His range included disturbing studies of the macabre, children's stories and historical fiction, most notably his "Herries" series, set in the Lake District.

Described by John Buchan as 'the greatest English novel since Jude the Obscure', Rogue Herries is a sweeping family saga full of romance and drama. By the 1930s, though his public success remained considerable, many literary critics saw Walpole as outdated. A fellow correspondent was Tom Driberg, whose memoirs tell of a lunch à deux at which Walpole arrived flushed with excitement from a sexual encounter that morning with an attendant in the Borghese Palace. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Don't be put off by some of the older covers - usually made by people who knew nothing of the book but what some overworked editing clerk threw down in a short note, or from an inaccurate pre-publishing blurb.Although I read wanting to know what happens next, either I wasn’t told or when it did I wasn’t interested. If the sun insists on shining (or if it rains cats and dogs) we will just have to make the best of it. An 18th century family saga about the wild and tormented Francis Herries, who starts a new life in Cumberland. n 8] The four new authors on whom he focused were Walpole, Gilbert Cannan, Compton Mackenzie and D H Lawrence.

And during a gathering of authors at his house in London, he founded The Book Society to promote "the advancement of literature" - the forerunner of what is now the Booktrust charity. I particularly liked Walpole's capture of the people's adherence at this time to what are almost medieval beliefs and the mystical feel to some events. Time and place were wonderfully evoked, the descriptions were wonderful, but the book fell down for me on character and relationships.The British Film Institute lists three film versions of Walpole's own works made in the 1930s and 40s: Kind Lady (1935, partly based on "The Silver Mask", a 1933 short story), Vanessa: Her Love Story (1935) and Mr Perrin and Mr Traill (1948). I only read it because I like the Watendlath area, so felt I should, but that's a bit like reading "Tess of the D'Urbevilles" because Stonehenge is in it. Walpole later admitted that he had both despised and liked him – "both emotions that time has proved I was wrong to indulge". In 2011 the BBC broadcast a reappraisal of Walpole, The Walpole Chronicle, presented by Eric Robson. In 2013 a new stage version of Rogue Herries was presented by the Theatre by the Lake company in Walpole's adopted home of Keswick.

Little is known about what he wrote for the department, as most of its records were destroyed after the war, [61] but he noted in his diary that he had written the department's official report to the War Cabinet: "a beastly job – the worst I've ever attempted". Though Walpole was no admirer of the schools he had attended there, the cathedral cities of Truro, Canterbury and Durham made a strong impression on him. The opening evocation of "mist, mizzle and mud" is not only lugubrious scene‑setting for an 18th-century saga, but a fairly accurate weather report.Steele comments, "This periodical, complemented by several historical novels Walpole also wrote during this time, constitutes a solid body of juvenilia. Portrait of a Man with Red Hair (1925) depicts the malign influence of a manipulative, insane father on his family and others. The B5289 road runs down the full length of the valley, and at the southern end crosses the Honister Pass to Buttermere. In the summer of 1915 he worked on the Austrian-Russian front, assisting at operations in field hospitals and retrieving the dead and wounded from the battlefield. Priestley was less impressed by the supposed Trollopian side of Walpole's work, finding some of it formulaic.