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Archive for the ‘Vita Sackville-West’ Category

Learning about Vita from her cousin

Posted in events, Orlando, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , , on Monday 6 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you will be in New York City on March 15, you can learn about Vita Sackville-West from her cousin. Yes, I’m serious.

Sponsored by the Royal Oak Foundation, the first talk in an in-person lecture series will be given by Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville on March 15 at 6 p.m. (ET) at 20 W. 44th Street, between 5th and 6th avenues. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture, which is titled “Vita Sackville-West and A Sense of Place.”

Information about the event, which I learned about from a press release, is a bit sketchy. The release did not include any information regarding cost, and the appropriate page on the Royal Oak Foundation website is not updated to include the lecture series focused on Vita. However, I did find this email address, which might be helpful for obtaining more information: lectures@royal-oak.org

About the lecture series

The lecture series will describe Vita Sackville-West’s life and illustrate the places important to Virginia Woolf’s friend and lover.

One of these places was Knole, the 365-room house in which she grew up but which she was not able to inherit due to her sex. Woolf immortalized Vita’s feelings about Knole in her 1928 novel, Orlando.

In his lectures, Sackville-West will discuss Vita’s connections to Knole, as well as Sissinghurst, a nearby castle ruin and tumbledown farm that is considered Vita’s greatest creation and most enduring legacy. Both Knole and Sissinghurst are now owned by Britain’s National Trust.

About Robert Sackville-West

Robert Sackville-West, the 13th generation of the family to live at Knole, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole.

Knole House, originally built as an archbishop’s palace but given to the Sackville family in 1603.

Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens

 

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Travel to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

Posted in gardens, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , on Monday 9 August 2021| Leave a Comment »

If you are in the UK, you can travel to the world-renowned Sissinghurst Castle Garden via episode 20 of BBC Two’s “Gardeners’ World.”

Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens

On Aug. 6, British garden designer Adam Frost traveled to Sissinghurst Castle Garden, designed by Vita Sackville-West. He was there to view a new area of the garden inspired by a visit to the Greek island of Delos. You can watch the broadcast online.

But if you are not in the UK, you can still get a look at Sissinghurst through this National Trust video posted on YouTube.

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Two videos celebrate Vita and Virginia

Posted in films, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , on Sunday 19 July 2020| 1 Comment »

From the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain comes these resources: links to two short videos of an exchange of letters between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Both were recorded for Amnesty International and LGBTI+.

  • Vita’s letter to Virginia, read by Jodie Comer
  • Virginia letter replying to Vita, read by Nicola Coughlan

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Vita and Virginia: Seeing the film in London

Posted in films, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , on Friday 12 July 2019| 1 Comment »

“Vita and Virginia,” the much-anticipated Chanya Button film about the love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is playing in London, and I saw it yesterday.

It has opened to mixed reviews. But if you are a fan of Virginia Woolf — as I obviously am — it is a must-see.

Scenery, sets, and superb fashion

As Sarah Hall put it in a message to VWoolf ListServ, “In films or plays about real people you get used to the departures from reality, so I made a determined effort to ignore these and enjoyed the scenery and the costumes and, frankly, the well-recreated sets (all except Knole, which is gloriously real).”

I agree. The sets look wonderfully authentic. The scenes that take place at Charleston look like Charleston, down to the painted doorways and decorated mantelpieces. The room where the Hogarth Press was housed looks just as I imagined it — although Stuart Clarke of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain said a press such as the Woolfs owned would not have sounded like the one in the film. But film needs sound, so the producers added the clanking of machinery as the pages of Jacob’s Room (1922) are shown coming off the press.

The costumes are fabulous — although I did wonder if Vita’s actual wardrobe was as glamorous as the film portrayed. But movies are expected to be a treat for the eyes, and this one succeeded at that, with the sets, the scenery, and the costumes.

The words don’t fail but the pacing plods

Since it was based on the eponymous play by Eileen Atkins, which was based on the letters that Vita and Virginia wrote each other, I also appreciated hearing the words of those two writers as much of the film’s dialogue.

But where the words succeed, the pacing plods. Even for a Woolf lover, the film is slow.

And there are a number of scenes — from the party scene where one first encounters Virginia to the love scenes in Vita’s bed — where I shook my head in disbelief. No, Virginia would not have danced around like a Grateful Dead groupie at any party, I thought. And no, I thought, Virginia never experienced sexual fulfillment via Vita. Did she?

Sarah Hall also had this criticism, “What didn’t make dramatic sense is to have Vita’s mother in residence at Knole instead of her father (who doesn’t appear and isn’t even mentioned). If Lionel is meant to be prematurely deceased, why hasn’t Knole been bestowed on a male heir?”

The casting is questionable

However, the casting may be my main complaint. After two casting changes for the role of Virginia, the film stars Gemma Arterton as Vita and Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia. Neither really works. In my opinion, Arterton is too cute and feminine to play the outdoorsy Vita. Debicki is absolutely too tall; she towers over the petite Arterton in too many scenes, which put me off.

Peter Ferdinando works well as Leonard and portrays him as a sympathetic character, which suits me. But Adam Gilles is wrong on every count as Duncan Grant. I had to wonder why they didn’t cast the beautiful James Norton, who made the perfect Duncan in Life in Squares.

Despite complaints, I recommend the film to anyone who cares about Virginia Woolf, Vita, and the Bloomsbury group. Apparently, many agree. On its opening weekend, July 4-7, the film made £49,223 showing in 63 cinemas.

The film opens in the U.S. in October.

 

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Vita and Virginia: the film is out

Posted in films, Vita and Virginia, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , on Monday 10 September 2018| Leave a Comment »

From the release of details about the film in 2015 to cast selection in the winter of 2017 to additional preparations made later that year, Blogging Woolf has kept readers informed about Vita and Virginia, the new film telling the love story of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

Now that Chanya Button’s UK-Ireland feature film is about to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow, we have an update that includes the brief official trailer and a review link.

I imagine that most readers of Woolf are eager to see the film, which stars Elizabeth Debicki as Woolf and Gemma Arterton as Sackville-West. Arterton also served as the movie’s executive producer. And although I don’t know when it will be available in theaters, I am already enjoying this quote from the trailer:

Independence has no sex.

The Toronto Review wrote a negative review, stating that the film “attempts to manufacture chemistry by regurgitating chunks of the letters that Vita and Virginia wrote to each other.”

I guess we’ll have to wait until we see it ourselves before we can decide whether the film does more than that. I, for one, am hopeful that it does justice to both women.

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