Join Miranda Seymour, author of 'Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale' for a lunchtime talk on the arts patron Ottoline Morrell and her life at Garsington.
Ottoline Morrell described Garsington Manor as a kind of ‘theatre’ for social gatherings, and during the First World War she offered her home as a farm that would provide employment for conscientious objectors. Many of the artists and writers who visited created poems, paintings and stories inspired by the house and formal Italianate gardens, including Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, and John Nash whose work will be featured in our current exhibition Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors.
Ottoline continued to entertain at Garsington after the war, when a visit became mandatory for any Oxford University student with literary aspirations. Guests included DH Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Siegfried Sassoon, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, LP Hartley and EM Forster. The garden bewitched visitors, while Ottoline astonished them. The combination was irresistible.
Join author Miranda Seymour to hear the story of how the Ottoline and her husband Philip came to Garsington Manor and created a garden, based on Ottoline’s early time at a ravishing Italian villa which had a garden that provided the template, to which the Morrells added their own glorious and sometimes idiosyncratic touches.
Bios
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Miranda Seymour
Miranda Seymour
Miranda Seymour, celebrated as a biographer, novelist, memoir writer and critic, has been a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts as well as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and the author of the award-winning memoir, In My Father’s House. Her many acclaimed biographies include: A Ring of Conspirators, an innovative study of Henry James and his literary circle; Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale; Robert Graves: Life on the Edge; Mary Shelley; In Byron’s Wake, The Bugatti Queen and I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys.
