The Living Stones

In the midst of the Second World War, surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun withdraws from London to Cornwall, searching for a studio and a refuge from the Blitz. So begins a profound and lifelong relationship with Britain's westernmost county. It is a land of granite ridges and lush valleys, surrounded by sea and steeped in myth, where the ancient Celtic past makes contact with the present.

Drawn to the sacred and the beautiful, the wild and the weird, Colquhoun writes about Cornwall as a living landscape, where every tree, standing stone and holy well is a palimpsest of folklore - and perhaps a place where everyday reality connects to the world beyond. In prose as gorgeously dreamlike as it is sharply witty, this inimitable artist gives us a travelogue deeply attuned to natural rhythms, local atmosphere and the eerie beauty of a place that is as much legend as it is water and rock.