Author Patricia Nicol reveals a selection of the best books on: Romantic walks

  • The British literary expert Patricia Nicol selects books about romantic walks 
  • All Jane Austen's novels use walks to show us more about her characters 
  • The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim is one of her favourite novels 

By Patricia Nicol For The Daily Mail

Published: | Updated:

A friend tentatively beginning a new relationship in lockdown tells me it is like 'being in a Jane Austen novel'. With all indoor mixing banned, all that is available to her and her suitor are socially distanced walks.

Is this such a bad way to have to navigate awkward first dates? Grim as it is for the hospitality industry to be unable to take Valentine's bookings, the truth is that eating and drinking with strangers can often be a fraught affair.

The rhythm of walking and lack of obligatory eye contact often promote easy conversation. With the sap rising and a burgeoning spring beckoning, the outdoors offers more conversational starters, too.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Author Patricia Nicol reveals a selection of the best books centred on romantic walks. Left: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Right: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

All Jane Austen's novels use walks to show us more about her characters. Think of Elizabeth Bennet's mud-hemmed trudge to Netherfield to visit her bedbound sister, Jane, in Pride And Prejudice, or the Box Hill incident in Emma. Most sophisticatedly, in Mansfield Park, a trip to Mr Rushworth's estate, and the indecorous, reckless manner in which the younger Bertrams, spurred by the Crawfords, explore the 'Wilderness' of the parkland there — clambering over locked gates; jumping over ha-has — pre-figures ruinous romantic entanglements.

'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day,' is the very first line of Jane Eyre, a character who after being led up one garden path, takes flight across the moors. Restless, mentally and physically, until she heeds the blinded Mr Rochester's desperate call for her, their reunion dawns on a scene of contentment: 'I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields.'

The transformative effect of nature on the browbeaten Lottie Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot and, later, their husbands, is explored in one of my favourite novels, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim.

The walks it describes, through the grounds of San Salvatore, 'the small medieval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean' they incautiously rent, are transporting. If you cannot get out for a walk, lose yourself in an amorous literary amble.

Coronavirus Lockdowns

Most watched News videos