Margaret Mellis spent only seven years in Cornwall, yet this period would prove the most formative in a long and wide-ranging career. Fear of impending war brought her to Carbis Bay, near St Ives, in 1939 and the breakup of her marriage in 1946 drove her away.
Of course Mellis was not alone in finding sanctuary in the south west, but she and her husband, the painter and critic Adrian Stokes, were the first of their Hampstead circle to move to Cornwall.
Of course Mellis was not alone in finding sanctuary in the south west, but she and her husband, the painter and critic Adrian Stokes, were the first of their Hampstead circle to move to Cornwall.
