Charleston

The Grumpy Vegan made his first visit to Charleston, the Sussex home of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell and country meeting place for the Bloomsbury Group. Quite simply, it’s an incredible home and garden where every canvas imaginable lives and breaths this remarkable group of artists and intellectuals. We attended one of the Charleston Literary Festival’s presentations. This was a talk given by Tristram Hunt and Sheila Rowbotham and was called “The Good Life.” Hunt spoke about Friedrich Engels and his recent biography about him, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. Rowbotham discussed her biography of Edward Carpenter. The Grumpy Vegan wrote briefly about it here. It was a fascinating presentation and discussion. The contrast between Engels, the hard-living, fox-hunting revolutionary socialist, on the one hand, and Edward Carpenter, the pro-vegetarian, animal rights advocate, homosexual, ethical socialist, on the other. In response to a question from the floor, Hunt made the very interesting comment that he thought Carpenter’s ideas had been more achieved than those held by Engels.