INTRODUCTION IF you had found your way during the mid-fifties of last century to the remote parish of Morwenstow in North Cornwall, you might have met a remarkable figure coming from the vicarage, the house with the church-tower chimneys-a whim of the vicar-that stood in the combe beneath Morwenstows own church of the Norman arches. The figure would have been Hawker himself, Robert Stephen Hawker, a tall, burly man in middle age, darkeyed and white-haired, wearing a brimless hat, a claret coloured tail-coat over a fishermans blue jersey with a small red cross woven into its side, and fishermans waders that reached above the knee. It was an extraordinary costume for an extraordinary man-a man touched with a wild, gusty genius that hurtled through his work like an Atlantic gale across the Northern coast. Hawker must be always Hawker of Morwenstow. Hc wears the name of the parish as a peer his full title. Certainly none would have disputed his lordship at a day when Morwenstow and its...