BBC Radio 3 veteran Petroc Trelawny’s first book, Trelawny’s Cornwall, opens with the writer visiting Pelynt, the home of a (possible) baronet ancestor, on 30 June, Trelawny Day. Part memoir, part local history, the book explores what it means to be Cornish and the wider concept of identity. In the churchyard, the sister-in-law of a more recent baronet looks him up and down and says witheringly, ‘You are the fake Trelawny.’ Later, he pushes her for an explanation: ‘“You are on the radio,” she starts off, “so I assumed you adopted Trelawny as a nom de plume, a romantic pseudonym to make you sound more Cornish.” I smile and explain that the name is on my birth certificate. “I’m real,” I say.’

Trelawny explores Cornishness (his own and in general) by drawing upon a range of anecdotes, historical accounts, poems, plays, and ancient and modern mythologies. Cornwall has a divided heart. This shows up in the county’s language and history. Even the Cornish mottos, Kernow Bys Vyken (‘Cornwall Forever’) and Onen Hag Oll (‘One and all’), feel almost antithetical, at once isolationist and inclusive. 

The 1549 Act of Uniformity imposed the Book of Common Prayer on England and insisted that church services be in English rather than Latin. At that time, Cornish was still the mother tongue of many and English was not uniformly spoken. Even if the Latin in churches wasn’t understood,