A day like this

11 May, 1916 PETER WARLOCK writes to Robert Nichols from Cornwall: 'All around nothing but open moorland and rock-strewn hills, mostly crowned with marvellous Druidic temples. Without leaving the house I can see the sun rise at five in the morning, and watch it sink at night into the sea. The sky never grows dark; the darkness seems rather to come welling out of the earth like a dye, infusing into every shape and form a keen intense blackness. In the twilight, bushes, walls, roofs, and the line of the hills all become rigid and sharp against the sky, like dark blades, while the upper air remains clear and bright and the sky becomes more and more luminous as the blue deepens to a marvellous purple setting for the first stars. The hollows and lower slopes of the hills are covered with the dazzling profusion of gorse and blackthorn - I have never seen such blazing masses of gorse. Tiny lizards dart about among the violets on the sunny banks and splendid gold-and-black adders cross one's path on the moors.'