Читать книгу Britain: The Lake District - Vivienne Crow - Страница 32

The Lake District continues to attract large numbers of writers, and it would be impossible to name them all here, but here are a few of the best known from the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.

Apart from several years spent in a tubercolosis sanatorium as a teenager, poet Norman Nicholson (1914–1987) hardly ever left his home town of Millom in southwest Cumbria. His poems powerfully convey the passion he felt for his home county, and he often explored the relationship between man and landscape.

Although he no longer resides permanently in Cumbria, Wigton-born writer and broadcaster Lord Melvyn Bragg (1939–) is regarded as one of the unofficial ambassadors for the county. Many of his books are set in Cumbria, including The Hired Man and The Maid of Buttermere, based on the life of Mary Robinson (see here), and he often speaks out on local issues.

Hunter Davies (1936–) and his wife Margaret Forster (1938–) both went to school in Carlisle and now divide their time between London and their home at Loweswater. The prolific Davies is probably best known as The Beatles’ biographer, but he has written dozens of other biographies, travelogues and children’s books. Forster’s Georgy Girl was made into a successful film starring Lynn Redgrave and Charlotte Rampling.

Cumbrian-born Sarah Hall (1974–) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for ‘best first book’ in 2003 (Haweswater) and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004 (The Electric Michelangelo). She grew up in the Haweswater area and now lives in Carlisle. As with so many local writers, Cumbria figures highly in her work, and it is this depiction of place that often wins her so much praise.

Another name to watch out for in the coming years is Jacob Polley (1975–). Best known as a poet, his 2009 debut novel Talk of the Town, set in and around his home city of Carlisle, was well received by the critics.