'Beautiful' town hailed in New York newspaper

TIMES are unquestionably hard and almost every day, the financial markets bring us further gloomy news.

So it's good to hear that our transatlantic cousins rate the far west of Cornwall and St Ives in particular as the 'UK's last great bargain'.

Writing in the New York Post, Alex Robertson Textor says American visitors to London 'have collected many a horror story'.

"It is perversely therapeutic to catalogue the outrageous prices for things: $50 for breakfast, $250 for a grubby shoebox of a hotel room and $8 for a single ride on the Tube," he writes.

But Cornwall is a 'must-visit' which remains relatively affordable for Americans and St Ives is in 'the first tier of beautiful Cornish seaside towns, an art colony turned beach town whose narrow streets throng with tourists'... more>

The Big Question: Is there really a Cornish culture, and does it deserve promotion?

Why are we asking this now?

Because Cornwall, the home of surfing, pasties and Rick Stein, has been awarded £350,000 of European Union money to help finance its bid to put itself on the cultural map. Britain's most southerly county has campaigned for almost five years for a Europe-wide scheme to celebrate culture in the continent's often neglected rural areas.

"Rural regions account for about 80 per cent of Europe's landmass and 25 per cent of its population," says Miranda Bird, director of European Regions of Culture Campaign Organisation (EROCCO), which hopes Cornwall will become one of the first Regions of Culture, "yet when you talk to people outside Cornwall, they only think of beaches, pasties and ice cream."

What is the case for regarding Cornwall as a region of culture? ...more>

All fired-up in St Ives

'It has been a sign-writing workshop, a knitting factory, all sorts of things. And now it’s going to be a working pottery once more.” Jack Doherty leans over the wet, mushroom-pale pot he has been working on, holding a razor blade in one clay-covered hand, and with a deft movement makes an incision, like the barb on a strand of wire. The mild-mannered pot suddenly looks disquietingly edgy.
Doherty is the lead potter at the newly-restored Leach Pottery in St Ives, set on a sliver of land between the rushing Stennack River and the road down into town. It was set up in 1920 by Bernard Leach, one of the great potters of the 20th century, with the Japanese potter Shoji Hamada (who stayed for three years). Their ideas came as a shock to a Britain used to porcelain from Stoke-on-Trent: Leach pottery was sturdy and sensuous, using powerful, sombre glazes. The new museum shows a dark dish with a mysterious figure walking towards peaks of dripping glaze; a blue-and-grey quartered bottle decorated with red characters; a simple bowl with a single line around the inner rim... more>

How Mark Rothko became an Anglophile

Even as he won over his fellow New Yorkers, Mark Rothko remained the angry outsider. Yet he fell for the people and town of St Ives – and the feeling was mutual. As a new Tate show opens, our critic profiles a tormented genius... more>

Hawk solution for seagull problem

Hawks could be brought in to scare gulls away from the harbour area of a Cornish resort.
Holidaymakers have complained to officials about being dive-bombed by gulls trying to grab food.
Now, St Ives Town Council is considering bringing back hawks after the idea had some success during a trial in April last year... more>