First Friends

Paul and John Nash, Dora Carrington and Christine Kuhlenthal met at the Slade School - much the same age, each wonderfully gifted yet troubled and released by the new freedoms of the period. After the death of John and Christine Nash, Ronald Blythe discovered a tin trunk full of letters in the brick bread-oven of their farm. These were the letters this extraordinary group of friends had written to each other since just before the First World War and throughout the 1920s. The letters they wrote reflect the uncertainty of these years: who would be killed in the trenches, who would fall as lover or artist, who would eventually have the strength to live as he or she chose, and not to be defeated by the tough conventions of the day. They are profound, funny, sad and brave by turn. Blythe has brought together these candid and intimate letters as well as the accomplished and startling paintings of the group. Here is a book about student days, the Western Front, friendship and courtship, and the real passion which all four shared - a love of landscape.