British regional literature of London and the south of England. John Cowper Powys has been seen as a successor to Thomas Hardy, and "Wolf Solent", "A Glastonbury Romance" (1932), along with "Weymouth Sands" (1934) and "Maiden Castle" (1936), are often referred to as his Wessex novels. As with Hardy's novels, the landscape plays a major role in Powys's works, and an elemental philosophy is important in the lives of his characters. Powys's first novel "Wood and Stone" was dedicated to Thomas Hardy. "Maiden Castle", the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which he intended to be
Wessex West Somerset Yeomanry adopted a Wessex Wyvern rampant as the centre piece for its cap badge, and the current Royal Wessex Yeomanry adopted a similar device in 2014 when the Regiment moved from wearing individual squadron county yeomanry cap badges to a unified single Regimental cap badge. When Sophie, Countess of Wessex was granted arms, the sinister supporter assigned was a blue wyvern, described by the College of Arms as ""an heraldic beast which has long been associated with Wessex"". In the 1970s William Crampton, the founder of the British Flag Institute, designed a flag for the Wessex region which