Hewitt's History Files

It's a story Portsmouth's Anne Crow has researched for a new book celebrating John Keats' connections with the city.

The plaque in Eastgate Square marks the building in which Keats began to write The Eve Of St Agnes in 1819.

Just weeks earlier, Keats' younger brother had died, his poetry had not sold well and it was a glum Keats who arrived in Chichester to stay with friends.

"He was either very happy and bubbly or depressed," Anne explains. "I think he was probably what we would call now bipolar, though no one has actually labelled him that. But in 1819 he was very depressed.

"He was staying with the Snooks who lived in the house where the plaque is. He only actually stayed with them for a couple of days. They were the parents of his friends Charles and Maria Dilke. Maria was a Snook, and they were friends he had met in London."

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette April 22