In Cornwall where visual artists enjoy the relative security of a supportive tradition, through established galleries, studios and workshops, to be a full time professional writer is to be something of an unsung hero. Denys Val Baker was such a man.

There are one or two others of course but what made Val Baker unique was his dedication to the writer’s trade and his marvellous and unselfish belief that there should be a “community of writers” in the same sense that there is a community of artists; that the written word should be as much a part of Cornwall’s culture as the visual arts and that both should be extended.

Too often of course writers are their own worst enemies. Introverted and subjective, they lack the gregariousness of the painter and the visual evidence of their work while, for those writers who succeeded, total withdrawal seems to be inevitable.

Denys Val Baker never hit the bestseller lists but had he done so, it’s a fair bet he would have achieved even more for the Cornish literary world and for that community of writers he so believed in. As it was, he did everything he could until circumstances overcame even his spirited support for the written word.

It was ironic that, coincident with his death, opportunities for literature were being further eroded by a philistine National Arts Council.

Des Hannigan. Obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance August 1984