Born: 15 March 1911, Valletta, Malta
Died: 23 October 2007, London, England
Nationality: English
Ursula Vaughan Williams was an English poet, novelist, librettist and biographer. She was the second wife of Ralph Vaughan Williams and wrote a major biography of the composer.
Ursula Vaughan Williams
Paradise Remembered
Albion Music Ltd., 2002.
We found the perfect house, 10 Hanover Terrace in Regent's Park...Before we could move in the rebuilding following the bomb damage had to be completed
This was 1953, and they lived there until Ralph Vaughan Williams's death in 1958.
It was a delight to live in Hanover Terrace. It is a large and beautiful house, the front looking over Regent's Park, red may trees, an early flowering chestnut and the lake beyond. At the back, a garden the width of the house, and the mews house at the end of it...Ralph's pattern of work did not change, but there seemed much more time for diversion. His, and often my, daily strolls were in the park
In RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (OUP, 1964) Ursula Vaughan Williams says they became 'very much involved' in a campaign to prevent the Nash Terraces being demolished. At Whitsun 1956 a group of Morris dancers performed in front of the house and were invited in for drinks afterwards. Michael Kennedy (The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Clarendon, 1992) adds that 'at 10 Hanover Terrace - his "plainly grand" home, as Frances Cornford described it - he enjoyed five years of golden harvest, happy, creative, and surrounded by friends young and old'.