We had a picnic lunch at Charleston. It’s not open and will not be for the rest of the year owing to the very small number of visitors who would be able to go round the house according to the rules of social distancing. So it is all shut, reverting to the status of a nearly private house. We were able to see the garden which was more lush than I have ever seen it, much more colourful than it is in mid-May when the Festival is normally, and no-one about, only the memory of those photographs of members of the Bloomsbury group lined up – Keynes in the intervals of writing The Economic Consequences of Peace, Roger Fry who apparently designed the garden, and Vanessa Bell who wrote of painting ‘apples, hollyhocks, plums, zinnias, dahlias’. There are still the lushest hollyhocks:-
By coincidence, we’ve just finished re-watching Life in Squares some of which was filmed at Charleston. The only time I visited it was closed too. Being only annual visitors to England, I may not manage to see inside (certainly not this year) but the TV series gave a good impression of it.
It’s so well worth it if you can – very atmospheric even when full of people. Charles