Civilisation comes in many sizes and, for Dr Samuel Johnson, compiler of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), his home town of Lichfield was a microcosm of educated and ordered society. He once wrote of a visit to the Staffordshire city with his trusty biographer James Boswell: “I lately took my friend and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.”
It is a trip worth repeating this summer, especially if you include a tour of Samuel Johnson’s Birthplace Museum & Bookshop, found close to the city’s ancient cathedral. The great lexicographer was born on 18 September 1709, in this house, built by his bookseller father, who ran his business from the ground floor.
