In April 1916 Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry arrived in Cornwall’s remote far west. They had just spent an idyllic time in Bandol in the south of France (the story about that period of their lives can be read here) but were returning to England during one of the darkest periods of the war,… Read more »
David Herbert Lawrence (1885 – 1930) was an English writer and poet. His modernist fiction focused on the inner self and the unconscious, reflecting on the dehumanising effects of industrialisation. Some of the issues Lawrence explores are sexuality, instinct and and vitality.
In the late 1800s the hospitality industry in London was in the doldrums. The most famous diva of her time, Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, described the cooking at the city’s leading hotels as ‘execrable…The carpets were dirty, the menu was medieval, the service an insult.’ The opening of The Savoy in 1889 changed… Read more »
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. His essays, some of the most influential ever written, are full of personal anecdote, insight and humanity.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was a nobleman, wine grower, diplomat and a friend of the King of France. In 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, he gave up his position as a magistrate in Bordeaux and withdrew to his chateau in the Dordogne, where he intended to pass the remainder of his life in quiet… Read more »
Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) was Elizabeth Gaskell’s last full length novel to be published before her death. Set against the background of the French Revolutionary wars (1792-1802) it is a tale of the conflicting claims of two lovers for the hand of the heroine, Sylvia. Elizabeth called it ‘the saddest book I ever wrote’. Its core… Read more »
Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) was an English painter and designer, known for her colourful Post Impressionist Paintings. She was an important member of the Bloomsbury Group and also the sister of Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), English, is one of the most important modernist writers of the 20th century. She was also a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group.
Vita Sackville West (1892-1962) was an English writer and garden designer. She inspired her friend and lover Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography.
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 »