Easter holiday
Time out from a patch of sky
Thanks very much for reading A Patch of Sky. I very much appreciate the support of all my readers and listeners.
I’ll be away for Easter so I’ve set up a few regular posts. Otherwise, I’m going to be relaxing and enjoying my time in Cornwall with our family and Wilson, our golden retriever. We’ll be staying again at North Minack, the house formerly owned by Rowena Cade who built The Minack Theatre next door.
As you may know I’ve recently finished a creative non-fiction book about Rowena Cade, her family and the building of the theatre, The Woman on the Cliff. The project started life as my MA dissertation at Birkbeck, University of London. I was encouraged to develop the book by my supervisor Marina Warner, who has now sent me a letter of support, for which I’m very, very grateful.
Here are just a couple of passages from her letter.
The Woman on the Cliff can take its place in the new and highly appreciated genre of fictive memoir, as a hybrid, between documentary and auto-fiction. It provides a vivid portrait of an extraordinary woman, Rowena Cade, and tells the heroic story of her building an open-air theatre, the Minack in Cornwall, almost single-handedly. It brings her to vivid life in relation to her family and presents a generous and observant portrait of upper-middle-class English society in the interwar years, during World War Two - and after.
In this story strong women –and highly unusual women at that – take centre stage, and their relationships are intrinsically fascinating and unconventional. John Davies traces the vicissitudes, the costs, troubles, and delights of their lives with sensitivity to their emotional complexity. In many ways, the cast of characters in The Woman on the Cliff uncovers another Bloomsbury not in London and Sussex, but in the wild dramatic scenery of Cornwall.
I wish him a great success with this surprising and fascinating book.
Marina Warner, CH DBE FBA FRSL
Professor of English and Creative Writing, Birkbeck College, London
Distinguished Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford
If you would like more information about the book, do get in touch.
Wishing you all a very happy holiday time!
