A Rope of Vines Journal from a Greek Island

A beautiful and personal account, this memoir recalls the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960s. Sea and harbor, mountain and monastery, her neighbors and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the realities outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record: the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence.

Brenda Chamberlain was born in Bangor in 1912. In 1931 she went to train as a painter at the Royal Academy Schools in London and five years later, after marrying the artist-craftsman John Petts, settled near the village of Llanllechid, near Bethesda in Caernarfonshire. During the Second World War she worked with her husband on the production of the Caseg Broadsheets. In 1947 she went to live on Bardsey (Ynys Enlli) where she remained until 1961. After six years on the Greek island of Ydra, she returned to Bangor; it was there, depressed and with financial problems, she died from an overdose. Brenda Chamberlain is the author of Bardsey in Tide Race, The Green Heart, and The Watercastle.