Gemma Arterton (above) starring as Tess in the BBC production of the tragic Wessex Tale Tess of the Durbervilles. (she also played Elizabeth in Lost in Austen, Kelly in the 2007 re-make of St Trinians and is now a Bond girl). Did you know that Wintoncester in this famous Thomas Hardy novel was actually a fictionalised Winchester (Hampshire)?

Does this look like a cathedral to you? Apparently Portsmouth has two 'cathedral churches' and this is one of them. The Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, Portsmouth in Hampshire, commonly known as Portsmouth Cathedral.

Landport, a district located near the centre of Portsea Island, part of the city of Portsmouth in Hampshire, is the birthplace of English novelist Charles Dickens. His former home in Old Commercial Road Portsmouth is now the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum.

The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Melanie and Leonard Cohen all played at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Some say that it was the last of its kind. Melanie played against a sunrise on Sunday morning and Jimi died two weeks later.

William Wilberforce's son, Samuel Wilberforce was made Rector of Alverstoke, Gosport Hampshire in 1840. Known as 'Soapy Sam', Samuel Wilberforce was a great public speaker and is known for his opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Ophelia - John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais was born in Southampton in Hampshire in 1829. He was a founder member of the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner and William Holman Hunt.

Isabella and the Pot of Basil, by John White Alexander 1897

John Keats may have been born in London and his grave may be in Rome but it was in Hampshire, in Winchester, during a long stay in 1819, that he wrote the beautiful and macabre Isabella. Isabella and Lorenzo are in love but Isabella's brothers kill Lorenzo. After finding his body, she put his head inside of a pot of basil (the basil herb symbolises love). Keats died two years later, on 23rd February 1821, aged 25. He specifically asked that his name not appear on his gravestone and that instead it should bear the inscription 'Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water'.

Did you realise that The Royal Albert Hall in London (famous for its annual Proms concerts since 1941) was built of bricks from Fareham in Hampshire? Fareham traditionally relied on its clay soil for industry, producing bricks, tiles and chimney pots.

The Rufus Stone
in The New Forest Hampshire

William Rufus, William 2nd, Kind of England from 1087 until 1100, who allegedly hated the English and their culture, was shot with an arrow in The New Forest in Hampshire. Some suspect that William's brother Henry was the one who shot the arrow that killed him, as he was among the hunting party that day and shortly after was crowned king.