While educational and cultural organisations in the United States have led the way in what is being coined "intellectual tourism", Britain appears to be catching up fast. Remote resort areas in the US and the United Kingdom have been turning themselves into year-round communities with a tourism industry based as much on educational pursuits as on the more traditional holiday ones of beach or theme park.

While Cameron House and Dimbola are not in themselves valuable buildings, they contain enough "sense of place" to remind visitors of the mid-Victorian era, when Freshwater was a fashionable place to live. The atmosphere remains: Farringford, Tennyson's home, is now a hotel and has a display of his memorabilia, including cloak, smoking cap and spirit flask. If Cameron House is saved, so will be the heart of "intellectual tourism" on the Isle of Wight.

"To reach the Gide apartment one had only to cross the boulevard Saint-Germain from the Malrauxs' rue du Bac, taking a right turn to the rue Vaneau; on his way to the Gallimard offices, Gide routinely passed the Malrauxs' door. Even a slow walker could bridge the distance in ten minutes…" Herbert Lottman is a fussy, implacable guide who will not allow his dutiful intellectual tourist to step out, even for a moment, from his assigned itinerary of literary sites and sightings.