Description
Book SynopsisIn 1945, Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys - writers for the New Statesman and a National Trust administrator - purchased Long Crichel House, an old rectory with no electricity and an inadequate water supply. In this improbable place, the last English literary salon began.
Quieter and less formal than the famed London literary salons, Long Crichel became an idiosyncratic experiment in communal living. Sackville-West, Shawe-Taylor and Knollys - later joined by the literary critic Raymond Mortimer - became members of one another''s surrogate families and their companionship became a stimulus for writing, for them and their guests. Long Crichel''s visitors'' book reveals a Who''s Who of the arts in post-war Britain - Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Laurie Lee, Cyril Connolly, Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forster, Cecil Beaton, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson - who were attracted by the good food, generous quantities of drink and exce
Trade Review
Fascinating -- Laura Freeman * The Times *
Very entertaining . . . the preservation of old houses, a cause with which many of the leading characters were involved one way or another, is skilfully used as a running theme in a book that, with a fine balance between nostalgia and clear-sightedness, commemorates a privileged world long since vanished. -- Peter Parker * Spectator *
Highly evocative . . . a portrait of an enchanted world -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail *
The Crichel boys . . . left behind merely a memory of charm, kindness and generosity, to which Fenwick pays a tender tribute * Financial Times *
A rich, luscious account of a postwar Britain that often gets lost * Mail on Sunday *
Fenwick, it must be said, is very much at home in this somewhat rarefied milieu, writes perceptively about the quartet's
achievements and is sensitive to some of the problems caused by having four neurotic personalities intermittently at large under a single roof
-- D. J. Taylor * Literary Review *
Absorbing new history -- Alexander Larman * Observer *
Fenwick gives us some fascinating vignettes of the often downplayed cultural life of post-war Britain * The Lady *
