Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill
Victoria & Albert Museum, until 4 July
‘I waked one morning at the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.’
Thus Horace Walpole related the origin of the first ‘Gothic’ novel, The Castle of Otranto, published in 1765. While several sons of prime ministers have failed to live up to their fathers’ ambitions, few have shown the imaginative sensitivity and dedication to a private imaginative world as the son of Sir Robert Walpole.
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