Art And Literature In Cornwall

The Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Gallery is also in St Ives where many of her great works are located, so it's a must for Barbara Hepworth fans, and indeed lovers of modernism and contemporary art.

Move to Penzance and nearby fishing village Newlyn to discover the delights of the Newlyn School of artists at the Penlee House Gallery in Penzance. Visitors stay in the many cottages Cornwall has to offer.

On the literary side, Cornwall lays claim to a few famous names including most renowned Daphne du Maurier to lived most of her life in Fowey. Discover the area around Wadebridge which so influenced the poetry of John Betjamen - Wadebridge has its own little John Betjamen centre which is well worth a visit. Lesser known poets such as Charles Causley, born in Launceston, East Cornwall. Discover a painting of Causley and more at the Lawrence House Museum in Launceston.

Fowey certainly won't disappoint Du Maurier fans, with its Du Maurier Literary Centre and annual May Du Maurier Festival. Exploring the coast here at Fowey offers fans a real flavour of the area that so features, and inspired her novels. Guided Du Maurier walks are also offered frequently. There is far more about Cornwall than Newquay hotels and Newquay surfing.

Daphne du Maurier and Fowey's associations date back to the war period, when as with the heroine in her novel 'Frenchman's Creek', she brought her children to a live in rented accommodation in Readymoney in 1942. Later in 1945 she moved to mammoth Menabilly on the Rashleigh Estate which is again near Fowey. This creaking old house was the inspiration for Manderley, ""That's not the Northern lights. That's Manderley!"" in her most successful novel, made film by Hitchcock - Rebecca. Once quoted as saying writers should be 'read rather than seen', Du Maurier shunned the public spotlot believing, says Richard Kelly for an interview with her, that success was a very personal thing. Visit in mid-May to co-incide with the superb Daphne du Maurier festival, and make your starting point the little Du Maurier Literary Centre in Fowey. ""Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"".

If you're a fan of Modernism - both painting and sculpture - then the St Ives branch of the St Ives Tate is probably one of the best galleries to head for you can never be too far away from a Cornwall hotel. Great things can indeed happen when artists congregate together, and St Ives' history as an artists colony (it's the light you see) dates back to the late 1800s. Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson arrived here at St Ives in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War. Other notables here in St Ives at the time included Piet Mondrian, an abstract artist, and Naum Gabo a purist geometric sculpture artist. On the journey of exploring abstraction, other artists gravitated towards St Ives including Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and Bryan Wynter. All emphasised experience in their art as opposed to a topographical view of the West Cornish landscape. The Tate St Ives holds many works by these ground breaking Modernists who were influenced by Gabo particularly and American Expressionism.