Cornish cornucopia #8

I think I'm at the end of my Cornish cornucopias for a while now - they have sustained me through the winter and it is less than a week until I will be heading for the county myself!
I'm packing some Cornish reading (and some other books too - I'll be posting about my holiday reading when things are finally finalised!)....

I fully intend to carry on with my Cornish reading over the next few weeks and months; I am sure that Fleurfisher will continue to tempt and inspire me with her posts on the subject.

So to conclude, here are 6 Cornish things that I love:
1. Cornishware pottery - I don't own any of this, but would love to have some of this distinctive tableware.

2. Saffron loaf - see here for a recipe!
3. Beautiful scenery:
4. Tide-timetable books:
5. Bodyboarding!
(not sure it will be warm enough for this this time, but I'll certainly be taking my pink bodyboard down to make the car look sporty!)

6. Building sandcastles:


(I don't really need to make an extra number 6 for Cornish books, we can take that as read :) )

Cornish Cornucopia #6 Mary Wesley

One of Cornwall's most well-known authors is Mary Wesley. I wrote about the film of her book, The Camomile Lawn at the start of my Reading Cornwall venture, have mentioned her lovely book of memoirs, and I have previously read a number of her novels. It was definitely time to read her biography. On discovering that this was still in print, I asked Vintage if they could send me a copy, and Fiona kindly obliged, and also supplied me with a few of her novels.

Mary Wesley had a hugely intriguing life. From being presented at court at the age of 18, she quickly fell into an unsuitable marriage, that did not last, but gave her a brief titled existence. During the Second World War she was recruited into MI5 where she worked on de-coding German ciphers, before resigning, pregnant with her second child to move to Boskenna in Cornwall, and embarked on a somewhat promiscuous life that led to her husband divorcing her for desertion in 1945. She then lived with a married man, Eric, but it was seven years before they could marry, as his wife refused to divorce him (this was such an engrossing part of the tale). In the mid 1950s they moved to Dartmoor and hoped to make their fortunes from writing literature, but both remained unpublished. When he died, in 1970, Mary was left without a pension or any money and took a procession of jobs to try to make ends meet. Deeply depressed she turned to writing and finally had a small success with her first novel, Jumping the queue. This gave her the motivation to continued, and nine more novels followed.

Thus, as Mary came late to writing, only the last part of the book really deals with her life as a novelist. But the best bit I found were the parts where events in her books were related to events in her life; for example drawing parallels between Wesley and Calypso and Polly in The Camomile Lawn. Both Wesley and Polly worked for MI5 during WW2, and Marnham suggests that Wesley's sexual experiences shaped both Calypso and Polly's attitude to sex.

I found Wesley hugely inspirational; to perservere with her writing and then to achieve huge success in old age is surely a lesson to all of us who are tempted to give up early on. It is clear that her rich life experience was invaluable to her creativity and providing ideas for her work.

My one quibble with the book was that although it is obviously hugely well-researched there were a few gaps. In Wesley's Part of the scenery, she mentions holidaying at Polzeath during the First World War. This wasn't mentioned in the book, yet a picture of her on holiday in "Cornwall" during that period was included. I was able to identify this as being Polzeath, but perhaps I am overzealous with regard to one of my favourite places.

Out of her novels, The Camomile Lawn is undoubtedly her most famous and most Cornish; it is certainly my favourite out of all of her novels which I have read so far. If you haven't read any Mary Wesley, then do check this one out as it is a wonderful period piece. I am looking forward to reading Second Fiddle and An imaginative experience which Vintage also sent me. I can't quite remember which of her novels besides The Camomile Lawn were set in the county - can anyone help out?

Cornish Cornucopia #5 The Isles of Scilly

"The thing about an island," she said, "is it has edges, so you know exactly where you are" (Molteno)

The Isles of Scilly are an area that is within the county of Cornwall, but somehow slightly outside it. I'd be interested to know how the Cornish view it actually. It's not somewhere that I have ever been, although my parents visited on a rare child-free break when I was a toddler and brought me back an amazing selection of shells but I would absolutely love to visit the region (one thing I am wondering about doing is this trip swimming around the Scilly Isles – wouldn’t that be a good way to see it?!). So I thought it would be a good idea to do some Scillian reading as part of my bookish tour around Cornwall.

Somewhere more simple by Marion Molteno is the beautifully told story of a woman named Cari, who was captivated by the Scilly Islands as a child, and who comes back as an adult to teach in the secondary school as a maternity cover, having sought an escape from her gruelling job in an inner-city school. Her story becomes intertwined with two other people who have moved back to the islands - Anna, a doctor who is grieving for her son who drowned, and Hugh, left by his wife.

What fascinated me most about the book was the insight it gave me into life on the Scilly Isles.

Describing the main island, the school's headmaster says:

"It's a small piece of earth we're on...two and a half miles at its widest, under nine miles all the way around. An environment that takes your breath away every time that you stop and look. Still does that to me after twenty-five years. Safe. No traffic, no crime, everyone knows everyone. You couldn't find anything more ideal for the younger children. But for the older ones - too little stimulus for growing minds. No challenge - they settle too easily for the average."

As a result, the school arranges trips to the mainland where the children can learn how to navigate around the towns, and this provides a central episode in the novel.

It creates an isolated state of mind:

For example, Andrew, Cari's husband is watching tv one night:

"Cari joined him on the sofa, but he knew it was just for the cuddle. Things happening on the mainland seemed to her to have lost reality. Island vision, he called it privately, like tunnel vision but leading nowhere."

I felt that the book realy evoked the landscape and atmosphere of the islands, or at least enabled me to imagine it, and overall, I loved Molteno's style and storytelling, and although she has not written anymore novels set in Cornwall I am certainly going to seek her out and am sorry that I had not come across her before.

I plan to do some more Scillian reading and read An island parish (Nigel Farrell). It ties in with the TV series, A seaside Parish, following members of the Scillian community over one summer.

Cornish Cornucopia #4 Some fiction

The first proper novel I read as part of my Cornish inspired reading was The main cages by Philip Marsden. I had not heard of Philip Marsden before, but according to the blurb on the fly leaf he is an eminent writer, predominantly focussing on travel writing, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. This is his first novel.

Set in the 1930s a small Cornish village near Penzance called Polymayne, the Main cages is a book framed by a group of perilous rocks outside Polmayne. It starts with a tragic shipwreck on these rocks and their presence hangs over the entire tale. In between Marsden paints a picture of the community and its characters; the fishermen, the hoteliers, the painters, the visitors on holiday. We follow the main character Jack Sweeney, a newcomer to the town as he falls in love with an artist named Anna. But given the opening of the book and the oppresive presence of the rocks, the whole tale is overhung with a sense of foreboding.

"Even in this deadest of dawn seas, the Main Cages picked out a swell where there appeared to be none. It came in from the east, each wave mounting as it approached the first of the rocks, the Curate. The crest steepend and began to curl, and just before it broke, the water was sucked away from around the rock and it was exposed, a brief black island hung with strands of draining white"

I loved his particular style of writing which felt almost like a medieval chronicle in places. Individuals were sparsely introduced and events related in a bare fashion before being fleshed out with more detail. It was also interesting to read a tale of the 1930s; often books set in this time have the threat of war hanging over them, but this didn't, and this may actually reflect the experiences of the ordinary people of the time.

I'm not sure whether I would seek out more works by Marsden because I liked this best for being a book about Cornwall but it was certainly a good way to kick things off.

*********


Another suggestion from Fleur Fisher, The quickening ground was an immensley enjoyable Cornish read, telling the story of two women, 100 years apart who inhabit the same farmhouse near Newlyn. Claira in 1886 has just moved in after getting married to her husband, and Claire in 1986 has moved in after her family decide to leave their city existence for a less stressful life near the sea. The pair's lives intertwine after Claire discovers a nineteenth century painting from the local Newlyn school. It's a cleverly written story that kept me guessing up until the end.

But the reason I read this book was for its connection with Cornwall, and I wasn't disappointed in that either. The story itself might not be a new concept, but the descriptions of Cornwall are beautiful.

***
Summer in February seemed like an appropriate read for this time of year, but turned out to be even more timely than I had anticipated given my reading of Laura Knight's autobiography earlier on in my Reading Cornwall adventure. This is a beautifully told and meticulously researched book about the community of painters in Newlyn and Lamorna before the First World War. Characters such as Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings feature. Ultimately, it is a love story following what happens when two of the men fall in love with the same woman, but it is so very much more than that, detailing the lives of the characters, and describing the wonderful landscapes. I read on the internet that there are plans to make this into a film and think that this would be fantastic!

Cornish cornucopia #3 Crime

Although I usually tend to avoid crime books, I have made a bit of an exception over the last couple of weeks as there are a number set in Cornwall, and I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed this venture into pastures anew. I have not discovered great literature, but I have encountered gripping page-turners.


I'm not a complete stranger to Cornish crime; I was a devotee of the television series Wycliffe, broadcast in the 1990s, and often repeated on ITV2, for the scenery and wonderful opening music. I subsequently read a lot of the books which they were based on, although if I'm honest I never really enjoyed the books as much as the series.

However, a number of crime books and series were recommended to me when I embarked on this challenge, so I decided to dive in and sample some.

The first book I tried was Careless in red by Elizabeth George, recommended to me by EllenB. This got my attention because rarely for Cornish fiction it is set on the North coast as opposed to on the South coast, and this is the area with which I am most familiar and can picture most vividly (I think this is important in reading fiction by place...). Although reviews on Amazon are somewhat damning, suggesting that it does not live up to George's usual standard of crime novel, I did not have any preconceptions about it. The book opens with Inspector Lynley undertaking a walk along the coast path as part of the process of grieving for his wife; he has gone incognito, literally only in the clothes he is wearing, trying to find some peace. On his 43rd day of walking, he sees a climber fall to his death, and suddenly becomes embroiled in a murder enquiry. Although this story is the main driving force behind the book, there is a complicated cast of characters, the inhabitants of the nearby village, and George deals with family relationships making a much more complex story than I anticipated. I'm not sure that I would seek out more Inspector Lynley novels to read, but I did enjoy this one with its Cornish setting.

Various people suggested Janie Bolitho's Rose Treveylan mysteries. These are a series of detective novels set in Penzance. It would have been good to start at the beginning of the series, but the library only had Plotted in Cornwall on the shelves so I started 6 books in. I will definitely be requesting the others as I really loved it. It wasn't so much of a page-turning mystery as the Elizabeth George, but I liked it more for being a novel about a woman who is a painter and photographer and for being a book about the characters as much as the events. There was also a slightly smaller cast than in Careless in red which made it easier to follow. In some ways I found it reminiscent of the Veronica Stallwood books, set in Oxford, which are the only other crime novels that I have enjoyed previously. So, if you fancy a fairly easy read set in Cornwall with some elements of mystery and detection, then do seek this out.

Cornish cornucopia #2 Some memoirs

Fleurfisher mentioned The magic of a line, the memoirs of Dame Laura Knight, when she brainstormed ideas for Cornish books and I was immediately intrigued as I am familiar with Dame Laura Knight as an important war artist during the Second World War, producing paintings such as the one above to help maintain morale.

The memoirs are certainly interesting, although obviously written by an artist rather than a writer. We learn about Laura's early life, and having to go to university at the age of 13 to tran to be an art teacher due to impecunious family circumstances. There is some interesting information about being an artist, and the edition of the book that I borrowed from the library was heavily illustrated with wonderful plates of her drawings. The range of her work was extremely broad; in addition to war artistry, she also did a lot of painting of dancers such as Pavlova. The book also tells the story of her friendship and subsequent marriage to the artist Harold Knight.

Laura and Harold went to Cornwall after hearing that it had light that lasted longer than anywhere else in the country, obviously important for an artist, and settled briefly in Lamorna. There is unfortunately only really one chapter in the book that touches on their experiences in Cornwall but a lot of what she said about Cornwall rang true.

Towards the end in a "retrospective" on her life she writes:
"Cornwall is not like any other sort of country-it's no use trying to comapre it with any other place. There are times when you think everything is quite ordinary; and there are times when you feel you are not properly you, but someone else whom you don't in the least know; and an atmosphere prevails which takes away any sense or belief you have ever had, and you don't know why, but you aren't in England any more"

"I have to admit too that a longing for the sight of the Atlantic ocean and its constant change of mood often irks my mind"

***
After reading a review of Land girls gang up by Pat Peters in Cornwall today, I was keen to add this to my collection of Cornish memoirs. Although again not hugely literary, this is a fantastic story of the misadventures of some girls who go from London to Cornwall to be land girls during the Second World War. Long days, back breaking work, and little social life weren't easy but there were humorous events too, such as when the girls opened their packed lunches on the first day...
Taking a half moon shape from her food box Nell exclaimed "I've got a bleedin' piece of pie crust!"
"Don't be a chump, it's a pasty and its filled with something" Pauline told her.
Jackie eyed her half moon with suspicion before breaking it in half. Jame spilled from the pasty onto her dungarees "God how I hate jam"...
Those who had pasties were to find that something was almost anything. Kay and I found ours to be filled with potatoes, meat and onions while Pauline and Phyllis's held egg and bacon. Bunny's had apples and Jimmy waved hers aloft proclaiming "currants!".
Set in and around areas that I love in North Cornwall, it was interesting to have a historical perspective on what to me are holiday destinations.
***
Another set of memoirs which mention Cornwall briefly are those written by Molly Hughes, starting with London Child in the 1870s. This is the first in a series of wonderful autobiographical books by Hughes, the first of which has recently been republished by Persephone books. Hughes also wrote Vivians, a tale of her Cornish ancestors which is mainly set in Cornwall.

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I then read Village by the ford by Gordon Channer. This is the story of a family who leave their life in a city to set up a caravan site in a wild valley in South Cornwall. A quote on the back of the book compared it to A town like Alice; I thought this was stretching it slightly. It's an entertaining story, but not hugely literary. Channer has written three more books about the adventures of the family, and although I won't rush to read them I'd be interested to find out how it all pans out!

***

I spent a lovely evening with Mary Wesley's Part of the scenery which is partly memoir, partly description of life in the Westcountry, and partly photographic illustration. Although its remit goes beyond the Cornish county, as as Devon-baby I was interested to read about other places that I know. Mary Wesley confesses in the text that she can't really remember which locations inspired her books, often they are a mishmash of several places that she knew. But I was tickled to find that like me she spent her childhood holidays in Polzeath, although this was many years earlier than I did, during the First World War. The wonderful photographs by Kim Sayer really complement the text and make for a virtual holiday.

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Memoirs which deal more overtly with Cornwall which I have read are Myself when young (Daphne Du Maurier), A Cornish childhood (A.L. Rowse), Kisses on a postcard (Terence Frisby), Great Western Beach (Smith), We bought an island (Atkins) and its sequel Tales from our Cornish Island)

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Another memoir that I intend to read is Schoolhouse in the wind (Anne Treneer). Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Cornish cornucopia #1 : The camomile lawn (DVD)

I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response to my post last week about my plans to read plenty of Cornish books this year, so thank you to everyone for your suggestions. Fleurfisher has put together a wonderful list of ideas giving me even more inspiration, and I've made a list in a notebook of the titles that I definitely want to read. I've read quite a lot of Cornish books already, so at some point I think I will make a list of those for "completeness" sake. I am so very excited about it that I think there will be posts on this theme far more regularly than once a month, perhaps even once a week in the next nine weeks running up to Easter, which I am spending in the county.

I decided to kick off with a film rather than a book. I found a good long list of films made in the county, some of which I'd seen (Saving Grace, Ladies in Lavender, Rebecca, Jamaica Inn), some which didn't particularly appeal (Straw dogs, Johnny English), some which are completely out of print, and some which are on the "wish-list" of films I'd like to see: Amy Foster, Next of Kin, Johnny Frenchman. I have long been a fan of the Wycliffe tv series, and wish that they would bring them out on DVD, and I'm wondering about getting hold of Doc Martin, since that was partly filmed in Port Isaac which is very close to where we will be staying at Easter.



A trip to the library enabled me to borrow The camomile lawn, which is an adaption of the book by the same name by Mary Wesley. It was originally a television drama, and for my £1.25 rental fee I got 264 minutes of watching. It's been a while since I've read the book so I can't comment on how faithful the adaption is, but it was most enjoyable. Set mainly in Cornwall, on and after the eve of the Second World War, the drama tells the story of the Cuthbertson family - an aunt, uncle, cousins and an orphan, and some of their neighbours and how they are affected by the arrival of the war. They are all from the upper middle class, and from the richer section of society. Some of the book is set in London, reflecting their wartime experiences. There is love, drama, relationships and above all the lifechanging experience of living through the Second World War.

If I'm honest, the coastal scenery could have been anywhere, and not specifically Cornwall, although it was filmed in Veryan and Portloe (admittedly areas that I am not familiar with). But the period detail, especially in the parts filmed in London is fantastic - if you like wartime dramas then this is also one for you. The excellent cast includes Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington (familiar from The Good Life, although here they are married rather than neighbours), Tara Fitzgerald (another favourite of mine), and Jennifer Ehle.

I'm not sure which of Mary Wesley's novels are set in Cornwall, but I have discovered that she wrote a book called Part of the scenery, which is about the Westcountry region and her life, and have reserved this at the library. More on that in due course I expect!

Anyway, do let me know what your favourite Cornish films and television are, I'd be fascinated to know if there is anything else that I'd like that I might have missed.

Cornish cornucopia in 2010

Regular readers will be aware of my love for Cornwall, and of Cornish books, arising from spending so many holidays and weekends in the region as a child. Fleur_fisher recently mentiond her own Cornish reading challenge and I thought that that sounded like something that I'd like to try. She's planning to read at least one Cornish book a month, and I think I'll do the same, although I'd love to try to read one a fortnight, or certainly more when I am on holiday in the county over Easter. Cornwall is a very diverse country, and having holidayed mostly on the North Coast, many of the books I have previously read have been set in the West and the South of Cornwall so I'm hoping I may encounter more reading which mentions the places which I know.

Cath at read_warbler has a wonderful list here of books set in Cornwall, many of which I have read - the Daphne Du Mauriers, the Wycliffe, Mary Wesley, Rosamund Pilcher, Alan Titschmarsh.

I already have some Cornish themed reading on my TBR pile
Summer in February (Jonathan Smith) (next month's read for obvious reasons)
Rambles beyond railways (Wilkie Collins)
Hungry hill (Daphne Du Maurier)(set in Ireland but apparently mentions Cornwall)

Otherwise, I am hoping to read at least one of Winston Graham's Poldark books, the two Susan Cooper novels (Over sea, under stone and Greenwitch), Thomas Hardy's Pair of blue eyes, Deep down by Ballatyne (if I can get hold of it) and maybe I'll give the Rose Trevelyan novels a go too. I've found an author called Gordon Channer who I haven't yet heard of, and I've ordered his first from the library. Fleur fisher mentioned Laura Knight's autobiography, so I have ordered a copy of that from the library too. Travelogues are good; so along with the Wilkie Collins I might check out Craik's An unsentimental journey through Cornwall.
I'm also hoping to read some non-fiction and maybe do some baking along the way too - Cornish Hevva Cake and Saffron Loaf are two bakes that I have in mind.

This post is as much a brainstorm for me as anything else, but I'd love to hear about books set in Cornwall that you have loved, or anything Cornish related...