“There Is No Art More Exciting Than English Art”: British–Belgian Artistic Liaisons, 1890–1919

Abstract

In this chapter I present a new overview of the network of British and Belgian modernist writers of which Maurice Maeterlinck and Henry James are probably the best known. I also explore at length the network resulting from the friendship between Laurence Binyon and Olivier Destrée leading to a rekindling of a warm artistic relationship between Britain and Belgium during the First World War. This is possibly epitomised by the best-known, though fictional, Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. In this chapter I will come back to the stereotypical comments by visiting authors, such as Henry James, about Belgium and the ways in which they helped construct British identity. The chapter ends with an unearthing of documents and letters that illustrate, again, the closeness of the two monarchies in the First World War when the Belgian King had to seek refuge in a house on a sliver of unoccupied Belgium but sent his children to the safety of a British home.