I came to london almost 30 years ago, knowing v few people and my weekends seemed interminably long- I was almost crippled with loneliness. So I visited art galleries and some paintings came to be friends ….. and that’s how my interest in art starts
I fell in love with books and stories when I was very young. Because I had asthma, I was often home from school or up at night. My grandmother lived with us, and would read me stories to help me relax and pass the time. My favorites were Heidi, Little Women, the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. I would cuddle next to her and listen to her soft, soothing southern voice. So many lovely embodied memories of reading with her in those days, they certainly inspired a love of books and reading, and a sense of the magical powers a good story contained. My grandmother has been gone a long time, but her memory is beside me whenever I sit down with a book.
That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing your memories, Becca. How lovely that you can imagine her with you when you read. My grandparents lived across from us and were very much like second parents. They often brought me books, most of which I still have. I particularly remember a lovely pink book of short stories they bought for me when I had chicken pox.
I love that we share those memories of our grandparents. As a grandmother myself, I want most to be making those kinds of memories with my own grandchild. He too is a ravenous reader (and writer!)
My mother told me stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. By the time my school introduced them through Sanskrit lessons, I already knew them by heart. Then came the school library, weekends at the local library with my uncle, and eventually my mother's own bookshelf. I picked up books I was probably too young to read and certainly too young to fully understand. It took me years to realize that my love of reading hadn't started with a book at all. It started with my mother, who quietly planted the seed long before I knew it, with the art of simple storytelling.
My journey into books and writing started with me being absolutely rubbish at spelling. My mom would sit down with me and dictate a text from a book which I had to write down. We both grew frustrated when it didn't help - but something still happened. I grew curious as to what happened in the story! I wanted to know about the adventures. So, I started reading. I fell into the different worlds and my spelling improved fast. My imagination grew and soon I was writing and drawing my own stories. I still write, but I stopped drawing.
I knit and crochet, though, which I learned to have a connection to my grandmother. Now, whenever I pick up my needles, I feel her next to me.
I actually just asked her! We’re sitting together right now, enjoying a calm evening after work.
And she didn’t. She thought I would finish that one book and then not pick up another. But it was a part of a series my grandparents had gifted me - St. Clare's by Enid Blyton.
I picked up the second book and it was all downhill from there. I still have those books, actually.
Oooh, I'm a bit late to say hello to your Mum, but hello anyway. I loved the St Clare's books. And Mallory Towers. Did you read those as well? I still have them too. Do you remember the Anchovy paste sandwiches?
Unfortunately I didn't get to read Mallory Towers - but maybe I'll find them! Have to figure out what they were called in German, though. Which shouldn't be too hard given that we have the internet to help with that.
St Clare's are called "Hanni und Nanni" in German - after the twins.
Yes, sometimes it's nice to go back and read children's books. Either ones we've read before, or ones that we missed. I have a new nephew (my first), and I'm looking forward to reading some of my old books with him.
That's very true! I'm currently re-reading one of my children's book. It is one of the books that I am handing over to the local library, so that others can enjoy it as well. I don't think that it was ever translated into English. The first edition was printed in the 1980s, I think.
There are passages in the book that actually hit a lot harder now than they did when I was reading it for the first time as a child. Goes to remind you that with education (usually) comes a deeper understanding. If that makes sense.
My parents were craft potters and I spent much of my childhood at craft fairs and around artists and artisan crafts people. A very bohemian circle of people.
My parents had a big hardback book entitled 'Impressionism' which I remember looking through as a child. Pictures like Monet's 'Women in the Garden' intrigued me as I wanted to know what they were talking about and where the lady sweeping off down the path is going - as well as admiring their beautiful clothes! I went on to study history of art at university and I'm sure that book was where it all started...
My parents took my brother and me to countless museums when we were on vacation in France. We often were quite reluctant if I recall that correctly, but I remember so many things rather vividly: paintings by Chagall, installations with parts of (real!) dead bulls hanging from the ceiling in a monastery in Arles, a chapel painted by Matisse near Antibes, paintings by Picasso, so many impressionistic pictures… It really was an education. Also at home there were lots of paintings by both my grandfathers (who were only amateurs, but some of them were quite good, especially the ones of my musician grandfather!). My brother became a painter and sculptor, I went on to study musicology and am a translator specialising in music related texts. And reading always played a huge role in my life, I couldn’t imagine ever not reading lots and lots of books.
So the love of art was installed from my earliest childhood, and I am happy that my four daughters share this with me - they also weren’t too happy about visiting museums when they were little, but now they are grownups and we regularly meet to see exhibitions together (two this week alone!).
Greetings from Heidelberg (the one in Germany)! 🖼️
Thank you so much for your reply, Susanne. It sounds like you had such a richly cultural childhood. How absolutely lovely! Do you still have your grandfathers' paintings? Which exhibitions have you just seen? The next Conversation I am planning is on our favourite galleries...
Not paintings but photography I recently attended an event at the Portrait Gallery in London where Cecil Beaton’ photography and Edith Sitwell’s poetry were put together and performed as a reading. It was interesting and a good way to look at both art forms one inspiring the other.
I spent a lot of time reading from an early age. We made family trips to the library, where my mother would assist me in selecting books as a young child. I discovered poetry when I was 8 and owned an anthology that I read countless times. I loved literature studied at school and continued to consume even more on my own. I always loved art projects, but in high school I took an art history class that exposed me to the world of Western Art. I started visiting museums and galleries and took more art history in college. Literature and art have remained sources of joy in my life, although I pursued careers in psychology and law. Now that I'm retired, I devote lots of time to reading the classics and enjoying art online and in person.
Sharon, as a child, I also made frequent trips to the library with my mother. Now, nearly three-quarters of a century later, I see it in my mind's eye and can conjure up the smell of that special place.
Thank you so much for your reply, Sharon. How wonderful to have discovered poetry at such a young age. And I have heard from other readers that they are enjoying returning to art and literature after careers in different fields. Thank you for being here!
Hello Anne, Liz, and other lovers of all things books, art, and beauty. Thank you, Victoria, for initiating this conversation. Although I am a New Yorker, my husband and I lived in Glasgow for three wonderful years from 2022 to 2025. I, too, am familiar with the magnificent Dali painting you both saw in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow. Anne, I loved reading your memory of viewing this painting as a young teenager and the awakening it produced in your soul. Twenty-five years ago, I had a similar experience when I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition, Vermeer and the Delft School. When I entered the first gallery, I was dumbstruck by the enormity of such beauty. The only thing I can compare it to is seeing the immense Grand Canyon for the first and only time as a young teenager. Both experiences left me speechless.
Speaking of Scotland, I enjoyed discovering the architect/artist Rennie Mackintosh, his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, as well as learning about the Glasgow Boys.
As for reading, it's been a lifelong love. Around the pandemic, I discovered Penelope Fitzgerald, which led to Anita Bruckner, which led me to the backlisted podcast and its treasures. For the past several years, I have been indulging in the mid-20th century Middlebrow authors, and beginning in 2026, I have taken a deep dive back into Trollope.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reply, Barbara. And you're very welcome. It's great to learn more about Beyond Bloomsbury's readers. I do think it's lovely when a painting can create such wonder. And to leave such a lasting impression. Thank you for being here!
Though I was reading as early as four years old, when my father gave me Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson in its lovely black case and that I still have, the deal was sealed.
Thank you for replying and being here, Mary. How lovely that you still have such a treasure. I still have a lot of my childhood books, but sadly, some have been misplaced along the way.
Books were always around. We were not allowed/expected to spend much time at all watching TV but were encouraged to use our imagination and read. Also my mother would line a badminton court with lime and after teaching us how to play badminton encouraged us to do so. They sat and talked from above while watching sort of and drinking coffee or lemonade or.,,,
I can't remember ever not loving books. I started writing my first novel aged 4. But visual art took a long time; there was little to see where I lived. So coming to London aged 18, and wandering through the National Gallery. + the old Courtauld, hidden in an upper floor in Woburn Square. A secret treasure trove.
The first time I was impressed by a painting it was Lady in a Red Hat by William Strang. It was 1981 I was 21 and a drama student in Glasgow. We were taken to I think the Kelvinside art gallery. Our tutor instructed us to choose a figure from a painting we could then characterise. I chose this one because I thought the lady was very striking. I bought a post card of the portrait which I still have. I had no idea who the lady Vita Sackville West was at that time but I found out about her and she sparked my interest in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set which I have to this day.
I fell in love with art nouveau, the poetry of Keats, the Arthurian legends at an early age. I collected post cards, books, fell in love with Virginia Wolf, Dame Laura Knight, the Pre- Raphaelites & the Bloomsbury group, the Fabians oh so many others who fired my imagination & fill my soul to this day. 🕊️
Hello Anne and everyone. I saw the same painting during a visit to Glasgow with the friends of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Like you I was mesmerised and so lucky to have the little room, where it was then displayed, to myself.
I can’t ever remember not loving books and literature - my fortnightly visits to the library with my dad were formative as was my mum’s insistence that we always had books to write or draw in. School encouraged all this for me and my English teachers were idolised.
Art came later - in my late twenties perhaps when we discovered (and still love) Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
I love Virginia Woolf and through her Vanessa Bell and the other Bloomsbury Artists and have delved into so much since I retired, daring just recently to give a talk at my local Art Appreciation Group about Charleston and the Bloomsbury Artists. I won’t go on…enough said!
That’s wonderful, Liz. I do admire you giving a talk. I’ve been to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a friend of mine used to work there, but only the once. I would love to go again.
Thanks Victoria - nerves were overcome as soon as I started talking but it’s a lovely friendly group so I knew there’d just be a lovely atmosphere. What I loved more than the speaking though was the researching and choosing the paintings to illustrate the talk - in my element doing all of that. I would imagine you enjoy that for your brilliant Substack posts!
YSP would definitely be worthy of a return visit! So many new and exciting exhibitions. We are very lucky to be able to visit frequently.
Thank you for your kind words, Liz. Yes, I've always loved research and writing, and searching for just the right images is so enjoyable. But I do have a fear of public speaking. I do admire your courage.
Aw bless you Victoria. As a teacher and eventually headteacher for 30 years, I’ve had plenty of opportunities although that was the first time I’d spoken about art and so was very nervous. You have found other ways to share your expertise and we are blessed with your contributions.
So glad you ‘got’ what I meant about how art can move us… I’ve been to York but not the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I’ll look it up (on Google now of course)🤭
I came to london almost 30 years ago, knowing v few people and my weekends seemed interminably long- I was almost crippled with loneliness. So I visited art galleries and some paintings came to be friends ….. and that’s how my interest in art starts
That's really lovely, Lisa. Thank you for sharing. And I can really understand that.
I fell in love with books and stories when I was very young. Because I had asthma, I was often home from school or up at night. My grandmother lived with us, and would read me stories to help me relax and pass the time. My favorites were Heidi, Little Women, the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. I would cuddle next to her and listen to her soft, soothing southern voice. So many lovely embodied memories of reading with her in those days, they certainly inspired a love of books and reading, and a sense of the magical powers a good story contained. My grandmother has been gone a long time, but her memory is beside me whenever I sit down with a book.
That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing your memories, Becca. How lovely that you can imagine her with you when you read. My grandparents lived across from us and were very much like second parents. They often brought me books, most of which I still have. I particularly remember a lovely pink book of short stories they bought for me when I had chicken pox.
I love that we share those memories of our grandparents. As a grandmother myself, I want most to be making those kinds of memories with my own grandchild. He too is a ravenous reader (and writer!)
That's lovely. He must take after you! :)
My mother told me stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. By the time my school introduced them through Sanskrit lessons, I already knew them by heart. Then came the school library, weekends at the local library with my uncle, and eventually my mother's own bookshelf. I picked up books I was probably too young to read and certainly too young to fully understand. It took me years to realize that my love of reading hadn't started with a book at all. It started with my mother, who quietly planted the seed long before I knew it, with the art of simple storytelling.
That's really beautiful, Sumedha, thank you for sharing your story! And what a lovely final sentence.
My journey into books and writing started with me being absolutely rubbish at spelling. My mom would sit down with me and dictate a text from a book which I had to write down. We both grew frustrated when it didn't help - but something still happened. I grew curious as to what happened in the story! I wanted to know about the adventures. So, I started reading. I fell into the different worlds and my spelling improved fast. My imagination grew and soon I was writing and drawing my own stories. I still write, but I stopped drawing.
I knit and crochet, though, which I learned to have a connection to my grandmother. Now, whenever I pick up my needles, I feel her next to me.
I love that, Sue. Do you think your mum knew that a curiosity for the stories would take over?
I actually just asked her! We’re sitting together right now, enjoying a calm evening after work.
And she didn’t. She thought I would finish that one book and then not pick up another. But it was a part of a series my grandparents had gifted me - St. Clare's by Enid Blyton.
I picked up the second book and it was all downhill from there. I still have those books, actually.
Oooh, I'm a bit late to say hello to your Mum, but hello anyway. I loved the St Clare's books. And Mallory Towers. Did you read those as well? I still have them too. Do you remember the Anchovy paste sandwiches?
I'll tell her that you said hello!
Unfortunately I didn't get to read Mallory Towers - but maybe I'll find them! Have to figure out what they were called in German, though. Which shouldn't be too hard given that we have the internet to help with that.
St Clare's are called "Hanni und Nanni" in German - after the twins.
Yes, sometimes it's nice to go back and read children's books. Either ones we've read before, or ones that we missed. I have a new nephew (my first), and I'm looking forward to reading some of my old books with him.
That's very true! I'm currently re-reading one of my children's book. It is one of the books that I am handing over to the local library, so that others can enjoy it as well. I don't think that it was ever translated into English. The first edition was printed in the 1980s, I think.
There are passages in the book that actually hit a lot harder now than they did when I was reading it for the first time as a child. Goes to remind you that with education (usually) comes a deeper understanding. If that makes sense.
My parents were craft potters and I spent much of my childhood at craft fairs and around artists and artisan crafts people. A very bohemian circle of people.
That sounds like a lovely way to spend your childhood, Debra. Thank you for joining in! :)
My parents had a big hardback book entitled 'Impressionism' which I remember looking through as a child. Pictures like Monet's 'Women in the Garden' intrigued me as I wanted to know what they were talking about and where the lady sweeping off down the path is going - as well as admiring their beautiful clothes! I went on to study history of art at university and I'm sure that book was where it all started...
Thank you, Kitty. That's lovely! For that book to have had such an impact on you. As a child and for your future decisions.
My parents took my brother and me to countless museums when we were on vacation in France. We often were quite reluctant if I recall that correctly, but I remember so many things rather vividly: paintings by Chagall, installations with parts of (real!) dead bulls hanging from the ceiling in a monastery in Arles, a chapel painted by Matisse near Antibes, paintings by Picasso, so many impressionistic pictures… It really was an education. Also at home there were lots of paintings by both my grandfathers (who were only amateurs, but some of them were quite good, especially the ones of my musician grandfather!). My brother became a painter and sculptor, I went on to study musicology and am a translator specialising in music related texts. And reading always played a huge role in my life, I couldn’t imagine ever not reading lots and lots of books.
So the love of art was installed from my earliest childhood, and I am happy that my four daughters share this with me - they also weren’t too happy about visiting museums when they were little, but now they are grownups and we regularly meet to see exhibitions together (two this week alone!).
Greetings from Heidelberg (the one in Germany)! 🖼️
Thank you so much for your reply, Susanne. It sounds like you had such a richly cultural childhood. How absolutely lovely! Do you still have your grandfathers' paintings? Which exhibitions have you just seen? The next Conversation I am planning is on our favourite galleries...
Not paintings but photography I recently attended an event at the Portrait Gallery in London where Cecil Beaton’ photography and Edith Sitwell’s poetry were put together and performed as a reading. It was interesting and a good way to look at both art forms one inspiring the other.
That sounds really interesting. So many of the paintings I post here can trigger thoughts of a short story.
I spent a lot of time reading from an early age. We made family trips to the library, where my mother would assist me in selecting books as a young child. I discovered poetry when I was 8 and owned an anthology that I read countless times. I loved literature studied at school and continued to consume even more on my own. I always loved art projects, but in high school I took an art history class that exposed me to the world of Western Art. I started visiting museums and galleries and took more art history in college. Literature and art have remained sources of joy in my life, although I pursued careers in psychology and law. Now that I'm retired, I devote lots of time to reading the classics and enjoying art online and in person.
Sharon, as a child, I also made frequent trips to the library with my mother. Now, nearly three-quarters of a century later, I see it in my mind's eye and can conjure up the smell of that special place.
Thank you so much for your reply, Sharon. How wonderful to have discovered poetry at such a young age. And I have heard from other readers that they are enjoying returning to art and literature after careers in different fields. Thank you for being here!
Hello Anne, Liz, and other lovers of all things books, art, and beauty. Thank you, Victoria, for initiating this conversation. Although I am a New Yorker, my husband and I lived in Glasgow for three wonderful years from 2022 to 2025. I, too, am familiar with the magnificent Dali painting you both saw in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow. Anne, I loved reading your memory of viewing this painting as a young teenager and the awakening it produced in your soul. Twenty-five years ago, I had a similar experience when I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition, Vermeer and the Delft School. When I entered the first gallery, I was dumbstruck by the enormity of such beauty. The only thing I can compare it to is seeing the immense Grand Canyon for the first and only time as a young teenager. Both experiences left me speechless.
Speaking of Scotland, I enjoyed discovering the architect/artist Rennie Mackintosh, his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, as well as learning about the Glasgow Boys.
As for reading, it's been a lifelong love. Around the pandemic, I discovered Penelope Fitzgerald, which led to Anita Bruckner, which led me to the backlisted podcast and its treasures. For the past several years, I have been indulging in the mid-20th century Middlebrow authors, and beginning in 2026, I have taken a deep dive back into Trollope.
Backlisted has been such a source of authors to me!
The podcast was a lifeline for me during the turmoil of covid and continues to inform my reading.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reply, Barbara. And you're very welcome. It's great to learn more about Beyond Bloomsbury's readers. I do think it's lovely when a painting can create such wonder. And to leave such a lasting impression. Thank you for being here!
Though I was reading as early as four years old, when my father gave me Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson in its lovely black case and that I still have, the deal was sealed.
Thank you for replying and being here, Mary. How lovely that you still have such a treasure. I still have a lot of my childhood books, but sadly, some have been misplaced along the way.
Books were always around. We were not allowed/expected to spend much time at all watching TV but were encouraged to use our imagination and read. Also my mother would line a badminton court with lime and after teaching us how to play badminton encouraged us to do so. They sat and talked from above while watching sort of and drinking coffee or lemonade or.,,,
That's a lovely memory, Pat. Thank you for sharing, and for being here!
Part two a badminton court onto our lawn each year. It was ringed with trees wh
I can't remember ever not loving books. I started writing my first novel aged 4. But visual art took a long time; there was little to see where I lived. So coming to London aged 18, and wandering through the National Gallery. + the old Courtauld, hidden in an upper floor in Woburn Square. A secret treasure trove.
Goodness, your first novel aged 4. Did you finish it, Ruth? And what was it about, if you don't mind me asking...
No, I think I wrote one page. I have no idea what it was about, except that there were pillars because I liked the word. Or maybe pilgrims.
💕
The first time I was impressed by a painting it was Lady in a Red Hat by William Strang. It was 1981 I was 21 and a drama student in Glasgow. We were taken to I think the Kelvinside art gallery. Our tutor instructed us to choose a figure from a painting we could then characterise. I chose this one because I thought the lady was very striking. I bought a post card of the portrait which I still have. I had no idea who the lady Vita Sackville West was at that time but I found out about her and she sparked my interest in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set which I have to this day.
Thank you for commenting, Kathryn. I, too, love that painting. It's such a striking portrait of a striking woman. And your tutor sounds great!
I fell in love with art nouveau, the poetry of Keats, the Arthurian legends at an early age. I collected post cards, books, fell in love with Virginia Wolf, Dame Laura Knight, the Pre- Raphaelites & the Bloomsbury group, the Fabians oh so many others who fired my imagination & fill my soul to this day. 🕊️
Fired your imagination and filled your soul. That is lovely, Wendy! Thank you for being here.
Hello Anne and everyone. I saw the same painting during a visit to Glasgow with the friends of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Like you I was mesmerised and so lucky to have the little room, where it was then displayed, to myself.
I can’t ever remember not loving books and literature - my fortnightly visits to the library with my dad were formative as was my mum’s insistence that we always had books to write or draw in. School encouraged all this for me and my English teachers were idolised.
Art came later - in my late twenties perhaps when we discovered (and still love) Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
I love Virginia Woolf and through her Vanessa Bell and the other Bloomsbury Artists and have delved into so much since I retired, daring just recently to give a talk at my local Art Appreciation Group about Charleston and the Bloomsbury Artists. I won’t go on…enough said!
That’s wonderful, Liz. I do admire you giving a talk. I’ve been to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a friend of mine used to work there, but only the once. I would love to go again.
Thanks Victoria - nerves were overcome as soon as I started talking but it’s a lovely friendly group so I knew there’d just be a lovely atmosphere. What I loved more than the speaking though was the researching and choosing the paintings to illustrate the talk - in my element doing all of that. I would imagine you enjoy that for your brilliant Substack posts!
YSP would definitely be worthy of a return visit! So many new and exciting exhibitions. We are very lucky to be able to visit frequently.
Thank you for your kind words, Liz. Yes, I've always loved research and writing, and searching for just the right images is so enjoyable. But I do have a fear of public speaking. I do admire your courage.
Aw bless you Victoria. As a teacher and eventually headteacher for 30 years, I’ve had plenty of opportunities although that was the first time I’d spoken about art and so was very nervous. You have found other ways to share your expertise and we are blessed with your contributions.
That’s really kind, thank you 🧡
So glad you ‘got’ what I meant about how art can move us… I’ve been to York but not the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I’ll look it up (on Google now of course)🤭
If you do make it Anne, I’m sure you’d love it. Not far from YSP is the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. Another fabulous place!
Oh nice, I’ve been to Hepworth Museum in St Ives
That’s brilliant too! Seeing where she actually worked was fabulous - some years ago now though. Perhaps time to return!