Vita Sackville-West is most well known for being the lover of Virginia Woolf, but the exhibition aims to show she was a best-selling author in her own right.
Finn Macdiarmid reports...
Finn Macdiarmid reports...
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00:00With Valentine's Day fast approaching, many people might be trying to emulate some iconic
00:04power couples, David and Victoria Beckham, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. But for Kent's
00:10historians, the answer is obvious. Writers and lovers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.
00:16So during LGBTQ History Month, a new exhibition at Sissinghurst Castle in Cranbrook to honour
00:21the love, life and literature of Vita has opened to the public.
00:25Throughout the annals of history, Vita Sackville-West was mostly known for her relationship with
00:29the writer Virginia Woolf. But this exhibition aims to show that she was a writer, a best-selling
00:34one in her own right, a gardener and an icon of LGBTQ history.
00:39The exhibition, called Between the Covers, has been in the works for many years and includes
00:43a visual collaboration with artist Sarah Tannatt-Jones to bring their story to life.
00:49When visitors visit Sissinghurst today, they can expect a very well-known garden, which
00:56was created by Vita and her husband Harold. However, Vita's story extends much more beyond
01:01that. Vita was a very prolific writer herself and we wanted to create an exhibition that
01:11would celebrate her writing, which is how this exhibition came about.
01:16The display shows the versatility of Vita's writing. It wasn't just novels like Portrait
01:20of a Marriage or Family History that she wrote. She also created poetry, semi-autobiographical
01:25books, plays and even a crime novel, Devil at Westies, which she never published. And
01:30this is the first time it's ever been on display.
01:33But it wasn't just her literary work. Objects that were important to her were also on display.
01:38Now this here is Minerva. It was the printing press used in the Hogarth Press to print works
01:42by Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot. And it was originally owned by Virginia Woolf
01:47but was later bought by Vita, which is why they have it here at the exhibition.
01:51The exhibition was created with LGBT history in mind and they wanted to make sure that
01:56it promoted that with accuracy and care.
01:58Some parts of the story that we're telling would have been illegal during the time of
02:02their life and we want to make sure that we're creating an accurate account that resembles
02:07both the intricacies of the story but also making sure it's relatable to a contemporary
02:12audience. And in that sense, there is quite a lot of difficult navigation in making sure
02:19that it tells the story truthfully while taking into consideration the balances that
02:27you get between narrating a story that's almost 100 years old and telling that to an audience today.
02:34Vita's sexuality was a core part of who she was and she once wrote that in the future
02:39it will be recognised that many more people of my type do exist than under the present
02:44day system. If she was alive today, she would probably be happy to see the LGBTQ pride
02:49flag flying at her castle home.
02:51Finn McDermid for KMTV in Cranbrook.