Stoke Poges

Village in south Buckinghamshire, west of London. In Brave New World it is the site of the Obstacle Golf club where Lenina and Henry spend their afternoon, beside the Slough Crematorium.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	setting	Lenina and Henry play Obstacle Golf at the Stoke Poges Club House, then fly back over the Slough Crematorium.

Brave New World — Aldous Huxley (1932)

Source: Brave New World · Original · Readwise highlight

Following its south-easterly course across the dark plain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the Slough Crematorium.

• Role: setting
• In the book: Henry Foster flies Lenina west from the Centre over the London suburbs, and ten minutes later they start a round of Obstacle Golf at Stoke Poges. At dusk the loudspeakers of the Club House tower call the lower castes home, and the pair fly off over Burnham Beeches and the Slough Crematorium, where Henry explains how phosphorus is recovered from the dead and Lenina repeats hypnopaedic lines about Epsilons.
• Why it matters: It packs the book’s world into one evening: caste-segregated leisure, conditioned consumption and the recycling of the dead.