It is possible that alexia75 is right, and that I am wasting my time, here, but I cannot believe it (despite the dreary evidence that militates in favour of the proposition that Potterficcers do not care about making their fics recognisably British, much less informed by history and a sense of place). I will continue to believe – faith being the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen – that there are those who will profit by this.

So. Let us look at further resources available almost everywhere to the Potterfan who wishes to earth his fic in the real soil of Britain.

Have a rather grand character with holdings in the country? The Countryside Alliance has a website, as does the Scottish Countryside Alliance.  So too does the Masters of Foxhounds Association. (I wonder: now that we are not to hunt foxes, may we hunt sabs and those who supported the ban? I’m in favour). If nothing else, you may model, oh, wyvern hunts on Muggle hunting (remember that Stod Withers is on your Famous Wizards Cards for a reason, as you may be reminded when next you have a choccy frog).

Need to keep up with things? The Times, the Telegraph, and the Scotsman are on the Web, as are the Guardian, the Independent, and various tabloids. The Beeb is also on the Web, and webcasts are available (the same is true for Sky), and in the BBC’s instance that includes BBC Radio, that is, the wireless. If nothing else, you want to have some familiarity at least with The Archers and Gardener’s Question Time. Additionally, the Beeb has excellent guide pages to politics, the Commons, nature and habitats and British mammals and flora and fauna of all sorts, gardens, and the whole boiling, as well as regional pages that often give receipts for regional specialities and have features on local landmarks and traditions and even dialect. IDEA, the International Dialects of English Archive, and the English Accents and Dialects page at the Collect Britain site run by the British Library, are indispensable, and have audio files and lexicons.

The House – Christ Church, Oxford – has a superb website (accessible from my links list) which will also serve as a portal to the University as a whole (‘and what a whole it is’). Presumably the Tabs and their little colleges have something of the sort as well. Eton has a website. So does that exemplary grammar school, Bp Wordsworth’s, in Salisbury. So do such places as Harrow and Marlborough and such small deer. For the distaff side, I know that Roedean and Cheltenham do have sites.

I’ve adverted you to the mapping sites – Streetmap, Multimap, the Ordnance Survey – before, but I wish to emphasise how valuable they can be. For one thing, it’s worthwhile to look up place names that are the surnames of Potterverse characters (Dursley, Snape, &c). In fact, you may find that there are several place names that cd serve: in the case of the Dursleys, for example, I chose to use the well-known town in Gloucs so I cd make a ‘Gloucester Old Spot’ joke (that being a British breed of pig), but if you wished to make Uncle Vernon a distant Squib connexion of the equally nasty Malfoys, well, there’s a Dursley hamlet in Wilts, also, just south of Trowbridge, near the A350. And just as they have been for JKR, maps and place names are a boon to you, in siting characters and in giving them surnames. (And you never know what you may be inspired by maps to write. We all know that Ottery St Catchpole is modelled on Ottery St Mary, but the choice of the name for the Weasley’s place is very evocative of Burrow Bridge in Somerset, just outside Othery.) The OS also provides historical mapping for many places.

The C of E have a website that lists every parish church in the kingdom, and many dioceses and most cathedrals have websites, as will many parishes (as I mentioned yesterday). The Diocese of Salisbury has a useful site, Salisbury Cathedral a superb one, and All That.

Especially do I wish to call to your attention the England in Particular site, and its mother site, Common Ground. I should imagine that in many ways, they and I have no common ground whatever in how we came to similar views, yet they are as committed as I to local distinctiveness, to preserving chalk streams and orchards, old buildings and hedgerows, and all the fun of the fair, and their websites are superb places in which to immerse oneself in the local and the particular, be it cider, local traditions and festivals, the Green Man, old trees, the River Stour, otters, or what have you.

As to local concerns, do not forget the local newspapers. The Salisbury Journal and Avon Advertiser, the Wiltshire Times, the Amesbury Journal, the Swindon Advertiser, the Gazette and Herald, all the local papers in Wilts have a joint website (thisiswiltshire[dot]co[dot]uk), and I’m sure the same is true elsewhere. Look for things such as the parish news and the rural reports and livestock sales to get a feel for rooted reality.

UpMyStreet, as I have noted before, is a wonderful resource, and includes area (postcode) profiles based on the ACORN neighbourhood classification system (prosperity, education, mortgages, newspapers read, leisure activities preferred, and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all), to which UpMyStreet links for greater detail.

Finally, of course, the Britpicking thread at FA and Essy’s brilliant Britticus Totallus site (linked on my profile page or per margin) are indispensable.

Please tell me this is not in vain: go forth and fic!

Tags: critical analysis, england my england, essays, proffers for criticism