Centenary Celebration

Moving opening talk of the literature festival at Charleston Farmhouse focusing on the centenary of Vanessa and Clive Bell renting the house and moving there with Duncan Grant and David Garnett.

A series of speakers  spoke passionately about what the house and the Bloomsbury Group means to them.  This started with Virginia Nicholson, Vanessa’s granddaughter talking about her own memories of the house both while Duncan and Vanessa were still alive but also her work since the Trust was set up and writing the definitive book on the house with her father, Quentin Bell.  He was delightful that her mother Anne Olivier Bell was in the audience.

Claire Tomalin, the biographer and Christopher Hampton, who directed the film Carrington, both talked about the hospitality they had received at the house when researching their work, why they had been attracted to the Bloomsbury Group and why they felt the house and the group were still important.

Carmen Callil, founder of Virago and Managing Director of Chatto & Windus and The Hogarth Press, talked about the role of publishing and the Hogarth Press to the Bloomsbury Group. The session was brilliantly chaired by Virginia’s husband and author William Nicholson.