A high proportion of the population are now 'overners' rather than locally born, and so with a few notable exceptions it has more often formed the backdrop for cultural events of wider rather than island-specific significance.
The first creative flowering occurred during the reign of Queen Victoria, under whose patronage the island became a fashionable destination for the gentry.
The author Maxwell Gray (Mary Gleed Tuttiett) was born in Newport, and a number of her novels, including the best-known, The Silence of Dean Maitland, are set on the island.
[3] The "Isle of Wight School" of Romantic painters specialised in views of the South West Coast; prominent were George Morland and J. M. W. Turner.
Julia Margaret Cameron was a prominent early photographer, who has a museum dedicated to her at Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater.
It is an oft-quoted statistic that 92% of islanders read the local newspaper, the Isle of Wight County Press, which is published most Fridays.
It was first popularised in England at a dinner party given by George III who was taken with a display arranged under glass at his dinner table by a Bavarian named Benjamin Zobel (Memmingen, Germany, 21 September 1762 - London, England, 24 October 1830),[10] a friend of George Morland, a painter prominent in the "Isle of Wight School" .
Wet Leg is a British indie rock band from the Isle of Wight, founded in 2019 by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers.
Local skateboarding team 'Wight Trash' and its associated retail brand was launched with the help of Inbiz and a Prince's Trust loan in April 2004.
[citation needed] The Isle of Wight was the last area of English paganism until 686CE when, according to Bede, Cædwalla of Wessex conquered the island, killing its inhabitants and installing Christians in their place.
Historically several women were alleged to be witches (such as the nineteenth-century Bembridge woman Molly Downer), although not apparently persecuted.