties, and which Emsworth finds ways to get rid of, because all he wants is to be left in peace in his library with a glass of port or to wander out on his beautiful grounds to commune with his enormous prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings. There is also Angus McCallister, the short-tempered Scottish groundskeeper whose wrath Emsworth is constantly at risk of invoking.
In the words of Evelyn Waugh, “for Wodehouse there had been no fall of Man – the gardens of Blandings Castle are the original gardens of Eden from which we are all exiled”. Or in the words of Susan Hill, “Wodehouse was a master of the language; he created an idyllic world, the perfect English pastoral; he was the cleverest plotter in the business and side-splittingly funny.”
A dear friend of mine wrote Wodehouse a fan letter when he was a kid and got a gracious, handwritten reply, which he treasured.
Bit of trivia, it’s pronounced “woodhouse.”
Wow, I would treasure that, too! I’d have it framed and put behind the glass doors of my “valuable” section of bookshelves. The closest I have to any kind of real Wodehouse authenticity is my collection of many original hardcover releases, both US and UK versions, some of them first editions, most with their original famously colorful cartoonish dust jackets, with Penguin paperbacks making up most of the rest.
I like the Blandings Castle stories much better than Wooster and Jeeves.
Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’ hotel Portmeirion, more commonly known as The Village. I couldn’t really say if I liked the Village because of the show The Prisoner, or the other way around, but – someone actually built all these buildings this way? (The same question I had at world fairs I went to as a child.) I still do architecture for a living, but my private designs don’t get built.
Sorry, the inside of the TV Cheers isn’t at all like the inside of the Boston bar it’s based on. There is another bar on the other side of Boston that I’ve heard imitates the TV version. Having not been inside of either one, I can’t say, but it’s a Boston story.
Well, I did ask for fictional locations.
I thought of another one this morning, Brother Cadfael’s TV workshop with its hanging herbs, cozy fire, and bottles of home brew. You would be well-cared for there.
I’ll gladly join What_Exit for a pint at the Prancing Pony in Bree. I’d also like to visit (and maybe stay awhile at) Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca, 221B Baker Street in London, the Bridge of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, the headquarters of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in Newark, N.J., the Ministry of Magic in London and Hogwarts School in Scotland, and naturally the courtyard of the White Tree in Minas Tirith.
This sounds like a great tour, now we just need the continuum device that will take us to these and other places. Where’s Lazarus Long when you need him?
Lazarus? We need Jake Burroughs and family, and Gay Deceiver.
Yes, exactly. Sorry about that.
But they really need to update the Irrelevancy Device’s controls (Jake seems to spend entirely too much time setting verniers).
For myself? Not so much a location per se, but I’d kinda like to meet Steve and Virginia Matucheck. Or perhaps take a vacation in Randall Garrett’s Plantagenet Empire.
From television: the real Good Place, where you are surrounded by good and ethical people, can do whatever you can dream of, visit any real or imaginary place and time, and when you are at peace you can Go On.
Kind of cheating, since by definition the Good Place includes every place…
…Frozen Yogurt!
My (Neo-Bhuddo-Atheist) son believes that when we die, we go to the afterlife that we’ve believed in/imagined/pictured in our minds.
So everyone in this thread might be imagining their own Good Place… When you get there, look for me in the cozy little pub* with Dorothy Parker, Robin Williams, Mark Twain, and Jeeves.
…
*Hmmm, can’t decide. The Hog’s Head? McGinty’s? The Crab And Lobster? The Prancing Pony? The Horse And The…Other Horses? Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon? Hope I have time to think this through.
Milliway’s, or the Big Bang Burger Bar?
The album cover of Fragile.
Witherington.