World Book Day: Portsmouth's rich literary history, from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to Neil Gaiman

World Book Day is celebrated in more than 100 countries, with millions of people including teachers, pupils and parents participating in the United Kingdom. One of the main aims of the day is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own.

Here in Portsmouth, we are blessed with a rich literary history – and even today, still have some world-class writers who call the city their home.

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More than 200 years ago, Charles Dickens was born in what is now Old Commercial Road. The novelist and social critic is considered to be the greatest writer of the Victorian era, penning masterpieces such as Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.

His birthplace in Buckland has been turned into a museum, and his birthday is celebrated outside the building every year.

Another world-famous writer who called Portsmouth his home was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Best known for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he actually wrote the first two books – A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four – while living in Elm Grove, Southsea, during the 1880s. He was initially here to set up a doctor’s practice, but once his writing career took off that became his main focus.

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One lesser known fact about Conan Doyle is that he was also an excellent footballer, playing in goal for the team that would eventually become Portsmouth Football Club.

Further along Southsea, a brisk walk over to Campbell Road will show a blue plaque dedicated to writer Rudyard Kipling, who lived in the city when he was a young boy between 1871 and 1877.

Perhaps best known for his war poetry, Kipling lost only son, John, in the First World War.

Another great writer to have lived in Portsmouth was H.G. Wells, who wrote The War of the Worlds in the late 1890s. He came to Portsmouth for two years but admitted to despising the city, calling it ‘the most unhappy, hopeless period of my life.’

Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sanditon and many more novels, frequented Portsmouth to visit her brothers, who were in the Royal Navy. Like Wells, she wasn’t particularly keen on the city either.

Casting our minds forward to today, and the city still has a strong connection to the literary world.

Hayling Island author Pauline Rowson has taken inspiration from Portsmouth, Southsea and Port Solent for her DI Andy Horton series, and Neil Gaiman – best-known for The Sandman, Good Omens and the Dr Who episode Nightmare in Silver – lived in Portchester, then Purbrook and Southsea, when he was younger.