{"id":2208,"date":"2026-11-02T10:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T10:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/checking-in-to-a-fictional-world-the-enduring-appeal-of-literary-hotels\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T10:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T10:50:20","slug":"checking-in-to-a-fictional-world-the-enduring-appeal-of-literary-hotels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/checking-in-to-a-fictional-world-the-enduring-appeal-of-literary-hotels\/","title":{"rendered":"Checking in to a fictional world: the enduring appeal of literary hotels"},"content":{"rendered":"
Burgh Island is a tidal island off the southern coast of Devon and is famed for its association with Agatha Christie.<\/span> Mark Naylor\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At a literary event at Burgh Island Hotel in south Devon recently, the novelist Catherine Newman remarked that whenever she looked down from the island\u2019s steep cliffs while walking, she half-expected to discover a body. <\/p>\n

It was an apt response to a place that helped inspire Agatha Christie\u2019s crime novels, including Evil Under the Sun<\/a>. In the novel, Christie makes the island\u2019s isolation part of the mystery. When character Emily Brewster remarks, \u201cThis isn\u2019t the sort of place you\u2019d get a body\u201d, the famous sleuth Hercule Poirot responds: \u201cBut why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Burgh Island is more than a beautiful art deco hotel. Its cliffs, tidal causeway and isolation are geographical realities, but Christie transformed these features into elements of a fictional world. Generations of readers have since learned to see the island through her stories.<\/p>\n

This is part of what makes literary hotels so fascinating. Some are associated with writers\u2019 lives, others with the places where they worked. A third group has become part of the fictional worlds themselves.<\/p>\n

Inside Agatha Christie\u2019s favourite hotel that inspired her books.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From writers\u2019 lives to fictional worlds<\/h2>\n

Years ago, shortly after moving to Lancaster, I spent a night in a hotel where Dickens once lodged. There was a certain pleasure in knowing that he had been there before me, but the connection was historical rather than literary. The hotel belonged to Dickens\u2019s life, not to the fictional world he created.<\/p>\n

Other hotels offer a more direct connection to the act of writing. Poet Dylan Thomas\u2019s relationship with Brown\u2019s Hotel<\/a> in Laugharne, south-west Wales, belongs to this category. He would walk from the Boathouse<\/a> where he lived and wrote, into the town, spending time at Brown\u2019s. <\/p>\n

\n \"The
\n Dylan Thomas gave out the phone number for the bar at Brown\u2019s Hotel as his own personal contact number.<\/span>
\n James Hime\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Such places offer a glimpse of the circumstances in which writers lived and worked. But a writer\u2019s presence does not necessarily tell us how a particular story came into being. The relationship changes when a hotel enters fiction itself.<\/p>\n

Hotels are particularly adaptable settings for fiction. They bring strangers together in temporary communities, creating opportunities for encounters, misunderstandings and suspicion. In detective fiction, they can also provide a ready-made sense of enclosure: a place where characters are brought together and escape becomes difficult.<\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n Why the places we love in books can never quite be found in real life<\/a>
\n <\/strong>
\n <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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Christie stayed at Burgh Island<\/a> and wrote in its Beach House, drawing on its distinctive geography. In And Then There Were None, the island features an unnervingly modern house; in Evil Under the Sun, it becomes the fashionable Jolly Roger Hotel.<\/p>\n

The island\u2019s isolation is real, but Christie transformed it into something more. In her novels, the landscape becomes part of the machinery of suspense. Knowing the stories can therefore change how visitors experience the place itself. A tidal causeway is no longer simply a route across the water; it becomes a reminder that an island can be cut off from the outside world.<\/p>\n

\n \"The
\n The Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor was built in 1750.<\/span>
\n PJ photography\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A similar phenomenon can be seen at Jamaica Inn<\/a> on Bodmin Moor. Daphne du Maurier\u2019s experiences at the inn helped inspire her 1936 novel of the same name. <\/p>\n

During an early visit, she and her companion became lost in mist and darkness on the moor while riding, eventually finding their way back with the help of their horses. The experience of isolation and uncertainty echoes through the novel, in which the inn stands as a \u201cgrim landmark\u201d in a desolate landscape.<\/p>\n

In both cases, the relationship between place and fiction works in two directions. The real landscape provides material for the story, while the story gives the landscape a new identity.<\/p>\n

A literary afterlife<\/h2>\n

The King\u2019s Arms Hotel<\/a> in Dorchester illustrates how these three categories can overlap. Novelist Thomas Hardy stayed there, wrote there and incorporated the building into The Mayor of Casterbridge<\/a> as the principal hotel of Casterbridge.<\/p>\n

The building therefore belongs both to Hardy\u2019s biography and to his fiction. During his lifetime, the King\u2019s Arms became part of the emerging literary geography of Wessex<\/a>, attracting readers eager to connect fictional locations with real ones.<\/p>\n

Hardy helped foster this connection by revising his novels and prefaces to emphasise Wessex, the fictional region based on real places in south-west England. The King\u2019s Arms was no longer simply a hotel where Hardy had stayed; it had become part of the landscape his readers came to explore.<\/p>\n

Across Britain, hotels, houses and inns continue to attract visitors through their associations<\/a> with writers and books. Some offer a glimpse into an author\u2019s life, while others allow readers to encounter places that have become inseparable from the stories told about them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an important distinction because a hotel where a writer once stayed can bring us closer to literary history. A hotel that has entered fiction offers something different: the chance to experience a place through a world we first encountered on the page.<\/p>\n

Literary hotels make visible the relationship between literature and the world beyond it. The buildings are real, but their significance is continually reshaped by the stories attached to them and the readers who arrive in search of those stories. In this sense, visiting a literary hotel is not simply a journey into the past. It is also a way of stepping, however briefly, into a fictional world.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Rebecca Hutcheon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burgh Island is a tidal island off the southern coast of Devon and is famed for its association with Agatha Christie. Mark Naylor\/Shutterstock At a literary event at Burgh Island Hotel in south Devon recently, the novelist Catherine Newman remarked that whenever she looked down from the island\u2019s steep cliffs while walking, she half-expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}