Andrew Wordsworth is celebrating the 250th anniversary of his great-great-great-great uncle’s birth this week – and he’s also published a book to help people find out more about his ancestor.

His ancestor is, of course, one of the world’s most famous literary figures, William, who was born on April 7, 1770, in what is now called Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, where he grew up, later living at Dove Cottage in Grasmere and Rydal Mount near Ambleside.

William had a brother, Christopher, and wind the clock forward to 1955, when his great-great-great-grandson Andrew was born in Germany, where his father was serving in the army.

Andrew has written a book – Well-kept Secrets: The Story of William Wordsworth – to shed some new light on the interpretation of the poetry and to better understand the poet as a man.

“I think I first became aware of William when I was six. My great-aunt gave me a small chest that had belonged to the poet – a photo of it is in the book – and which I have always treasured,” said Andrew.

“Then at school I started to come across his poems. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ seems to be the one that children everywhere read first, but only now and again. Later, when I did English for A-level, I studied most of his major work, and then I read English at university, and so had the chance to get to know the work even better. By the time I left university I knew Wordsworth’s poetry fairly well.”

Andrew has spent much of his life in France and Italy, coming to England to visit his parents who live near London.

His has followed his famous ancestor into a creative career, working as a painter and a sculptor. His work has been exhibited in Tuscany, Sicily, Genoa, Venice, Paris and London. And his work can be found in private collections in various European countries, as well as in the United States.

But he did decide to follow William in words, by writing a book about him.

“I wanted to get to know both the man and his poetry better. I felt that the image most people had of him was not very satisfying, and I wanted to see if I could offer something better, or at least different,” said Andrew.

“I set aside time to write the book on Wordsworth – an hour or two each morning. That said, my life has always moved between literature and the visual arts. In fact, I decided to go to university rather than art school – a difficult choice – and I feel as much at home in the world of books as in that of paintings.”

Due to the coronavirus lockdown, Andrew can’t leave his home in Italy – he lives in the Umbria region – to come to England to celebrate William’s anniversary. He had been due to give a talk on Wordsworth at Rydal Mount.

Living along, he is spending time renovating a home he bought: “It’s a long job, but the workmen are excellent, and we’ve been very lucky with the weather, which allowed us to work outdoors throughout the winter.”

“The first phase of the work is almost finished. Coronavirus has interrupted things, but if we’re able to resume work soon, we should be able to complete everything by the end of the summer.”

Unable to celebrate the 250th anniversary in Cumbria as he had planned, Andrew will remember his ancestor with a walk – which William would approve of – and a drink or two in his memory, although the poet was a teetotaller!

With his book, Well Kept Secrets, Andrew says he looked to find out more about William from his work.

“At the level of interpreting the material publicly available, however, I feel I have offered a new reading of Wordsworth. He was a very private man, who kept a lot hidden, both in his personal life and in his poetry,” said Andrew.

“I think that if one approaches the subject with an open mind, and reads the poetry carefully, then there are certainly some surprising secrets to be unearthed.”

He is delighted at his ancestor’s enduring popularity, two-and-a-half centuries after his birth in a small town in Cumberland.

“The fact of choosing to live in the Lake District, far from cities like London, was significant,” said Andrew.

“Wordsworth knew exactly what life was like for people who lived in the country, and he wrote about it honestly, making no concessions to whatever was fashionable or glamorous. He deserves to be popular.”

He added: “At a personal level his poetry enriches my vision of life and of the world, and I’m proud to think that he was my ancestor.

“Considered objectively, I would say that he is definitely one of the major writers in English literature, and all the more important because the second generation of Romantic poets – Keats, Shelley and Byron – all died young. Without Wordsworth’s contribution British Romanticism would be far less significant than it is; and without Romanticism English literature would not have the same stature or the same history.”

And asked if his famous ancestor will still be commemorated in another 250 years, Andrew said: “Impossible to answer. Tastes in art and literature change, and the world also changes so much, that it becomes very hard to predict anything.

“One likes to believe that great art, music or literature will always be appreciated regardless of fashion, and I certainly think that Wordsworth’s vision and poetry have proved to be remarkably resilient: his message concerning man’s vital relation to nature, for example, is perhaps even more relevant today than it was in 1800. I hope he will continue to be read and enjoyed for centuries to come – he deserves to be.”

You can see Andrew’s work as a sculptor and a painter at his website, at www.andrewwordsworth.com

And his publisher – Pallas Athene Books – is offering readers of the Westmorland Gazette a £5 discount from the £24.95 price of the book. To get it for £19.95, go to the website bit.ly/Wordsworth-250