A CLEAR VIEW
John Ruskin was the original polymath. A leading light in the Romantic movement and an intellectual voice of Victorian Britain, his writing informed the work of authors, thinkers and activists as diverse as Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust and Mahatma Gandhi. He championed the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and tackled many key issues of the Industrial Age, his big-picture clarity helping warn of environmental impact. Yet the scholarly gentleman who made his home on the banks of Coniston Water has fallen from fashion in comparison to his fellow Lake District writers such as William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.
Until now, that is. A series of exhibitions and events, centring upon his Cumbrian home, will mark the bicentenary of his birth in 2019. It’s a
