I recently started this blog and an Instagram profile to share some history stories that I’ve come across since moving to Madrid.
One of the hardest things was deciding what to call it. I spent ages trying to think of a word, pun or quote that would cover what I wanted to do.
The problem was, what I wanted to do was quite random. There wasn’t really a set theme, time period or place, just some interesting bits of history that I discovered.
So when I came across this quote by Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), I decided it was perfect. Stanhope was a British statesman, diplomat, and writer, who travelled extensively and had a keen interest in history.
It sums up the often confusing, random and accidental things that have happened in the past and why it’s hard to get your head around history sometimes!
So, check out my Instagram and please comment below with your favourite random fact about history!
I also do walking tours and have an audio tour of the Madrid river area- more information on the page here.
We complete our Shakespeare story aptly enough in the place that witnessed the beginning and the end; his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Holy Trinity Church is a witness to the start and the end of Shakespeare’s life.
Act III: Stratford-upon-Avon
“When I was at home I was in a better place”
As You Like It, Act II, Scene IV
I’ve been to this picturesque market town in the county of Warwickshire a few times and there’s no getting away from the Shakespeare connection. Understandably, the man himself is a gift for the tourist board and local businesses, including a ‘Shakespeare in Love’ wedding dress shop, the ‘Food of Love’ cafe, and even a distillery that makes ‘Judith’s Pink Gin’, named after his youngest daughter. Add to this countless street names, several statues, and a lot of souvenirs, they certainly make the most out of their world-famous local son.
The Gower Memorial in Bancroft Gardens not only celebrates the writer himself but also features bronze statues symbolising four facets of his creativity. These are represented by some of his best-known characters: Lady Macbeth (Tragedy), Falstaff (Comedy) Prince Hal (History) and everyone’s favourite angry young man: Hamlet (Philosophy).
You could argue that all this commercialism hints at what’s been called ‘Bardolatry’: an excessive admiration of William Shakespeare. However, with almost three million visitors a year and supporting thousands of jobs, you can’t blame anyone in Stratford for wanting to be a part of the fandom.
It’s showbusiness after all.
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre has kept most of its original 1932 Art Deco look with a few modern additions. The shop’s pretty good too.
It’s not all sound and fury signifying nothing though. Alongside the tea towels and cream teas, you can visit places with genuine* links to the family. His mother Mary Arden’s Farm, and his wife Anne Hathway’s Cottage are now both visitor attractions slightly outside the main town. However, you don’t have to walk far around Stratford’s centre to get an idea of Will’s own life here, when he wasn’t living and working in London‘s theatre district of course.
“Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I, Scene I
Shakespeare’s Birthplace still has a working glover’s workshop demonstrating the skilled trade from which his dad John made his living (alongside some dodgy wool dealing that got him into legal trouble a few times).
To begin at the beginning, let’s start with Shakespeare’s Birthplace on Henley Street. Once a simpler timber-framed tenement building with a small garden, it was where Will probably first saw the light from yonder window on 23rd April 1564. I say probably, we don’t know the exact date of his birth, only his baptism on the 26th is recorded. Also, his parents John and Mary had property on nearby Greenhill Street, so it’s possible that Will was born there. However, let’s give the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who run all five family sites, the benefit of the doubt. Certainly, the tourists who flock to have their photo taken outside the front door, or to see a recreation of his Tudor childhood home (no objects directly connected to Shakespeare survive) have no such qualms. They seem genuinely excited to be in the location where William spent much of his young life.
It was here that he got his first education from his mum Mary, but then had the opportunity to go to the local grammar school, which was to have a massive influence on his career.
“Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining-morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school”
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
The school was also the site of the Guildhall, where the town council regularly met. John Shakespeare had several roles in the town, from ale taster to alderman, but was removed from office for non-attendance.
A seven-year-old Will didn’t have to drag himself too far to get to school in the morning, as from his home was only a short walk to the King’s New School, on Church Street. The Tudor curriculum focussed on a Classical education (you were even expected to talk to your classmates in Latin) reading Virgil, Horace, and works by Ovid, a writer who influenced much of William’s later writings (the play within a play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Ovid’s myth of Pyramus and Thisbe).
It wasn’t all declensions and rhetoric though, there was always fun to be had when the building hosted troupes of touring actors. From Bible stories and Greek tragedies to legends of Robin Hood and St George and the Dragon, these plays must have sparked the muse of fire in the young Shakespeare. There is even speculation that Will himself may have tried his hand at acting at this point, and he likely made personal connections that would become useful in his later theatrical career.
His formal education ended at 14 – only the elite posh boys went to university in the 1570s. As the eldest son, he would also be expected to take up a trade to support the family. The Shakespeare’s fortunes were mixed in these early years; underhand wool deals, bad debt and accusations of money lending plagued the household. The farmlands given to Mary had to be sold off – I imagine she was furious about losing her inheritance and the stress on the family (and for Will to get a ‘proper job’) must have been immense.
“It is a wise father that knows his own child”.
The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene II
The family home of New Place is right next to Shakespeare’s old school.
From 1582, the 18-year-old Will also acquired the new responsibility of being a husband to wife Anne and father to baby Suzanna. Luckily for English literature, the trade he ended up choosing was the precarious life of an actor/playwright/poet/theatre manager in London. Down to substantial talent and probably a bit of luck, it turned out to be a roaring success, and in 1597, he could buy a fancy brick house for the family: New Place.
Bought from the Clopton family, the house passed from William to daughter Suzanna, then to her daughter Elizabeth. When it was sold back to the Cloptons, in 1702 they committed what would now be described as ‘heritage vandalism’: demolishing the house and replacing it with a more modern one.
However, even 250 years ago, Shakespeare tourism was indeed a thing. So much so, that in 1759 the owner Reverend Francis Gastrell was so sick of superfans disturbing him, that he cut down a mulberry tree allegedly planted by William himself and demolished the house.
The enraged citizens of Stratford basically ran him out of town. Good for them.
Recent archaeological investigations have shed light on New Place before its destruction, prompting extensive scholarly work to interpret the site’s history. Today, a beautiful Tudor knot garden occupies the space, featuring fruit trees and a kitchen garden that once provided essential plants for both household and medicinal needs.
While New Place is often associated with William Shakespeare, the site was primarily inhabited by the women of his family. His mother, Mary, wife, Anne, and daughters, Susanna and Judith, were the main residents. They managed the household and navigated William’s frequent absences due to his successful career as a theater impresario in London. With son Hamnet passing away at age 11 in 1596, and father John dying in 1601, this was a mainly female space until William’s retirement around 1613.
The house would pass to Suzanna, and Shakespeare’s relationship with his eldest daughter is a fascinating one. Some of his last plays (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest) all feature strained father-daughter bonds. You wonder what conversations happened in these last years of his life, spent in New Place.
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene I
The grave is a popular attraction; Holy Trinity Church is free to enter, but you have to pay £5 to access the altar and see it.
William Shakespeare died at New Place in 1616, aged 52 and was buried on the 25th April. It’s assumed that he died on the 23rd, his own birthday, which makes it easier to remember.
He was buried where he was baptised, in the medieval church of Holy Trinity. The grave itself is fairly simple, a stone slab in front of the altar, which was fairly unusual. Most people were interred in the graveyard outside, but Shakespeare paid £440 (a huge sum, ten times what he paid for New Place) for the income and rights of a tithe** that gave him and the family the opportunity to be buried in this prime spot.
Shakespeare’s grave is famous for having a curse as an epitaph, no doubt wrote by the man himself. So carved into the gravestone is this warning:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
He may have been genuinely worried that his fame could lead to ‘relic hunting’: someone digging up his bones and selling them as souvenirs. And you think tourism is bad today…
William lies alongside wife Anne, daughter Suzanna, son-in-law John Hall (a Puritan doctor) and Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law. His twins Judith and Hamnet were buried in the graveyard. Their graves are now lost and it’s not certain why they weren’t next to their parents.
Watching over the family from the wall to the left of the altar is a painted alabaster bust of Shakespeare. With its receding hairline, goatee, authentic quill, and parchment, it’s an instantly recognizable image. Created just a few years after his death, it’s also probably a good likeness—perhaps even commissioned by Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare played many roles in his life: son, brother, husband, father, landowner, theatre manager, and actor. However, the inscription beneath the monument asks the reader to remember, above all, he was a writer:
‘all that he hath writ, leaves living art but page to serve his wit.’
The youthful connections to Lancashire, the fame in London and the bitter-sweet family life in Stratford – all may be true, but it’s the words that remain.
The death registry entry for William Shakespeare – Gent.
*I have to add the historian’s disclaimer that there has been much ‘restoration’ work in the past 200 years to make all these places look more ‘authentic’. The original versions probably looked very different, so bear that in mind!
** Tithes were the right to collect 10% of the produce grown by the local people. This used to go to the church, but after the Reformation, lay people could purchase these rights. The money made from selling the excess produce would have provided a nice income for the Shakespeare family.
The (new) Globe theatre in 2017 decked out for a summer of love…
For the second part of my Shakespeare-themed travels, we head down to London, where William spent most of his adult life.
Act II: London
“Shall we go see the relics of this town?”
Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene III
From around 1590 to 1613 Shakespeare worked as an actor, playwright, and theatre owner in the bustling capital of 200,000 people.
At first, he lived north of the river in St Helen’s parish, but soon crossed over the Thames to Southwark, London’s main ‘entertainment’ hub. Shakespeare lived on Silver Street with French immigrant hat-makers, whereas I stayed nearby with an old school friend.
The bear-baiting arena and brothels that made the area infamous in the Tudor period have been replaced by eye-wateringly expensive modern apartment buildings and trendy food markets. However, glimpses of the Southwark that Shakespeare walked through daily can still be seen around you.
“That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”
Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II
The first purpose-built theatre to show Shakespeare’s plays was The Rose, built on Maiden Lane (now Park Street). Built in 1587 by entrepreneurs Phillip Henslowe and John Cholmley, it regularly showed plays by celebrity playwright Christopher Marlowe. However, it wasn’t in use for that long, a newer playhouse The Globe (more on that below) became more popular and The Rose was dismantled in the 1600s.
The Rose Court Office Block now sits on the site of The Rose. Vinyls on the windows give some information about this historical location, but it’s still underwhelming.
The Rose is actually more famous now for its modern rediscovery and the subsequent effect on British archaeology and town planning. We lay our scene in 1989, when the site was up for redevelopment. During a two-month excavation, and to everyone’s amazement, two-thirds of the original wooden foundations were discovered. The 14-sided irregular polygonal structure was the first Shakespearean theatre to be excavated, so everyone expected an immediate stop to the construction and for the site to be saved.
However, a (not very merry) war then broke out between the government, the developers of the office block, the archaeologists, and Shakespeare fans including Judy Dench, Ian McKellan, Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. The contractors were under no legal obligation to do anything and the government didn’t want to pay compensation for halting the process. Under real threat of destruction, finally the office’s foundations were altered, so that The Rose’s remains could be viewed by the public and preserved under a layer of water to protect the timbers.
A (now missing) Blue Plaque is supposed to mark the spot of The Rose Theatre. It’s not really clear what this place is, and how you can get inside to see the foundations.
The subsequent bad publicity and embarrassment led to the UK Government’s introduction of PPG-16, a planning document that ensures archaeological work is a part of any new development. This may have been good news for the heritage industry, but the site today is still a massive anti-climax. It’s not obvious that you can visit, it’s all looking a bit shabby and the thousands of visitors that come this way every year must be disappointed. As King Lear said: “The shame itself doth speak for instant remedy”.
“All the world’s a stage”
As You Like It, Act II Scene VII
The Globe site is marked with marble and brick inlays, showing the line of the gallery walls and staircase.
A few metres further down Park Street lie the remains of a much more famous theatre: The Globe. Shakespeare and a few of his acting mates bought the plot of land themselves and, using the timbers taken from another playhouse north of the river, constructed this new venue in 1599. Sadly, the thatched roof caught fire in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII (using cannons in a flammable building is NOT recommended). Quickly rebuilt the year later with a tiled roof, it was demolished in 1644 to be replaced with apartments, the new Puritan-led government having banned all theatre two years earlier anyway. Along with anything remotely fun in general.
A bronze commemorative plaque and some information panels stand in front of The Globe’s original location.
If you want to see what the original would have looked like, you only have to walk 250 metres round the corner to Bankside. Shakespeare’s Globe is a dream made real by American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, after 20 years of hard work and extensive research. Opened in 1997, it’s a faithful two-story reconstruction of the original (with more fire exits thankfully) and still delights modern audiences who can get up close and personal with the actors, in an immersive experience that Shakespeare himself would probably have recognised.
A few years ago I saw a fantastic Mexican-themed ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at The Globe, with the crowd enjoying the (cheekily added) anti-US jokes. Well, Trump had not long got in…
“I can see a church by daylight”
Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene I
While living in the neighbourhood, Shakespeare would have occasionally popped into his local place of worship: St Saviour’s Church, now called Southwark Cathedral. William’s brother Edmund is buried there, and a new stained-glass window commemorating The Bard’s life and works was installed in the 1950s (the Victorian original was destroyed during WWII bombings). The window features some of his famous characters, with an alabaster figure of Shakespeare lying underneath, literally. He’s shown reclining on his side, looking a bit bored with a sprig of rosemary in his hand in a ‘remembrance’ homage to his Hamlet.
Southwark Cathedral was closed for essential works the day I’d planned to visit.
I’d add more of my photos here, but in a tragedy worthy of the man himself, the cathedral was closed on the ONE DAY I decided to go. It’s a good excuse to come back next year, I’ll check the website beforehand though. Something Shakespeare never had to worry about before popping in.
“Would I were in an alehouse in London!”
Henry V, Act II, Scene III
As with all the best tours, we’re going to end our story in a pub.
The George is one of Southwark’s oldest pubs
Down a dark alley off Borough High Street sits The George: the only surviving galleried coaching inn in London. Rebuilt after a fire in 1676, it’s not the same building Shakespeare himself would have known, but he certainly frequented the previous medieval alehouse while living and working in the neighbourhood.
Pubs like this pop up in many of his works, and during the Elizabethan period it was usual for plays to be performed in tavern yards, with a hat passed around to collect the tips.
The balcony of The George is the perfect place to re-enact that Romeo and Juliet scene.
Sitting on the balcony of the upper gallery watching the crowd below enjoy a Saturday morning pint, I can imagine watching one of his plays right here. After a few beers, I could probably join in. Wherefore art thou Romeo? It’s your round, mate.
Next time: The town that witnessed Shakespeare’s birth, death and the beginning of the literary tourism industry: Stratford-upon-Avon.
Rowboats on the Avon. I probably wouldn’t choose the Ophelia one…
Shakespeare’s Funerary Monument in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon- Avon, where he was born and died.
Around this time every year, when Madrid can get up to 40 degrees and it’s too hot to do anything, I return to Britain for a month to visit family and friends.
By happy accident, my summer tour this year has had a Shakespeare theme, as three places I visited are linked with England’s most famous actor/director/playwright/poet. So, I’ve penned my own historical trilogy, exploring places tied to The Bard’s life and work.
So, if you can lend me your ears over the next few weeks, let us begin.
Act 1: Lancashire
“My friends are in the North”
Richard III, Act IV, Scene IV
The first stop on our travels is Merseyside/Lancashire; my ancestral home, but probably not the first place you’d associate with Warwickshire lad William Shakespeare.
Arriving in a cold and damp Liverpool in the middle of July, the weather was more tempest-like than a midsummer’s dream. To lift our spirits, my friend Lesley had the great idea of visiting The Shakespeare North Playhouse, somewhere I’ve been meaning to visit for a while.
“Is there no play,to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1
A conversation between architect Dr. Nicholas Helm and Shakespeare expert Professor Richard Wilson was the spark that led to the construction of Shakespeare North.
Opened in 2022, the building looks brand new from the outside with a cafe, bar, shop and rehearsal spaces, just like any modern theatre. But venture into its heart and you’ll find a reconstruction of a cockpit-in-court style wooden playhouse, the only one of its kind outside London and with all of its 470 seats mercifully indoors.
On this dark Tuesday night, we enjoyed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; performed brilliantly by a cast of only four women from The Handlebards, a group of traveling actors that move all their costumes, sets and props by bicycle. Their production was as madcap and funny as the play itself, with rapid costume changes, lovers getting dosed with the magic potion from water pistols, and audience participation that included snatching sweets thrown from the upper gallery.
The cast interacted with the audience before the start, dressed in orange ponchos to represent the fairy spirits in the play. In cheeky sprite style, they stole a few sips from our wine glasses too!
But what is a Shakespearean theatre doing a few miles east of Liverpool, in the small market town of Prescot? Well, back in Tudor times, there was also a theatre here, on the edge of the vast estate of the key players in our story: The Earls of Derby.
“Saw you the king to-day, my Lord of Derby?”
Richard III, Act I, Scene III
The Shakespeare North theatre has a small display on the Earls of Derby, Tudor Lancashire, and its links to the theatrical world.
The 4th Earl of Derby, Henry Stanley, was one of the most powerful men in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In the 1580s he was Ambassador to the court of King Henry III of France, a Privy Council member, and was directly involved in both the trial of Mary Queen of Scots and the negotiations following England’s clash with the Spanish Armada.
He was also a theatre buff, supporting the construction of Prescot’s playhouse in the 1590s. Built by local gentleman Richard Harrington, it is thought to have been the only purpose-built indoor playhouse outside of London. Sadly, it was only used for a few decades and has been lost to history, demolished at the end of the 1600s. As no original plans survive for this Prescot Playhouse, the new theatre’s layout was based on a 1629 design by architect Inigo Jones for the theatre inside The Palace of Whitehall in London.
The circular stage and close seating add to an intimate atmosphere similar to the original Stuart experience. The electric lights are safer though, and it’s probably a lot less rowdy. And with fewer outbreaks of the Black Death.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene VII
So who played at this Prescot theatre? We do know that the leading touring English acting companies of the day did travel the 200 miles from London up to Lancashire. They were paid to perform at Stanley’s main seat at Lathom House near Ormskirk (the town where I, in fact, was born) as well as other great houses of the northern gentry. These companies included The Queen’s Men, as well as Lord Strange’s Men, named after their patron Fernando, Lord Strange, the 5th Earl of Derby. This troupe, who with Shakespeare, would go on to form the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, based at the Globe Theatre in London.
This million crown question is did William Shakespeare himself ever leave London and perform some of his plays in Lancashire? This is a theory that scholars and historians have been debating for years, and the speculation is more wishful thinking than proven fact. No written records have been found that prove he ever came up this far. One of many ideas is that he stayed with his old Lancashire-born schoolmaster John Cottom as a young man. Perhaps he wrote and acted under the patronage of the Earls of Derby during his ‘Lost Years; the gap in Shakespeare’s life between his twin’s birth in 1585 and appearing in London in 1592. That one will probably remain a mystery, for all time.
Next time: We travel down to London to lost theatres and lively pubs in the back streets of Southwark.
“On its mile-high plateaux, their city was considered to be the top rung of a ladder reaching just this side of paradise.”
These words, penned by British author Laurie Lee, capture his first impressions of Spain’s capital on a scorching summer day in 1935.
Published in his 1969 memoir As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Lee’s vivid descriptions still resonate through Madrid’s streets today.
Born Laurence Edward Alan Lee (1914-1997), this young poet would go on to write travel books, radio plays, and short stories, along with some journalistic work. But it’s his autobiographical trilogy that really put him on the literary map. While most know him for Cider with Rosie, a lyrical ode to his Gloucestershire childhood, it’s the second book in the series that interests me. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning chronicles Lee’s brief but eventful stint in Madrid.
The year is 1935, and 21-year-old Lee, after a year of toiling on London building sites, decides he’s had enough. “I would be penniless and free, and could just pack up and walk away,” he writes. Armed with only a smattering of Spanish (he could ask for a glass of water) and a violin for busking, Lee buys a one-way ticket to Vigo, a port in Galicia. What follows is a year-long trek through western and central Spain, from July 1935 to July 1936. Lee’s journey is peppered with encounters both comic and tragic, set against the backdrop of a nation teetering on the edge of civil war.
The midpoint of Lee’s Spanish odyssey was Madrid, so I’ve taken a few of Lee’s quotes and paired them with my own photos from recent midsummers in the capital. The result gives us a glimpse into a city that’s thoroughly modern yet still echoes with traditions and an atmosphere that might well have felt familiar to Lee, even 90 years later.
A crystal platform
Lee frequently describes Madrid’s clear blue skies, especially appreciated in the cooler mornings after hellish nights of suffocating heat in cheap, bug-infested hostels…
“Then the sky was an infinity of bubble blue, pure as a diamond seen through water, restoring to life the sleepless sufferers who emerged with faces shining like plates.”
“Raised close to the sky, the city sparkled, as though the first to receive its light.”
“Indeed Madrid, the highest capital in Europe* , was a crystal platform at this early hour.”
Exquisite taverns
Lee spent most of his nights in bars, spending his busking money on wine, savouring the fantastic seafood on offer while listening to the animated conversations of the working-class locals.
“For Madrid at that time, if not today, was a city of a thousand exquisite taverns – water-cooled, barrel-lined, and cavernously spacious, cheap and affectionately run, in whose traditional shade the men, at least, spent a half of their waking time.”
“Nobody drank without eating – it would have been thought uncivilized (and may have been one of the reasons why no one was drunk). But then this sea-food, after all, was some of the best in the world, land-locked Madrid’s particular miracle, freshly gathered that morning from the far-away shores…”
But I think my most lasting impression was still the unhurried dignity and noblesse with which the Spaniard** handled his drink. He never gulped, panicked, pleaded with the barman, or let himself be shouted into the street.”
The heart of the city
Lee mentions specific locations he visited during his stay in Madrid, many of which are still visible today.
“The Gran Via itself had a lion’s roar, although inflated, like a circus animal’s – wide, self-conscious, and somewhat seedy and lined with buildings like broken teeth.”
“I went first to the Post Office to collect my letters, which I found filed under ‘E’ for ‘Esquire’ – one from a newspaper with a third prize for a poem, and one from my mother hoping my feet were dry.”
“I felt that Madrid was a city where I might make some money, so I went to theTown Hall to get the usual permission. The man examined my violin hummed, a few bars of Il Travatore, and said I should go to the Commisserat of Police…”
“I ended that night, my last in Madrid, with a visit to the Bar Chicote – not the prophylactic night-spot it later became for tourists, but a place of unassumingly local indulgence. More like a private room than a public tavern, it has an atmosphere of exhausted eroticism, and the girls sat quietly in the shadows…”
This is where I leave you…
Lee’s Spanish adventure didn’t end in Madrid. He pressed on to Almuñecar, a coastal town in Andalusia, where he found himself when the Spanish Civil War erupted in July 1936. Luckily for Lee, HMS Blanche came to the rescue. This British warship was patrolling the area, enforcing Anglo-French non-intervention policies and scooping up similarly stranded civilians. (HMS Blanche herself had a tragic fate, becoming the first British destroyer sunk by enemy action in World War II when she hit a mine in November 1939).
But Lee’s love affair with Spain was far from over. Back in England, he longed to join the Republican fight, so crossed the Pyrenees to join the International Brigades from 1937-38. These later adventures form the heart of A Moment of War, the final installment of Lee’s autobiographical trilogy, published in 1991. In it, he returns to a Madrid transformed by conflict – but that’s a tale for another day…
To find out more about Madrid’s literary traditions, check out the new book from The Making of Madrid writer Felicity Hughes. Her ‘A Guide to Madrid’s Literary District’ is available online and at The Secret Kingdoms, Madrid’s friendly local English language bookshop.
* Actually Andorra de la Vela, the capital of the small co-principality of Andorra is the highest capital in Europe at 1023 metres compared to Madrid’s 650(ish).
** The drinker pictured is from Nuneaton. It was an unusually quiet night in the bar Antonio Sanchez!
