#17: STRATFORD-UPON-AVON Much ado about nothing? You will be surprised

ISN’T IT A BIT OF A THEME PARK?

This antique town of fabulous timber-frame inns and houses celebrates Shakespeare big time. Of course it does. The world’s most acclaimed writer was born here in 1564 (probably on April 23) and died here in 1616 (probably on April 23). Yet Stratford is not all homage to history; there’s a contemporary heartbeat, too. This month sees the Royal Shakespeare Company (rsc.org.uk) staging a new version of Maydays, David Edgar’s 1983 hit drama about revolutionary politics. The RSC is

Alas, poor Will Shakespeare’s grave has no skull, as confirmed by radar scans in

2016. launching new audition tours (adults £9, children £5) on which you go backstage, try on costumes and then tread the boards reciting Shakespearean lines in a mock audition. The Stratford Literary Festival also runs winter events, such as talks by Jodi Picoult and Channel 4 news presenter Cathy Newman (Oct 28-Nov 17; stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk). Or head eight miles west for a foodie fix at Alcester Food Festival (Oct 20; alcesterfoodfestival.org.uk).

TAKE ME AROUND THE TOWN FIRST

For a wonderfully informative overview of Stratford – Shakespeare and all – join a Stratford Town Walk (stratfordtownwalk.co.uk; adults £6, children £3). Two-hour ambles leave from outside the RSC main theatre at 11am daily; among many other places, you’ll pause outside the wattle and daub house where Shakespeare was born, the church where he is buried and the house where his daughter and her frankly crackpot-sounding, physician husband lived. Along the way you’ll be treated to terrifically diverse stories, learning that it was the actor David Garrick who kick-started tourism to Stratford by organising the first Shakespeare jubilee here in 1769, and that in the Nineties The Teletubbies (another great Stratford export) was devised from a studio on Chapel Street, now an optician’s practice.

TELETUBBIES? NO THANKS. SHOW ME SOME SHAKESPEARE

There’s a host of Shakespearerelated sites to visit (shakespeare. org.uk), some more tenuously connected to the Bard than others.