CHALDON HERRING
Writers in a Dorset Landscape
By Judith Stinton
Chaldon Herring is the story of a Dorset village and the remarkable colony of writers and artists drawn to the place between the wars by the presence of the reclusive novelist Theodore Powys whose best known novel Mr Weston’s Good Wine is set in the village. Among those who left their mark were David Garnett – his novel The Sailor’s Return was inspired by the village pub, the novelist and poet Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland. Other members of the Powys clan, most notably Theodore’s younger brother Llewelyn Powys and his family came to live on the hills above that inspired some of his best rural essays.
Illustrated with archive photos, woodcuts and dust jackets, Judith Stinton’s research places Chaldon in its landscape setting and social context. Chapters on the church, the school, the vicarage, the pub and the villagers who feature in so many poems and short stories paint a unique picture of creative endeavour in the 1930s in this remote and beautiful Dorset parish.