A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS CARD AND EXCITING NEWS
Date Posted: 19th December 2025
Forgive me for sending my Christmas cards via the news letter again. With Our Royal Mail now in private hands it makes more sense to use a lovely Kelly image, save paper and make a donation to charity.
Percy Kelly used to start designing and printing his Christmas cards in September every year and only just managed to get them done before Christmas. There was always a crisis and a last minute scramble. He pointedly warned his friend Joan David that if people didn’t acknowledge them he would cross them off his Christmas card list (a terrible fate!). This definitely spurred Joan on - writing to Percy was tedious at times, especially when he answered by return - sometimes 30 pages long often using both sides - but his painted letters were so beautiful she kept going.
I have lots of art news the most exciting being the 25th anniversary of Words by the Water literary festival in the spring (Wednesday 11th to Sunday 15th March.) This is not to be missed. The new brochure is out today and it is full of surprises and big names. ( Chris Bonington , Sarah Hall, Penny Mordaunt, John Crace, Simon Armitage, just to mention a few. There are some new well known contributors from the art world which I will reveal in my next newsletter. I just can’t wait for March when it opens. www.wordsbythewater.com will take you to the web site where you can sign up for the newsletter or see the festival brochure. I will give you more detail in my next newsletter. 2026 will give us a lot to look forward to.
Hope you all have a lovely break this Christmas. I have two more great grandchildren this year. ( I already had one, Vinnie aged 2 this Christmas ) Those of you who remember my Saturday assistants - granddaughters Tash followed by Saturday Sylvia – both are now mothers to Laurie and Dottie.
Have a lovely Christmas break. See you in 2026. Thank you for staying with me in my ‘retirement’ – that’s a joke!
chris
I have more news. Some of you may remember Michael Baron who lived at Loweswater and then Cockermouth. He died in London last month aged 96. I saw him for the last time last year when his daughter drove him up from London to help clear his house and put it on the market. We sat and talked for ages about old times. Michael was always an ideas man. He would often rush into the gallery to give me his latest brainstorm. Most of the ideas were basically good but he was unable to see them through. He came in excitedly one day to tell me about a literary festival he had visited. He thought WE should do one here in Cumbria. I sent him off to find someone who had some experience in running book festivals. A few weeks later two people came into the gallery, bought a piece of sculpture from the garden and told me they ran a book festival in Devon. Yes, Michael Baron had found them and sent them to see me. And this is how WWW began 25 years ago. Those two people Kay Dunbar and Stephen Bristow became great friends and I became a writer. I trod the boards for the first time in 2004 on stage at the theatre in Keswick with my first book The Painted Letters and have never looked back since. Thank you Michael Baron. Some of your ideas worked and I am really grateful.