Leo Walmsley (1892–1966)
Autore di British Ports and Harbours
Sull'Autore
Opere di Leo Walmsley
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Walmsley, Leo
- Data di nascita
- 1892-09-29
- Data di morte
- 1966-06-08
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di nascita
- Shipley, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Luogo di morte
- Fowey, Cornwall
- Luogo di residenza
- Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire
Pont Pill, Polruan, Cornwall - Istruzione
- The Old Wesleyan Chapel, Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire
- Attività lavorative
- writer
- Relazioni
- Du Maurier, Daphne (friend)
Walmsley, Ulric (father) - Organizzazioni
- Royal Flying Corps
- Premi e riconoscimenti
- Military Cross
Utenti
Recensioni
“A book of mine with the rapturous title, Love in the Sun was published in this country in August of the fateful year 1939, three months before the start of Hitler’s war.
It was the story, based closely on fact, of how my wife and I, then very poor, found an empty and derelict army hut on a lonely creek near Fowey in Cornwall, rented it for three shillings a week, and made it into a home, making our own furniture, chiefly from driftwood and ships’ dunnage, growing or catching most of our food …”
I was both confused and entranced by those opening lines. Leo Walmsley’s novel, Love in the Sun, was everything that he says, and quite wonderful, but what was this book. It read like fact, and yet it stood next to Love in the Sun on the Cornish Fiction shelf in the library.
It was fiction, I discovered as I was propelled forward by Leo Walmsley, but clearly fiction that was just a whisper away from fact, and written in a very different world.
Love in the Sun ended with the birth of a child and the publication of a book. Since then, I learned the couple had prospered, moved back closer to their roots in the north, and their family had grown. But there were dark shadows. The war, of course and the couple’s relationship deteriorated. Different attitudes to life, to how to bring up their children took their toll.
It was an utterly real story, one that must have been told so many times, but I was drawn in by the emotional honesty and the simple clarity of the storytelling.
Eventually she took their children and left him.
He retreated to Cornwall, to the army hut by the river where the couple had been so happy. To lick his wounds. To make a holiday home for his children. And maybe, just maybe, to win his wife back when she brought the children down.
The restoration of that home echoes the first book beautifully.
When the children come they love it.
So many lovely small details bring a simple story to life, and real emotional honesty makes it sing.
The children grow up, of course, and so over the years summer holidays in Cornwall and their father’s role, change.
But then maybe a different future calls ….
At the beginning of Paradise Creek I was disappointed that the idyll of Love in the Sun had ended. But I was quickly caught up, emotionally involved, as the story of that end unfolded and I was taken on a very different journey.
The storyteller was flawed, but I saw into his heart and I recognised a real, fallible human being.
Everything rang true. And as I read on I realised how cleverly the structure of this book echoed its predecessor.
It works as a companion piece, and it stands up on its own. Because it is a wonderful piece of storytelling: emotionally involving, simple and utterly believable.
This is a book that will remain in my heart.… (altro)
It was the story, based closely on fact, of how my wife and I, then very poor, found an empty and derelict army hut on a lonely creek near Fowey in Cornwall, rented it for three shillings a week, and made it into a home, making our own furniture, chiefly from driftwood and ships’ dunnage, growing or catching most of our food …”
I was both confused and entranced by those opening lines. Leo Walmsley’s novel, Love in the Sun, was everything that he says, and quite wonderful, but what was this book. It read like fact, and yet it stood next to Love in the Sun on the Cornish Fiction shelf in the library.
It was fiction, I discovered as I was propelled forward by Leo Walmsley, but clearly fiction that was just a whisper away from fact, and written in a very different world.
Love in the Sun ended with the birth of a child and the publication of a book. Since then, I learned the couple had prospered, moved back closer to their roots in the north, and their family had grown. But there were dark shadows. The war, of course and the couple’s relationship deteriorated. Different attitudes to life, to how to bring up their children took their toll.
It was an utterly real story, one that must have been told so many times, but I was drawn in by the emotional honesty and the simple clarity of the storytelling.
Eventually she took their children and left him.
He retreated to Cornwall, to the army hut by the river where the couple had been so happy. To lick his wounds. To make a holiday home for his children. And maybe, just maybe, to win his wife back when she brought the children down.
The restoration of that home echoes the first book beautifully.
When the children come they love it.
So many lovely small details bring a simple story to life, and real emotional honesty makes it sing.
The children grow up, of course, and so over the years summer holidays in Cornwall and their father’s role, change.
But then maybe a different future calls ….
At the beginning of Paradise Creek I was disappointed that the idyll of Love in the Sun had ended. But I was quickly caught up, emotionally involved, as the story of that end unfolded and I was taken on a very different journey.
The storyteller was flawed, but I saw into his heart and I recognised a real, fallible human being.
Everything rang true. And as I read on I realised how cleverly the structure of this book echoed its predecessor.
It works as a companion piece, and it stands up on its own. Because it is a wonderful piece of storytelling: emotionally involving, simple and utterly believable.
This is a book that will remain in my heart.… (altro)
I picked up an older edition of Love in the Sun purely by chance, as I browsed local fiction in the library. I am so, so glad that I did. It is a gem.
The first clue was Daphne Du Maurier’s introduction:
”‘Love in the Sun’ will make other writers feel ashamed. And, curiously enough, old-fashioned too. It is a revelation in the art of writing and may be one of the pioneers in a new renaissance which shall and must take place in our time if the novel is to survive at all. While we struggle to produce our complicated plots, all sex and psychology, fondly imagining we are drawing modern life while really we are as démodé as jazz and mah jong, Leo Walmsley gives the reader a true story, classic in its simplicity, of a man and a girl who possessed nothing in life but love for each other and faith in the future, and because of these things, were courageous and happy…”
How could I not bring it home after reading that?!
The story is indeed simple.
A man and a woman from Yorkshire are in love, and they run away to Cornwall. Life had become complicated, and they just want to build a life together and be happy.
“We were in love and we knew what we wanted. To have a little house close to the sea, a garden, a boat…”
They lease an old army hut – previously only used as temporary shelter – for their home. They create a garden and grow vegetables; they catch fish too; they collect driftwood to burn for fuel, and so they survive and build that life. So that he can write his novel and she can have their baby.
Yes, it really is that simple. But it works beautifully, because it is honest and true.
There are little incidents, and many ups and downs, along the way. A roof that cannot keep out the Cornish rain. A kitten rescued. A boat lost to strong tides. Desperate attempts to avoid a familiar face from home. An unexpected friendship. A failed attempt to sell surplus produce. All things that you can imagine the couple recalling fondly in later life.
A baby arrives, and so does a book. There are dark shadows: the man struggles to come to terms with the time and attention that the woman must give to the child, and with the pressure to produce a second book after the first is published.
But all of that falls away when the couple’s future is threatened. Their love comes to the fore, and with a little luck they will pull through.
It is impossible not to care: the man and the woman are utterly real, and every detail rings true.
We make life complicated, when it could be so simple.
Love in the Sun is simply lovely.
“”Yes,” she cried. “Yes, I’m certian of it. Everybody will want to read it. Everybody will want to buy it. How could people not help liking it? It’s so real. There’s nothing dull about it… It’s a grand book.”
“God!” I cried. “You’re right. It ought to go. It ought to sell in thousands.”
Words from Love in the Sun, but they could equally well be said about it. I am so that it has been reissued by the Leo Walmsley Society, and wish it every success… (altro)
The first clue was Daphne Du Maurier’s introduction:
”‘Love in the Sun’ will make other writers feel ashamed. And, curiously enough, old-fashioned too. It is a revelation in the art of writing and may be one of the pioneers in a new renaissance which shall and must take place in our time if the novel is to survive at all. While we struggle to produce our complicated plots, all sex and psychology, fondly imagining we are drawing modern life while really we are as démodé as jazz and mah jong, Leo Walmsley gives the reader a true story, classic in its simplicity, of a man and a girl who possessed nothing in life but love for each other and faith in the future, and because of these things, were courageous and happy…”
How could I not bring it home after reading that?!
The story is indeed simple.
A man and a woman from Yorkshire are in love, and they run away to Cornwall. Life had become complicated, and they just want to build a life together and be happy.
“We were in love and we knew what we wanted. To have a little house close to the sea, a garden, a boat…”
They lease an old army hut – previously only used as temporary shelter – for their home. They create a garden and grow vegetables; they catch fish too; they collect driftwood to burn for fuel, and so they survive and build that life. So that he can write his novel and she can have their baby.
Yes, it really is that simple. But it works beautifully, because it is honest and true.
There are little incidents, and many ups and downs, along the way. A roof that cannot keep out the Cornish rain. A kitten rescued. A boat lost to strong tides. Desperate attempts to avoid a familiar face from home. An unexpected friendship. A failed attempt to sell surplus produce. All things that you can imagine the couple recalling fondly in later life.
A baby arrives, and so does a book. There are dark shadows: the man struggles to come to terms with the time and attention that the woman must give to the child, and with the pressure to produce a second book after the first is published.
But all of that falls away when the couple’s future is threatened. Their love comes to the fore, and with a little luck they will pull through.
It is impossible not to care: the man and the woman are utterly real, and every detail rings true.
We make life complicated, when it could be so simple.
Love in the Sun is simply lovely.
“”Yes,” she cried. “Yes, I’m certian of it. Everybody will want to read it. Everybody will want to buy it. How could people not help liking it? It’s so real. There’s nothing dull about it… It’s a grand book.”
“God!” I cried. “You’re right. It ought to go. It ought to sell in thousands.”
Words from Love in the Sun, but they could equally well be said about it. I am so that it has been reissued by the Leo Walmsley Society, and wish it every success… (altro)
Story of the inshore fisherman's fight to earn a living from the North Sea in the early years of the 20th century.
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 21
- Opere correlate
- 1
- Utenti
- 159
- Popolarità
- #132,375
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 6
- ISBN
- 27
- Lingue
- 1
- Preferito da
- 1
Stubbornness won in the end. It had travelled with me for all those years, perhaps I should see what I had missed? After reading three brilliant Nigerian post-colonial novels (yet to be reviewed here) I needed a change of scene. And how!
Worms, the narrator of Foreigners is a pre-adolescent (roughly) kid from Bramblewick (modelled on Walmsley's Robin Hood's Bay). The narrative is not entirely anchored in time, perhaps a little retrospective, pre-cars, perhaps Walmsley's own turn of century era. The characters are slightly wooden, not Dickensian caricatures, but more or less variations on a handful of themes: adult women (mother included), adult men, and boys. Girls do not exist. The adult men fall into two groups: foreigners (nice), locals (drunkards). The boys are the same grouping in inchoate form.
The "foreigners" are ostracised, are anyone not from Bramblewick, and to that extent at least Walmsley's most popular work slips into the mode of timelessness. Other aspects are now inescapably dated and regionalised: the propensity for silly nick-names (Chicken is one boy who, more or less, breaks into Worms' inner sanctum by virtue of greater weakness and more conspicuous otherness);Ginger (Worms opportunistically beats him up for the crime of having red hair), Slogger (a bullying teacher), Grab. A litany of nicknames with the occasional surname: Grab is Fosdyck and a bully. Mick Regan escapes a nickname because he is an adult and a foreigner, but his character (nice and big and strong when sober, drunk when drunk) is strangely undeveloped, and Worms' love for him (not sexual, but the love of a role model) unexplained. Except he can fight, and is strong. And dies, of course, of a stroke. Slogger boxes around ears because teachers do. Mother cries a lot, prays a lot, loves a lot. Father paints a lot, and is different a lot. Worms cries a lot, smokes a lot when peer pressure dictates, fights and more often loses than wins, and "scrats", a lot. Chicken has sticky lollies and leaves but [spoiler] comes back and Charley arrives and leaves and transforms Worms' fighting ability but probably inflicts irreparable damage on his lungs. Charley is a very foreign foreigner and calls his father pater but his father is so foreign he's a conman and the police try but fail to find him.
Yet amongst the jolly fisticuffs and bally swears and fags (not the prefect's caddy kind), xenophobia and dislocation, or their regional variant, are themes running throughout the narrative: the other is ostracised, and Worms is the other. Faith is clung to by some outsiders, strived for by Worms and more or less lost as if by rite of passage into adolescence. Prohibition comes and goes, ineffectually: the village drinks on.
Jolly fisticuffs, but a period piece gem. Perhaps I should read Biggles again, now? But I won't regret winning the public speaking prize in 1971, nor even Geoff Austin (long since died) persuading me to choose a book from his childhood past and its narration of its author's childhood past, and therefore take me back into a narrative near-lost.… (altro)