'One November evening in 1925, two young women from London arrived at the village of Chaldon, in Dorset. They brought with them two suitcases, a gramophone, and a wooden boxful of records; the bare necessities. Both wore trousers and had Eton-cropped hair. The taller of the two, Mrs Turpin, had come to the country to recover from a recent operation to remove her hymen.' Mrs Turpin was Valentine Ackland, on the run from her recent disastrous marriage. She was soon to meet the love of her life, Sylvia Townsend Warner, already a celebrity for her dashing debut novel Lolly Willowes.
They would live in Dorset together in a passionate relationship until Valentine's death in 1969. Valentine was a dedicated poet, deeply involved with Communism during the 1930s, and an environmentalist and peace campaigner. Recently released MI5 files show that she was blacklisted for confidential work during the Second World War, and remained under long-term surveillance. Despite her commitment to Sylvia, Valentine had many affairs with women who fell for her androgynous beauty and her masterful conduct of an amour. She also struggled with alcoholism, but the relationship with Sylvia survived all challenges.
About the Author
Frances Bingham has written the definitive biography of Valentine Ackland, a remarkable cross-dressing woman, poet and activist, recovering an important part of British lesbian history and creating a testament to queerness and gender identity in Valentine's transgressive life. Her biography will be published on what would have been Valentine's 115th birthday. Frances originally studied English and Theatre; she loves writing for live performance and her work often references plays, especially Shakespeare.
Alongside writing she has worked in a variety of jobs, including; studio assistant in a country pottery; contemporary ceramics curator and London gallery front-of-house manager, exhibition installer, arts journalist, theatrical script editor, journal-writing workshop tutor. With her partner Liz Mathews she runs Potters' Yard Arts in London; among other projects they collaborate on joint text/image projects, including artist's books which sometimes set Frances' words, and making artists' films (Riversoup, Paper Wings, The Moment That Holds You - shown at Arnolfini Bristol, turnthepage Norwich and Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh, among other venues).
Industry Reviews
'The lovers (Warner was then 37, Ackland 24) knew that they had embarked on a kind of relationship which, if not exactly unheard of, would take some figuring out. The emotional generosity and sense of adventure that had first drawn them together would - just about - see them through an enduring creative and domestic partnership extraordinary by any standards ... the rigorous observance of anniversaries was by no means the only ritualised aspect of this brave new relationship. Bingham rightly insists on its basis as a defiance of convention. But she also wonders whether Ackland might not have seen herself at time as imitating a traditional model of masculinity, in which she was the husband and Warner the wife, while her many other conquests played the part of mistress or casual fling.' - David Trotter, London Review of Books
