FOWEY photograph by Jonathan Billinger - shared under creative commons
...in the lovely Cornish town of Fowey (pronounced foy) which has only one drawback - it's thronged by tourists in the holiday season. I was one of them back in a glorious summer in the 1990s (glorious despite the weather. It rained every day and we had to buy puddle jumping suits for the children. We spent an afternoon on the beach in a downpour and loved it, even though we couldn't find adult sized puddle jumpers.)
Du Maurier lived in her beach side cottage with her own children during the war years when she wrote Hungry Hill and had an on-off love affair with the man who inspired the Irish family saga set on the Beara Peninsular in West Cork. I actually stayed near Hungry Hill last summer with husband and one of those now grown up children who still likes nothing better than messing around in rock pools (although now he'd prefer a pint of Guinness afterwards rather than a carton of orange).
And I actually saw the 1947 film starring Margaret Lockwood (who had hair that could over act) based on Du Maurier's novel in the back of a van in the main (that is only) street of Castletownbere. Haven't read the book but I can tell you that the film is truly awful. Dreadful. If we hadn't been sitting in the back of the van we'd have gone for a Guinness.
But the real Hungry Hill is beautiful and so is Fowey. And I bet the De Maurier cottage is a peach. It's called Readymoney Cottage -- exactly what a writer needs, especially if he or she is going to meet the nearly £2 million price tag.
Du Maurier lived in her beach side cottage with her own children during the war years when she wrote Hungry Hill and had an on-off love affair with the man who inspired the Irish family saga set on the Beara Peninsular in West Cork. I actually stayed near Hungry Hill last summer with husband and one of those now grown up children who still likes nothing better than messing around in rock pools (although now he'd prefer a pint of Guinness afterwards rather than a carton of orange).
And I actually saw the 1947 film starring Margaret Lockwood (who had hair that could over act) based on Du Maurier's novel in the back of a van in the main (that is only) street of Castletownbere. Haven't read the book but I can tell you that the film is truly awful. Dreadful. If we hadn't been sitting in the back of the van we'd have gone for a Guinness.
But the real Hungry Hill is beautiful and so is Fowey. And I bet the De Maurier cottage is a peach. It's called Readymoney Cottage -- exactly what a writer needs, especially if he or she is going to meet the nearly £2 million price tag.
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