Culture of Cornwall Cornish poets. The Nobel-prizewinning novelist William Golding who was born in St Columb Minor in 1911, and returned to live near Truro from 1985 until his death in 1993. Other notable Cornish writers include Arthur Quiller-Couch, alias "Q", novelist and literary critic, Jack Clemo, deaf-blind poet, Ronald Bottrall, modernist poet, Robert Stephen Hawker, eccentric Victorian poet and priest, Geoffrey Grigson, poet and critic, Silas Hocking, a prolific novelist, and D. M. Thomas, novelist and poet. The late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman was famously fond of Cornwall and it featured prominently in his poetry. He is buried in the churchyard
The Wind in the Willows was an inspiration for Toad Hall, although Hardwick House and Fawley Court also make this claim. The village of Lerryn, Cornwall claims to be the setting for the book. Simon Winchester suggested that the character of Ratty was based on Frederick Furnivall, a keen oarsman and acquaintance of Kenneth Grahame. However, Grahame himself said that this character was inspired by his good friend, the writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Grahame wrote this in a signed copy he gave to Quiller-Couch's daughter, Foy Felicia. "The Scotsman" and "Oban Times" suggested was inspired by the Crinan Canal because Grahame spent some of his