PHG Book Club
1 September 2008
For those of you not in the know, PHG must be a rather opaque acronym. It stands for Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex.
Pallant House Gallery exists because of the generosity or perhaps foresight of a single individual. Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, left his personal collection to the city in 1977 with the condition that the collection be shown in Pallant House, a Grade 1 listed Queen Anne town house dating from 1712.
Since 1919, the house had been used as Council offices and from 1979 a restoration programme began and preparations were made for it to open in 1982 as a unique combination of historic house and modern art gallery.
In 1985 an independent trust, consisting of the Friends and representatives of the Council, was formed to manage the Gallery. Since then the collections and the Gallery's activities have expanded to the extent that it was decided a new building was needed in order for it to survive. The Gallery reopened Summer 2006 with a new wing and vastly improved facilities.
In 2007, Pallant House Gallery won the Gulbenkian Prize for the imaginative development of its Grade 1 listed Queen Anne townhouse, located within a conservation area of a Cathedral city, to embrace a contemporary new wing.
It's in my mind because my husband Greg has recently set up a book club at the gallery, discussing fiction and non-fiction with strong links to the world of art. On Thursday 4 September, the group will discuss Anne Donovan's new novel Being Emily. He also has a guest author - Kirsten Ellis, author of Star of the Morning, The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope.
Hester Stanhope's life was full of astonishing transformations - from aristocratic wild child to society hostess at Downing Street for the unmarried William Pitt - to the bohemian adventurer who lived with her lover in Constantinople before heading east to carve out her own fiefdom in the foothills of Mount Lebanon. Famous for her wit, beauty and energy, she became the greatest woman traveller of her day. She developed a passion for the Arab world and forged lasting friendships with pashas, emirs and sheikhs - and was revered by the Bedouin, whose cause she championed, as their 'Star of the Morning.'
The Sepulchre has no boundaries.
