The Pleasures and Pains of Denton Welch
Since his death 75 years ago, the writer and artist Denton Welch has been both a cult figure and a neglected writer. Regan Hutchins goes in search of a subversive queer hero.
Denton Welch lived the last years of his short life in Kent during the Second World War. His writing career took off in 1943 and in the same year he met his companion, Eric Oliver.
His writing is mostly autobiographical and carries his readers from a childhood in Shanghai, boarding school in 1930s England, a near-fatal bicycle accident while he was in art college, a slow convalescence and, finally, to his years travelling about the Kent countryside, picnicking, exploring churches and observing rural life with an artist's eye. And a queer eye.
His subtle and gently subversive descriptions of same-sex desire and sexual identity has thrilled and challenged his readers for eighty years.
His preoccupations include art and beauty as well as pain and death. His great ability as a writer is to draw characters - often based entirely on himself and those closest to him - with tiny details which spring to life on the page. These can be very funny, cruel, poignant or erotic.
He wrote novels, stories and journals as well as working with art and poetry.
Regan Hutchins has always been a fan of Denton's writing and he travels to the village of Hadlow in Kent, where Denton lived during the Second World War. There he meets Denton's would-be neighbours who show him the landscape that inspired the writer. Biographers, academics, film-makers and writers help to build a picture of a writer who has, for too long, been out of sight.
Producer Regan Hutchins
Reader Rob Vesty
With thanks to the Hadlow Historical Society.
Sound supervision by Tinpot Productions.
A New Normal Culture production for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3
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