Dawidziak is a busy guy

I got this response to my email to former BJ and current PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak about the April 8-25 trip to England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales by Paula and me, bringing my countries visited total to 45 since my 1996 retirement from the BJ:

John,

A trip through the British Isles certainly would boost the authors' homes and graves numbers. You should also have added Dickens with the stop at Poets Corner. It's a modest stone, but he didn't even want to be buried there. His wishes were overruled by national desire.

And I know how much the pilgrimage to the Greyfriars Bobby grave meant.

I've been on my own authors' tour these last few days. Thursday night, I was introducing Michael Slater, author of the magnificent Dickens biography published by Yale in 2009, at the Hermit Club in Cleveland (always wanted to get into that place, and the inside looked just as I have imagined it all these years). Friday was spent all day at the John S. Knight Center and the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair (talking Tully). Saturday, I was down in Massillon to give the keynote address for the Big Read devoted to Twain (nice turnout, and we're back at the Lincoln Theatre to do "Twain By Three" on May 15).

We finally have copies of the Tully biography, and it looks grand. The big coming-out party will be a free May 21 reception at the Cleveland Public Library. I'll send you details. Paul and I will be making like Tully, hitting the road for Tully talks and book fairs from May to November.

Glad you and Paula made it safely home. Sounds like another glorious trip.

All best,
Mark


Poets Corner is in London's Westminster Abbey. A ton of famous authors, including Chaucer, are buried there.

I've made a habit of trying to visit homes and graves of authors over the years.

"Greyfriars Bobby," the title of the Disney movie about the dog, is famous for sleeping on the grave of John Gray, his master, for 14 years after Gray died. Bobby's grave is the first one you see when you enter the cemetery. Greyfriars got special permission to bury a dog in a grave full of humans.

Tully is the subject of Dawidziak's 12th book, "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler," which Kent State Press published and which is co-authored by Kent bookseller Paul J. Bauer. Tully, who was fired twice by the Beacon Journal and also worked for the Akron Press, became a boxer and Charlie Chaplin's ghost writer and biographer.

Last year Dawidziak and wife Sara Showman performed "Twain by Three" at the University of Akron's Wayne College in Orrville and participated in the Big Read program in Wayne County. This sounds like a triumphant return tour.

The photo is of William Shakespeare's grave, inside Stratford's Holy Trinity Church in England. The bard was born in Stratford. Shakespeare is buried next to his wife, Anne Hathaway, who grew up in a 12-bedroom farmhouse near Stratford in Warwickshire, England.

Paula and I just got home at 1 a.m. today after 18 days on the road and going without sleep for 25 hours while taking flights from London to New York City to Atlanta to Akron-Canton. More details and photos about that later, after I decompress and get caught up on my Ohio life.

I know some of you can't wait.