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Of Thomas Hardy and PJ Harvey: on the trail of Dorset’s inspirational powers
10.08.2023 - 20:27 / theguardian.com
I’ve spent my working life as bookseller, book marketer, publisher and now author, so it was probably inevitable that I would lean heavily on literature for my book Real Dorset. Luckily for me, writers have frequently turned to Dorset for their inspiration.
Chief of these of course is Thomas Hardy. He stamped his personality over his idea of Wessex, reviving an ancient kingdom, and giving towns and villages new names. Dorset was the focus for Hardy’s imagination and his presence is everywhere – in museums, bookshops, on blue plaques. Every town seems to have been a film set for a Hardy adaptation. In a somewhat overliteral move, his heart is buried at Stinsford, just east of Dorchester. But there are many more writers worth exploring, all with their own visions.
You might begin a literary tour of Dorset in its north-east, on Cranborne Chase, the chalkland that borders Hampshire and Wiltshire. Now an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it is marked by the traces of ancient earthworks and shaped by its designation as forest – for hunting – which held until the early 19th century. WH Hudson chose a house just over the border in Hampshire’s most westerly village, Martin, when he was writing A Shepherd’s Life, first published in 1910. Originally from Argentina, Hudson described Cranborne Chase’s downlands and wildlife, and also the rural people he met on his travels. He wrote that he hoped that by committing them to paper he might lay to rest the ghosts of his imagination.
Children’s author Angela McAllister once lived in Hudson’s cottage and told me that a century after his death devotees still make their way to his old home, entranced by his singular vision. Also on Cranborne Chase, in the village of Long Crichel, is the beautiful, recently restored St Mary’s Church. The adjoining rectory was once the scene of what the biographer Simon Fenwick described as England’s last literary salon, where writers, musicians, artists and even Greta Garbo stayed. This extraordinary roll call – which included Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, EM Forster, Vita Sackville-West, Cecil Beaton and Evelyn Waugh – sometimes gave rise to a complex web of personal relationships. But the house was also where, in the midst of 1950s anti-gay hysteria, the seeds of change were planted, when two of the wider Crichel group, Michael Pitt Rivers and Lord Montagu, were convicted of homosexual acts and imprisoned. This led to the Wolfenden report and a change in the law, making the small village an important site in LGBTQ+ history.
Beyond Shaftesbury – which Hardy renamed Shaston, and where he had the unfortunate Sue throw herself from a window in Jude the Obscure – is Blackmore Vale. This is a hidden, little-known place, a patchwork of
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