Art critic, poet and historian, Herbert Read was invited to become the first and founding President of the Penwith Society in 1949, by the founding artists, which included Peter LANYON, Barbara HEPWORTH, Ben NICHOLSON, Shearer ARMSTRONG, Denis MITCHELL, Misome PEILE and others. He was a close friend of T S Eliot and a firm champion of modern art.  Though he did not live locally, he was looked to as the intellectual justifier and supporter of the breakaway from simple representational art. He is noted for being amongst the earliest thinkers to take note of existentialism and to interest himself in the work of Jean Paul Sartre.

His bibliography is large, and can be found on Wikipedia and other related websites. He was knighted in 1953 for 'Services to literature', despite a lifetime of anarchist tendency and writings.