Product Description

Set in the heart of the Sussex Downs, Charleston Farmhouse is the most important remaining example of Bloomsbury decorative style, created by the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, and his daughter Virghinia Nicholson, tell the story of this unique house, linking it with some of the leading cultural figures who were invited there, including Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, the writer Lytton Strachey, the economist Maynard Keynes and the art critic Roger Fry. The house and garden are portrayed through Alen MacWeeney's atmostpheric photographs; pictures from Vanessa Bell's family album convey the flavour of the household in its heyday.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28248 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
a fabulous DIY story, with lashings of eminent Edwardians (Independent )

Here is a view of the quintessential Bloomsbury house through the eyes of a child and grandchild of Clive and Vanessa Bell. It gives warm and intimate views of unorthodox lives ... the pictures are a glorious reminder of Charleston's enduring influence (Times )

About the Author
Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, grew up at Charleston, giving him an intimate knowledge of the house and its inhabitants. He was a painter, sculptor, potter and art critic, and held chairs in Fine Art and the History of Art at the universities of Leeds, Oxford and Sussex. He died in 1996.

Virginia Nicholson is the elder daughter of Quentin and Olivier Bell. After studying at Cambridge University she worked as a television researcher. She lives in Sussex near Charleston and is a member of the Charleston Committee.

Customer Reviews

The most charming house in England
Beautiful pictures in this room-by-room tour of Charleston Farmhouse; brought back memories of a very happy visit some years ago and made me want to go back. When Vanessa Bell moved there in 1916, with Duncan Grant and his friend David Garnett - a complicated menage that seems to have worked very happily - they worked a transformation with paint. The result ... one of England's most delightful interiors, sheer exuberance of colour and design used with absolute fearlessness. (And what an inspiration ... what can be done with a can of Dulux if you throw caution to the winds!)
This memoir of the house is written by Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicholson, Vanessa's younger son and grand-daughter. Quentin was 85 when he began writing the first draft but as his health failed, his daughter sat by his bed recording his memories. The book is imbued with their love for the house (as well as being a daughter's affectionate memoir of her father). Quentin's memories, in particular, convey what a magical place it was to live in. Happily, without any of that Bloomsbury Set adulation that so often gets up my nose ... to him, they were real people, Vanessa a loving mother, Clive Bell emerging from his bathroom 'pink as a peach', Maynard Keynes sweeping in with the Evening Standard and the fascination of his involvement with high politics and the Treaty of Versailles, his ballerina wife who could bore for Russia.
What a shame that the house is now a shrine for visitors, when it was once so full of life - a place to be enjoyed, not revered.