I Left My Grandfather’s House

by Denton Welch

I Left My Grandfather's House contains much that is vintage Denton Welch an exhibition of his unique powers of observation, his obsession with food, his love of horror and his ambivalent attitude towards his own sexuality. But essentially it is a re-creation of the quite 'ordinary' adventures of a naive young man of eighteen on the edge of life written by his twenty-eight-year-old ghost quite literally a 'ghost' in the literary sense of someone who writes another's book, for not once does the adult author attempt to cloak his youthful unworldliness in latent maturity or to disguise that artless dialogue in which the young so naturally speak and which Denton Welch, when recalling his youth on more than one occasion, always reproduced so faithfully. On the contrary, the magical quality of this extraordinary and immensely entertaining document is contained in its permanent freshness, its restrained longing for fulfilment and its evocation of lost innocence of a whole world of freedom to travel at will, at really not cost at all, lost to all of us, forever. Michael De-le-Noy in his introduction to this edition This beautiful short novel describes a Sussex walking tour undertaken by Denton Welch at 18 years of age, before the tragic motor accident which was to leave him a partial invalid and which led to his early death when he was 33. Previously published only in a limited, privately printed edition, it is now available in paperback for the first time. Cover design by Mick Keates. The cover illustration is a painting by Denton Welch entitled by him A Lion and a Pilgrim, executed in 1944 while he was living at Pitt's Folly Cottage, Hadlow in Kent, and is reproduced by courtesy of Michael De-la-Noy. Also available from Allison & Busby is the first ever complete edition of The Journals of Denton Welch

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Travel

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Maurice Denton Welch was an English-American writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as thick with descriptions and sensual encounters with inanimate objects as his other books – more of an I did this I did that travelogue – though his adoration of a mediaeval privy (the high point of his excitement during the journey) is vintage Welch; his telling of how they tossed sand and herbs in after the excrement, making of even that act a precious ritual, and how he wouldn’t dare use it, out of respect (he rarely treats people with as much respect…). Though the descriptions are thinner the odd encounters with not always odd people (though all seem odd through his eyes) are in full attendance, and as always there is often a (repressed?) undercurrent of sexuality in these encounters. The man who picked him up hitchhiking who immediately offered him a job designing shirts (as the man’s mysterious boxed cheesed reeked in the back). The young man he encountered on the road and before you know it they’re tumbling in the turf. Innocently? And the departure without sharing names. This memoir/novella embodies the natural self-involvement of a late teen, even as that teen rambles through the world in order to satisfy some urge, some need for encounters and experience. Though he is in so many ways closed and complete some hidden incompleteness compels him, some search for something – though possibly just his moment with an herb-strewn privy of his imagination, which is enough and more than many find.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I thoroughly enjoyed where he was and what he was doing, I found young Mr. Dench to be just this side of insufferable. Repression is a nasty poison, and Dench's veins ran thick with it.

[Steve Charters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Denton Welch's writing since my first encounter. There's a good deal of bathos in reading him when you know his untimely end. The prose is direct and clear with some idiosyncracies and a good deal of introspection.

This posthumously published account is in essence a recollected travelogue of an earlier walking tour, so relies on observation, reflection and memory for its effect. The mundane details of the English countryside and towns some ninety years ago are intriguing now. The homoerotic blokish encounters are always masked or derailed by Welch's own prudishness or timidity. Jogging along on horseback between the thighs of a brawny farmer, arms wrapped round him to hold the reins, or lying beside a strapping naked slightly grubby swimmer with a 'golden bush' the possibility of any sexual culmination always terminates abruptly. As if Welch, bed-ridden with such encounters now impossible, taunts himself with the fantasy of missed opportunities. If they ever came to anything such detail is excised in this memoir. I suspect Welch would have been prickly and difficult to live with even had he not become embittered after his accident. There's a tension between his clinical honesty and what is left unsaid.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denton Welch recreates a walking trip he took when he was 18 from his journals without trying in the least to hide the fact that when we are 18 we are usually not yet at our best. Here the author is petulant, temperamental, snobbish, lonely and sexually repressed. But warts and all, this book is a delight to read. For those of us who grew up gay (and repressed) we recognize this person with painful empathy. Welch is different, not understood (or very wanted) by his family, and longs for love and companionship. The walking tour allows him to get away from them, but it also allows him to pursue what he cannot even admit to himself, the love of men. Every encounter is fraught with sexual tension, although a straight person might not recognize the sexual potential of all male hostel rooms (where I lost my virginity!), naked swimming in rivers and traipsing through woods with a strange man (who holds his hand!) because it is a “shortcut.” I wish the book had not ended so abruptly, but love what we are left with, despite any lack of resolution.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this account Denton Welch describes the walking tour he took in the early 1930s when at the age of eighteen he set off from his grandfathers house for Devon, staying at a series of youth hostels. Written some ten years after the event, the result is a remarkable feat of observation combined with a thoroughly honest and at times self effacing picture of the author as a sometimes naive, sometimes precocious young man.

Denton is not afraid to reveal his feelings, and occasionally hints at his leanings can be detected in his admiration of handsome young men. His love of old old buildings and of little collector’s trinkets is clearly apparent, but what makes this such an immensely enjoyable read is Denton's comparabilities as a writer, able to make even the most mundane captivating.

[milly · Rating 3 out of 5]

three-point-five. it's very beautiful, and again, rich in all the art history, but i was not very interested in it as much as i was with in youth is pleasure. maybe ive been too put-on to american works. british writing feels so much slower now -- so modernist, you know? you just can't escape it (i guess). it's like on the road except very slow limey and not nearly as entertaining (it's not like OTR at all -- minus the fact that the main character is... walking along some roads, and sometimes driving). i wish i liked it more, but i couldn't connect to it as much. maybe it's because i myself am american, and have no clue what british countrysides or rural areas or medieval ruins should look like when you're trekking through them.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple account of a walking tour. Sometime in the 1930s, the young Denton sets out, to travel between youth hostels in the south of England. Denton writes with precision, and often includes funny anecdotes and observations of his fellow young people, as well as cutting asides. The work captures Denton's loneliness, and how little connections he has with his relations. It's by no means his strongest piece, but it's compelling, like all his writing.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not a bad read. That said it's one of the dullest and least self aware travelogues I've ever read. I'd a long way away from the joys of Patrick Leigh Fermor. The book is short and covers little ground - literally and figuratively. The narrator is quite negative and a not a great person to be spending time with! A book that's off to the neighbourhood free library.

[mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything was still as death, until the wind came to bend the grass or stroke the leaves of the trees the wrong way. But when the gust stopped and the blades and the leaves fell back into place, the stillness seemed more binding than before.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Banal and misanthropic.

[Muzzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Left My Grandfather’s House is less a conventional narrative and more a quiet travel journal. Through the eyes of a young art student, the British countryside of the interwar period unfolds in small observations, encounters, and impressions.

What stayed with me most was the descriptive, almost unhurried tone. The writing lingers on landscapes, interiors, and fleeting interactions, creating a sense of gentle movement rather than plot-driven urgency. There is a certain carefree quality to the journey, even when underlying vulnerability becomes visible.

The book also offers subtle insights into everyday life in 1930s Britain. These details never feel forced; they emerge naturally through the narrator’s attentive gaze, giving the text both historical texture and intimacy.

A quiet, atmospheric travel narrative that invites slow reading and careful attention.

— Revised March 22, 2026