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Cooper, Duff (2005). John Julius Norwich (ed.). The Duff Cooper Diaries. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297848437. I grew up... discontented, ugly, abnormally sensitive, and excessively conceited. No one liked me – not masters, boys, friends of the family, nor relations who came to stay; and I do not in the least wonder at it. I was untidy, uncleanly, excessively gauche. I believed that I was profoundly misunderstood, that people took my pale and pimpled countenance for the mirror of my soul, that I had marvellous things of interest in me that would one day be discovered. [12]Wodehouse wrote to a friend, "I can't remember if I ever told you about meeting Hugh when I was at Oxford getting my D.Litt. I was staying with the Vice-Chancellor at Magdalen and he blew in and spent the day. It was just after Hilaire Belloc had said that I was the best living English writer. It was just a gag, of course, but it worried Hugh terribly. He said to me, 'Did you see what Belloc said about you?' I said I had. 'I wonder why he said that.' 'I wonder,' I said. Long silence. 'I can't imagine why he said that,' said Hugh. I said I couldn't, either. Another long silence. 'It seems such an extraordinary thing to say!' 'Most extraordinary.' Long silence again. 'Ah, well,' said Hugh, having apparently found the solution, 'the old man's getting very old.'" [116] Walpole wrote in 1939, "That I love Cumberland with all my heart and soul is another reason for my pleasure in writing these Herries books. That I wasn't born a Cumbrian isn't my fault: that Cumbrians, in spite of my 'foreignness', have been so kind to me, is my good fortune." [75] The article was revised and reprinted in James's 1914 book Notes on Novelists under the title "The New Novel". [39] It has fantastic set pieces that make it a great community show that calls for children, older people, musicians and dancers. The appeal is in the sheer epic scale of the story. I was also very interested in the father and son relationship at the centre of the book, something very rarely explored in the theatre. capacity to appreciate and admire generously the work of authors very different from himself. He held in the highest esteem, for instance, the novels of Mr James Joyce and Mrs Woolf.

Most schools have their autumn half-term holidays starting around Oct. 23, which means there will be families visiting the Lake District with their children, so it may be a bit more crowded then than the first few weeks of October. Condition: Good. Light wear to boards. Content is clean and bright. DJ with some edge wear and tears. According to Duff Cooper, an old friend of Walpole, Hart-Davis (who was Cooper's nephew) found in Walpole's diaries an admission that he dreaded having to fight, although he knew his short-sightedness precluded it; it was as a non-combatant that he was later decorated for courage in the battlefield. [43] The critical and commercial success of the film of David Copperfield led to an invitation to return to Hollywood in 1936. [88] When he got there he found that the studio executives had no idea which films they wanted him to work on, and he had eight weeks of highly paid leisure, during which he wrote a short story and worked on a novel. He was eventually asked to write the scenario for Little Lord Fauntleroy, which he enjoyed doing. He spent most of his fees on paintings, forgetting to keep enough money to pay US tax on his earnings. [88] He replenished his American funds with a lecture tour – his last – in late 1936. [89] [n 16]The Lake District is great all year round, but you are right, in October it could be cool and grey. And wet. But that wouldn’t stop me! Just dress appropriately! Waterproof boots, full waterproof body coverage, layers, hat and gloves. Map and compass. Free U.K. phone app ‘OS Locate’ gives you a compass, your altitude and six figure grid ref so you can identify your exact position on a paper map. During his career contemporaries saw both negative and positive sides to Walpole's outgoing nature and desire to be in the public eye. Wodehouse commented, "I always think Hugh Walpole's reputation was two thirds publicity. He was always endorsing books and speaking at lunches and so on." [120] On the other hand, Walpole stood out as one of the few literary figures willing to go into court and give evidence for the defence at the obscenity trial after the 1928 lesbian novel by Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, was published. [121] The most powerful chapter describes a pathetic old woman being lynched as a witch, but again I couldn’t see any thematic let alone narrative connection with the rest of the book. (Possibly she is an example of hostility to outsiders, like Herries himself.)

By the 1930s, though his public success remained considerable, many literary critics saw Walpole as outdated. His reputation in literary circles took a blow from a malicious caricature in Somerset Maugham's 1930 novel Cakes and Ale: the character Alroy Kear, a superficial novelist of more pushy ambition than literary talent, was widely taken to be based on Walpole. [n 15] In the same year Walpole wrote possibly his best-known work, Rogue Herries, a historical novel set in the Lake District. It was well-received: The Daily Mail considered it "not only a profound study of human character, but a subtle and intimate biography of a place." [84] He followed it with three sequels; all four novels were published in a single volume as The Herries Chronicle. [85]

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The London Novels were Fortitude, The Duchess of Wrexe, The Green Mirror, The Captives, The Young Enchanted, Wintersmoon, Hans Frost and Captain Nicholas. a b c d e Priestley, J B. "Hugh Walpole", The English Journal, Volume 17, No 7 (September 1928), pp. 529–536 (subscription required) Walpole's output was large and varied. Between 1909 and 1941 he wrote thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two original plays and three volumes of memoirs. His range included disturbing studies of the macabre, children's stories and historical fiction, most notably his Herries Chronicle series, set in the Lake District. He worked in Hollywood writing scenarios for two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films in the 1930s, and had a cameo in the 1935 film adaptation of David Copperfield. Parnell, J. (2009). "Genesis of the graphite deposit at Seathwaite in Borrowdale, Cumbria". Geological Magazine. 119 (5): 511–512. doi: 10.1017/S0016756800026868.

In time though, things changed. Deborah fell in love with a clergyman, who told her that he was prepared to wait until she was ready to leave her family. David fell in love with a young woman who he had to wrestle away from her cruel guardian – quite literally. And – most extraordinarily – Francis Herries developed a passion for Mirabell, the daughter of a gypsy woman he had helped and who had asked her to watch over her daughter after her death. He loved her as he had never loved before, she didn’t feel the same way, but she was buffeted by life and he became her refuge. I inherited Rogue Herries and thought I’d give it a whirl. I can see why it was popular – nearly every chapter is vivid and leaving you to want to know what happens next. It opens in the early eighteenth century with Francis Herries travelling to live in a remote family home in the Lake District together with his wife, three children, his mistress and a Roman Catholic priest. But I found it deeply frustrating that the incidents don’t hang together. We never know why Herries, who is not a Catholic, protects this priest. The wife dies off early and the mistress is dismissed in a dramatic scene never to appear again. The priest does reappear and introduces Herries to Bonny Prince Charles during the 1745 rising and then just disappears. Nothing further is made of the meeting, which would be at the centre of most historical novels.I read all of The Herries Chronicle when I was quite young, say 11 or 12. We had an old copy in the book cupboard at home, probably belonging to my mum. I found it then completely eye popping and couldn’t put it down. I don’t know what happened to that volume. I think it had maps in the endpapers of all the locations in the Lake District where the stories unfold. WorldCat (November 2013) lists reissues in 1962 (Harcourt Brace, New York), 1963 (Rupert Hart-Davis, London) and 1980 (Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn), and a new edition in 1980 (Hamish Hamilton, London), reissued in 1985 (Hamish Hamilton) and 1997 (Phoenix Mill, Stroud, UK). [128] Most of the mountains at the head of Borrowdale, including Scafell Pike and Great Gable, are part of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, a geological development from the Ordovician period. Edel, Leon, ed. (1984). Letters of Henry James, Volume 4. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 067438783X.