As an attentive aunt, Jane Austen was keen to encourage her niece, Anna, with the novel she was writing. ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ she wrote to her in ...

Winding lanes, storybook cottages, and ivy-clad stone structures are common sights in English villages. These are lovely to see, but there's no need to venture across the pond to experience them ...