Next week I’m going to the University of Vechta in Germany to give one of the keynote lectures at the ‘Lost Romantics’ conference organised by Norbert Lennartz.  Also on the programme are Frederick Burwick, Richard Sha, Richard Marggraf Turley, Michael O’Neill, Lilla Crisafulli and Fiona Stafford.  I’ll be talking about the remarkable John ‘Walking’ Stewart.  In his seventy-five years, Stewart walked across most of the known world, tramping from India to England, detouring through Ethiopia and into unmapped regions of Africa, visiting the Arab and Mediterranean countries, travelling on foot across much of Europe as far east as Russia and as far north as Lapland, before crossing the Atlantic to walk around North America and into northern Canada.  Along the way, he produced a fascinating and eccentric series of books expounding his philosophy.  He was friends with William Wordsworth and Thomas De Quincey, and in the last two decades of his life, he was a well-known figure walking London’s streets and engaging passers-by in conversation.  My lecture is called ‘Catching up with Walking Stewart’.