Nobody has captured Autumn better and, as we kick through the leaves and conkers, take a tour with us celebrating the season of Keats and mellow fruitfulness.
Much is owed, or ode if you like to the Romantic poet.
For his 25 prolific poetic years on this Earth.
Not least for inspiring this Edinburgh Fringe poet who found beauty in his words, despite the mechanical teaching of school educators.
This year marks the 230th since the Great Man’s birth and centenary of the opening of Keats House in Hampstead, London.
A Regency house this splendid property is where Keats lived for two years in 1818 before he left for Italy.
And you get a true sense of time and place in the home where he wrote La Belle Dame Sans Merci, The Eve of St Agnes and Ode to a Nightingale.
Keats House at 100
The Hampstead House is key to the Keats story.
As his neighbours during these years were only the family of his muse and great love Fanny Brawne.
The new Keats House 100 exhibition and special displays will immerse you in how the house looked when it opened to the public in May 1925.
Entry to the exhibition is included in the £10 adults admission.
As are the 30-minute accessibility-friendly volunteer-led tours, which take place most Thursday, Friday and Sunday afternoons at 2.30pm.
In the spirit of poetry too the curators offer an introduction into Keats’s life and work.
In a ten-minute film here and give an airing to the beautiful Ode to a Nightingale, written in 1819 in the garden at Keats House.
Now it would be all horses in Keats’ day but for those coming by train, the nearest stations are Hampstead Heath (Overground), and Hampstead and Belsize Park on the Northern Line.
While buses 1, 24, 46 and C11 all stop nearby and there is a car park on East Heath Road.
Keats’ Autumn town
All very helpful to plan ahead as is the excellent Keats Locations blog.
Which takes us further afield and even to the exact spot in Winchester, Hampshire, on the south coast of England.
Where Keats had repaired to for his health and wrote that it was ‘the pleasantest town’.
And we’ll forgive him for the arcane superlative we wouldn’t entertain today.
And again ‘on one side of the city there is a dry chalky down where the air is worth six pence a pint.’
Keats, we are told, took a regular walk through the Itchen’s water meadows.
To the Hospital of St Cross and then back up over the downs.
And that it was on one September walk, looking down from St Giles Hill that he wrote ‘To Autumn’.
Classic Keats in Rome
The beauty of our tour, preened from these expert sources, is that we visit La Citta Eterna, Rome too, where Keats spent his final days.
And 26 Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the Spanish Steps.
This was, of course, the final dwelling place of John Keats, who died here in 1821.
And the patrons have preserved his bedroom in pristine fashion.
The Keats-Shelley attraction features a chain of beautiful rooms.
And a great many treasures and curiosities associated with the lives and works of the Romantic poets.
As well as one of the finest libraries of Romantic literature in the world, now numbering more than 8,000 volumes.
There are also two spacious terraces boasting stunning views, a book and gift shop.
And a small cinema room where visitors can watch an exclusive introductory film about the Romantics.
And for those really serious Keatsophiles they should take a trip to the city’s cemetery for non-Catholics, the Cimitero Acattolico in Testaccio.
So wherever you celebrate him make this the season of Keats and mellow fruitfulness.