Geniuses are always difficult; they abhor the rest of humanity.

A rare venture into spoken-word territory for Sentinel, “A Cornishman at Oxford and in America” (SENS 1048) is a collection of prose & reminiscences from writer & historian A. L. Rowse. Rowse was born in Tregonissey, near St Austell, and while he spent much of his life in Oxford, he returned to Cornwall in 1973 to retire at Trenarren. I say “retire”; Rowse was a remarkably prolific writer, publishing over 100 books in his lifetime, many of them after his return to Cornwall. He also left a mountain of unpublished work when he died in 1997.
Rowse was also a formidable lecturer, and it’s from his lecture tours in the USA that he draws much of the material contained herein, which was recorded at his home in 1981.


He was famously irascible, to the point of arrogance, and the quote of his that I chose as the subject header is a neat summation of his world-view. Here’s another: "This filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts". Great stuff. Sadly, this temper rarely reaches boiling point on these recordings, which mostly comprise rose-tinted reflections on times past. Having said that, it’s certainly a fascinating glimpse into the history of (amongst other topics) Cornish settlers in America. If only he’d been backed by The Fall’s rhythm section.

The sleeve notes are penned by John Betjeman. “This is very good,” he claims, somewhat prosaically. Thanks for that.

Here’s an autobiographical selection from the album, “The Choice”, in which he considers the twin passions of his life: scholarship & the imagination.