A Bloomsbury House and Garden
Virginia Nicholson’s first book was co-authored with her father, and illustrated with colour photographs by Alen MacWeeney. The book describes the life lived in the Sussex farmhouse occupied for over fifty years by Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and their family and friends.
Set in the heart of the Sussex Downs, Charleston is the most important remaining example of Bloomsbury decorative style. Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, and his daughter Virginia Nicholson, tell the story of this unique house, linking it with some of the leading cultural figures who were invited there, including Vanessa Bell's sister Virginia Woolf, the writer Lytton Strachey, the economist Maynard Keynes and the art critic Roger Fry. The house and garden are portrayed through Alen MacWeeney's atmospheric photographs, while pictures from Vanessa's family album convey the flavour of the household in its heyday. This insider’s view of an historic house breathes life into the decorations, paintings and colourful ephemera which crowd the rooms, now seen by nearly twenty thousand visitors a year.
CHARLESTON: A Bloomsbury House and Garden appeared in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, and a German language edition came out in 1998. In 2004 it was re-issued in paperback. It is still in print.
Reviews
“…Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden, a wonderful new book about the Sussex farmhouse inhabited by members of the Bloomsbury Group…”
“An absolute must for lovers of Bloomsbury style and the result of a unique collaboration between Vanessa Bell’s late son Quentin Bell and his daughter Virginia Nicholson, this book offers a highly personal account of the evolution of one of the most amazing homes in England… Virginia Nicholson has completed her father’s work in a way that links Charleston’s interiors with some of the leading cultural figures of the twentieth century”.
“This book, which Quentin Bell left unfinished, has been completed by his daughter, a ‘patchwork’ as she says of his reminiscences, her own observations and a trawl through his papers… The book interweaves the story of the house with that of its inhabitants; for Bloomsbury devotees, an elegant if elegiac coda to a favourite theme”.
“…Now comes this marvellous book, and a poignant one, because the text consists partly of delightful comment and reminiscences by the late Quentin Bell (Vanessa’s son) and partly of equally delightful (but less quirky) comment by his daughter, Virginia Nicholson”.
“Quentin Bell submitted the first draft of this book’s text but it needed revision and amplification, a task skilfully undertaken after his death by his eldest daughter Virginia Nicholson…”