This year marks the 200th anniversary of William Wordsworth’s great autobiographical poem “The Prelude”. The manuscript is on display in the Wordsworth Museum, adjacent to his picturesque home Dove Cottage at Grasmere in the English Lake District. Spring 2005 also sees the opening of the new Collections centre, the Jerwood Centre.

The museum is exhibiting one of the finest collections of early British watercolours this summer. More than 40 artists, including JMW Turner, Peter De Wint and Samuel Palmer, are represented in the exhibition (July 14 – October). They come from the Spooner Collection, built up by Yorkshire industrialist William Wycliffe Spooner, whose family once owned How Foot Lodge, a short distance from Dove Cottage.

Best known of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in the Lake District and settled at Dove Cottage with his sister Dorothy. Grasmere is 282 miles north-west of London and admission to Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum, open daily from February, is £6.
Website: www.wordsworth.org.uk.