Cornish authors: Denys Val Baker
Feature
Cornish authors are surprisingly underrated even though they include such well-known bestsellers as Daphne Du Maurier and Derek Tangye, of Minack fame. We’ll start with one of my favourites:
Denys Val Baker
Denys is rarely heard of nowadays, but if you ever come across one of his books, acquire, read, enjoy.
Denys Val Baker (1917 – 1984), owner and editor of The Cornish Review, was the author of 20 or so hilarious autobiographies. Titles included, The Sea’s in the Kitchen and The Petrified Mariner, which give you a flavour of them.
He was a full-time professional author, by which I mean he was always broke.
Nevertheless, he managed to buy an enormous old tramp steamer, MVS Sanu, and, with no sailing experience whatever, took his large brood of wild children and long-suffering wife, Jess, on incredibly dangerous voyages. He was on the rocks more times than Jack Daniels.
Denys lived in Penzance, Land’s End and St. Ives in Cornwall, and was usually seeking some means of financing his next project. He was an adventurer in the grand English tradition, although always amusingly shambolic.
In the old days, when libraries were libraries, you could find his books on the shelves. These days they’re not so easy to come by, although Amazon has a good listing of second-hand titles, mostly at premium prices. Denys would have been proud. If you want a really good humorous read, do seek them out.
His character never allowed a moment to pass without doing something absolutely beyond the pale. When I lived in Penzance, we occupied a house across the road from his, although he had been dead for a decade. There was no blue plaque on his house, which is a pity, although everyone remembered him in the library, where he did most of his research.
At the time I was there (late 1990s) his son still ran a print business in the town, and his wildest daughter, Demelza, lived there too.
Denys was one of the old school of writers. He spent his early days in London, mostly in the literary pubs around Soho where he hung out with the likes of Dylan Thomas and other luminaries of the scribbling fraternity. But his heart was in Cornwall, as was most of his written output. He will be best remembered for his autobiographies.
Let’s hope he will not be totally forgotten, especially in the county that inspired his best work.
