Fanny Burney, Mary Delany

The connection between Fanny Burney and Mary Delany runs through Buckinghamshire like a thread of 18th-century wit and talent. Both women left their mark on this corner of England - Burney as a diarist and novelist of astonishing observational humour, Delany as an artist and letter-writer whose correspondence reads like the best gossip you've ever overheard at a country house party.

You won't find a grand museum here. What you get instead is the chance to walk where these two remarkable figures actually lived and worked, their stories bound up in the landscape itself. Burney's journals capture the absurdity of social life with a sharpness that still makes you laugh aloud. Delany's collages - she was making intricate botanical paper mosaics well into her eighties - show an artist who refused to stop creating.

History buffs will find themselves properly absorbed. Families with teenagers interested in women's writing or the Georgian period will get something genuine here, not a theme-park version of the past. Younger children might find it a bit thin on the ground, to be honest.

Windsor's just down the road, which makes this a natural addition to a Buckinghamshire park holiday. The caravan sites nearby - Queens Acre and Cranbourne Hall among them - are well-positioned for exploring both the Burney-Delany sites and the wider area. Allow a few hours if you're serious about it, longer if you want to sit with the writing and really soak it in.