THE BIRMINGHAM POST AND GAZETTE

Birmingham, Warwickshire, England

18 June 1957

(page 3)

Cornish Atmospherics.

The Living Stones: Cornwall. By Ithell Colquhoun. (Peter Owen 18s.)

At least one cannot accuse Miss Colquhoun of under-valuing the atmosphere of Cornwall. She is, indeed, almost excessively responsive. Many Cornishmen would claim (as I do) that their county is a haunted land. It is impossible to walk round the Lizard, or among the granite of West Penwith, or up in that singularity—and blessedly—unknown area about St. Tudy, without feeling the pressure of a remote past. Good; but Miss Colquhoun feels so much that, now and then, her preoccupation with the strangeness of Cornwall can embarrass.

This embarrassment does not last. Miss Colquhoun, as an artist, observes the place with an artist’s heightened sensibility. It is not a book to be skipped. For its frequent descriptive flashes we can forgive its occasional alarming intensity—and a dragged-in chapter on Aleister Crowley, who is the last man one would expect to meet in a book on Cornwall. (Still it is not the usual Cornish book.)

I find Miss Colquhoun most sympathetic when remembering an assembly of . . .