Budleigh Past and Present

  Meg Peacocke, a poet with wartime memories of Budleigh Fairlynch Museum and the Otter Valley Association are combining to present a talk on 13 October which will give a special insight into life in Budleigh Salterton during the Second World War.   A sister of the composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Meg Peacocke is a distinguished poet who was brought up in Budleigh Salterton in the 1940s.   A World War Two recruitment poster Image © IWM Local artist Joyce Dennys had suggested that the family move from the London area to Budleigh to escape the danger of Nazi bombing raids, and Meg’s father, the children’s author Rodney Bennett, served as a warden at the ARP hut on The Green.     Meg Peacocke’s poem ‘Walking to Church 1940’ is one of several compositions which give a flavour of wartime life, describing how the Bennett family made its way to Sunday servic...

After my survey of Budleigh as used by so many authors as a ‘small town’ setting I’m left wondering   what the future holds. I was going to stop after Part 3, but a friend told me the other evening that he’d enjoyed my rambling in previous instalments so much that I thought I’d now go a bit imaginative in this one. If you haven't seen my previous postings they are  here  for Part 1, here    for Part 2 and  here  for Part 3. The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, 23-24 August 1572. Painting by François Dubois, a Huguenot painter born circa 1529 in Amiens, who settled in Switzerland. Although Dubois did not witness the massacre, he depicts Admiral Coligny's body hanging out of a window at the rear to the right. To the left rear, Catherine de' Medici is shown emerging from the Château du Louvre to inspect a heap of bodies.  Image credit: Wikipedia For example, will the budding creatives who gave us Summer Storm transport us b...

From time to time I've been asked by the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival organisers to give a tour of the town's landmarks associated with creative people of the past and present who've lived or who are living in Budleigh. That includes writers, artists, musicians and scientists.  A bit of exercise is involved with some uphill stretches, but there are good views to make up for that, and sometimes some benches. When I've done this sort of thing in the past, people asked if there was a book or leaflet where all that information was written down. Well, there isn't really! So I thought I'd have a go here, but focusing on writers who have used Budleigh Salterton as a setting for their novels or who've described it in their memoirs. Many writers have mentioned Budleigh Salterton or a similar name evoking it, among   the most famous being Noel Coward and J.K. Rowling. If, like me, you think this is one of the most romantic...