I have written about visiting Strawberry Hill House before, but when I visited this week with students taking my Gothic module, the house was beautifully decorated for Christmas – perhaps this isn’t very Gothic, but it was done with some atmospheric touches (Christmas hats on statues, little knitted robins, etc) that I’m sure would have appealed to Horace Walpole’s sense of humour. The house is always a wonderful place to visit, and it was great to take students there: the module begins with Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and how this (rather daft) novel starts the behemoth that Gothic literature has become. (You can read my students’ module blog here). The guides did a great job of exploring how Walpole’s fascination with early Gothic architecture was translated to his house and then to his writing. Here are some photos of the day.