Not surprisingly, given the tenor of this trip, Dubrovnik has turned up some interesting literary connections.

Chronologically (and far from exhaustively):

1. Marin Drzic, a Renaissance playwright who was born in Dubrovnik somewhere around 1508, and died in Venice in 1567

There's a Dom Marin Drzic in the old town. It is located "in a building erected after the earthquake in 1667, partly on the site of the destroyed house and previous All Saints Church, in which Drzic was a rector".









Inevitably there are comparisons with Shakespeare, born a little later: "Nicknamed Vidra, Drzic can be ranked only with William Shakespeare, yet, in 1567, when Vidra disappeared in the muddy canals of the Venetian Laguna, Shakespeare was only three years old. Drzic's finest comedy, Uncle Maroje, was written thirteen years before Shakespeare's birth, and Drzic's charming pastoral play Tirena fifteen years before the 'Swan of Avon' came into this world... 'If we could place the impossible hypothesis that Shakespeare spoke fluent Croatian, we would be able to write a scholarly doctoral dissertation on Držić's influence on Shakespeare' (Josip Torbarina)."


2. Our old friend, George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Visiting Dubrovnik as part of his Grand Tour, he was said to have dubbed it "the Pearl of the Adriatic". Seriously, was that the best a talented wordsmith like Byron could come up with...? Must have been a vinegar diet day...

3. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

GBS and his wife, Damir Kalogjera tells us, made a holiday visit to Yugoslavia in May 1929. They arrived in Dubrovnik by boat; they travelled to Montenegro, returned to Dubrovnik, went to Split, and then sailed for Venice at the end of the same month. It was a brief visit, but it "was made by the press into a considerable cultural event with political overtones".

Actually, it wasn't technically Yugoslavia at that point. It was still (as it had been since 1918) the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. On 6 January 1929, King Alexander, supposedly a constitutional monarch, assumed dictatorial powers, ostensibly to stop the fractious state falling apart completely. But it wasn't until 3 October that the country was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The coup was a bit of a blow to the polity's reputation, which was why a supportive statement from a world figure like Shaw would have been very welcome. In his press conference in Dubrovnik, he followed up a reference to "the statesmanlike decisions taken by King Alexander in Yugoslavia and Mussolini in Italy, serving a definite and good aim", with the pronouncement that the "concept of autocracy" is a good one, and had it not been for the king, "you might have been forced to invite Austria back".

You definitely can't please all the people... The authorities largely saw Shaw's words as a publicity gift. But they were not rapt at having King Alexander and Mussolini lumped into one bag, and were unhappy with Shaw's subsequent remarks about the Trianon Treaty (on Yugoslavia's borders). English-language newspapers, meanwhile, were appalled: "Shaw upholds dictatorship."

He apparently said some very complimentary things about the beauty of the country ("When somebody tells you they come here because of politics, science or art, he should not be believed. I am interested here precisely in what I am at home: gorgeous nature"), but he also warned against the distorting effects of tourism ("You have the case in France where old olive groves are cut down to raise chrysanthemums for the benefit of American and English ladies").

Kalogjera wonders: "After going through the press reports about this visit one occasionally feels something like a cultural gap appearing between the newspapermen and their interviewee. This gap results from an inability of the reporters to establish when Shaw was serious and when he was being facetious." (It seems he warned the Yuglosavs about American visitors, who were, he insinuated, all too ready to pocket the occasional rare object...)

Anyway, he did enough to get a street named after him:


4. Miroslav Krleza (1893-1981)

Interesting to see this author popping up again in this context. In 1931, he wrote a poem called Dubrovnik Scene, which he dedicated to his friend Petar Dobrovic (a painter, art critic, and politician). It's a poem of two halves, with idyllic scenes in the first part contrasting with all kinds of suffering in the second. According to Marijana Erstic, "The fault line between the two worlds in Krleza's poem is caused by tourism." The supposed former idyll is depicted as a theatrical experience to be bought and sold -- a "play for foreigners". And while it is going on, the city's residents are dying in the stuffy streets.

5. Agatha Christie (1890-1976)

Dubrovnik was where, in 1930, the prolific crime fiction writer spent her second honeymoon. Her lodging of choice was the Hotel Excelsior, which opened in 1913.


6. OK, we're moving from literature to film here, but we have to mention Shah Rukh Khan...

We saw his movie Fan in 2016. It turns out part of it was shot in Dubrovnik. Actually, it was the first Bollywood movie to be shot here. I must admit I don't totally remember the Dubrovnik scene, but hey...

You'll notice I'm NOT mentioning Game of Thrones... We watched about three episodes, and decided we hated it. But obviously trekking round the filming locations is a Thing here.

Again, so much food for thought.