Patrick Gale’s novel centres on Barnaby Johnson, a much-loved parish priest living with his family in Pendeen, near Land’s End in Cornwall. It begins with a shocking event. On the day of a local festival, Barnaby is called to the home of twenty-year old Lenny, who is wheelchair bound after a rugby accident. Lenny no… Read more »
Patrick Gale (1962 – ) is an English novelist and screenwriter. A number of his works are set in Cornwall where he has lived since 1988.
When Kenneth Grahame first arrived in Fowey in 1899 he was on the retreat from an ardent admirer, Elspeth Thomson. She was thirty-seven, a tricky age for the times. She considered Kenneth an ideal catch. His position as Secretary of the Bank of England was solid and respectable, yet he had also written three books,… Read more »
Christina Stead (1902 – 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer known for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.
These quotes are a small selection from the many writers and poets who have been drawn to Cornwall. With the exception of Percy Shelley who may or may not have visited Cornwall at all, and Paul Theroux who travelled through the county only briefly, they all lived here for a time; for some, the place… Read more »
Clutching the sword Excalibur, Sir Bedivere hurries to the lake. Some say the Pool of Dozmary in Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor was that very lake. About a mile in circumference, it is set in a basin surrounded by hills and lies on a tableland that borders the vale of Fowey. No obvious streams or springs feed… Read more »