The Memory Garden (48 page)

Around 1900, a new generation began to visit Lamorna, a secluded wooded valley several miles west from Newlyn. Laura and Harold Knight, Samuel John ‘Lamorna’ Birch, Dod and Ernest Procter, Alfred Munnings and, later, Augustus John, were more influenced by Impressionism in their choice of subject and style, moving away from the realist tableaux of the Newlyn tradition to capture light, colour and landscape. Both groups helped establish Cornwall as a land of artists, and their sense of freedom and invention contributed significantly to British art of the period.

The following publications have particularly informed the writing of this novel:
Oil Paint and Grease Paint
by Dame Laura Knight,
The Shining Sands: Artists in Newlyn and St Ives 1880–1930
by Tom Cross,
Five Women Painters
by Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley. Any mistakes in this novel are undoubtedly my own.

The Lamorna Valley retains its breathtaking and mysterious beauty, but I must apologise for taking slight liberties with its geography for fictional purposes. Merryn Hall and its inhabitants past and present exist only within these pages. So too does Carrie’s hotel and Jim and Irina’s cottages. Sadly, the community no longer has a Post Office-cum-stores, though the Cove café and gift shop near the quay are definitely worth a visit.

Thanks are due to a number of people who have advised or otherwise helped me during the writing of
The Memory Garden
: Tamsin Mallett and David Thomas, archivists at the Cornwall Record Office and absolute mines of information; Paul and Amanda Hook, whose lovely cottage I stayed in at Kemyel Wartha; Barbara and Dick Waterson of Trewoofe Orchard and Maryella Pigott, who showed me their beautiful Lamorna gardens. Juliet Bamber corrected my worst gardening inaccuracies; Dr Hilary Johnson gave excellent editorial advice, and Bob Mitchell is still lending me his laptop.

Great thanks are due to my agent Sheila Crowley and her colleagues at A.P. Watt, to my editor Suzanne Baboneau, copy editor Joan Deitch, junior editor Libby Vernon, publicist Sue Stephens, and the rest of the team at Simon & Schuster.

Finally, thank you Felix, Benjy and Leo who light up my life, and David, to whom this book is dedicated.