SPECIAL guest at Hambledon Village Fete last Saturday, was famous former resident Louis de Bernieres, the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which was also made into a Hollywood film.

The author’s memories of Hambledon, from 1965 until 1980, inspired his 2009 novel Notwithstanding, published in a series of short stories about larger than life village characters from a “vanished England”.

Mr de Bernieres returned to open the fete, which included the unveiling of a new village landmark, a bench carved from a single village tree toppled in the 1987 storm to mark Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday.

Louis moved to the village with his family as a young boy and worked as a landscape gardener in Surrey, in his 20s.

“I re-made a path by the side of the church wall and also the bargate stone steps for the church,” he said.

“My work is still here. Hambledon is extraordinarily still the same, it’s almost spooky. It’s just the personnel who change,

“I went into the graveyard to see who had popped off.”

Hambledon Parish Council chairman John Anderson was delighted to welcome the author and commended parish clerk Jane Woolley, who has just celebrated her 80th birthday, for being the “driving force” behind the council commissioning the new bench outside the community owned village shop.

“We wanted to do something for the Queen’s birthday,” he said.“It’s called the ‘Winds of Time’ and will be a focal point for the village.”

It was made by village craftsmen Dorian van Braam and Olafur Mason.