Pt 3 - 9: LITERALLY LITERARY 1 The Percy Hobbs on the outskirts of Winchester is famous as the very first of many genuine country public houses I visited in a dedicated in-depth study of country pubs all over the UK and Ireland. An actual house thrown open to the public it was small, intimate, friendly and warm with a jolly, rotund ruddy-faced innkeeper, hearty home-cooked fare and a nice line in Murphy’s Irish Stout. We arrived here late on the afternoon of a day which began with a lazy breakfast in Chiswick followed by a leisurely drive down the A31. I have to say I wasn’t too sad to leave the big smoke behind. Chawton, Jane Austen’s family home in Alton, Hampshire, was our first stop on a mostly literary circuit which would take us in a wide arc south, then west and loop us back to London. I liked Chawton straight away for its lack of pretence. Preserved pretty much as it was when the last Austen walked out of the house more than a hundred years ago, there’s a gentle atmosph...
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