Mitford, Garbo and a dodgy septic tank: inside England s last great literary salon
Why did everyone from Graham Greene to Benjamin Britten flock to rural Dorset? To meet the Crichel Boys
14 February 2021 • 12:00pm
‘Prose factory’: the rectory at Long Crichel, Dorset
Credit: David Grandorge
Nancy Mitford, a regular visitor to Long Crichel, a Queen Anne rectory in Dorset, called the house “a prose factory” and its owners “the Brontës”. For Rosamond Lehmann, a visit was one of her “treats and pleasures”. Ben Nicolson, the elder son of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, said that “Crichel is almost too good to be true… it seems to me the ideal house.” It was the last of the great English literary salons.