The Gilded Chalet: Off-piste in Literary Switzerland

by Padraig Rooney

In the summer of 1816 paparazzi trained their telescopes on the goings on of poets Byron and Shelley - and their womenfolk - across Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley babysat and wrote Frankenstein. Byron dieted and penned The Prisoner of Chillon. His doctor, Polidori, was dreaming up The Vampyre. Together they put Switzerland on the map.

Switzerland has always provided a refuge for writers attracted to it as an escape from world wars, oppression, tuberculosis... or marriage. While often for Swiss writers from Rousseau to Bouvier the country was like a gilded prison or sanatorium. The Romantics, the utopians (Wells, D. H. Lawrence) and other spiritual seekers (Hesse), viewed Switzerland as a land of milk and honey, as nature's paradise. In the twentieth century, spying in neutral Switzerland, spawned espionage and detective fiction from Conan Doyle to Maugham, Fleming, and Le Carré.

Padraig Rooney finds the rooms crammed with curios: lederhosen and Lepidoptera, spas and spies, fool's gold and numbered accounts. Literary detective work and treasure chest, history and scandal, The Gilded Chalet will make you strap on your skis and go off-piste to find out the real Swiss story.

• ISBN10: 1857886364
• ISBN13: 9781857886368
• Publish Date: 5 November 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 5 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

Well, this was a fun and informative look at Switzerland through the ages and through the lense of a reader - we get to hear stories of way too many writers to list, that have traveled to Switzerland or are Swiss and have traveled elsewhere. The only common denominator was, you guessed it, Switzerland.

I'll keep the book as a reference because some of the backstories were interesting but I know I will have forgotten them by next weekend.

If there was one thing I missed, it would be more examples of how Switzerland or the Swiss theme had merged into the writers' work. There were some like the scene on the ice in Frankenstein or Conan Doyle's seemingly odd choice for Holmes adventures at the Reichenbach Falls, but I would have liked more of that sort of thing- and less about people's love lives. I mean, surely after reading about Lord Byron's escapades, nothing will have the same entertainment value...