Category Archives: At home with…
Doubles: Marie Corelli
A prolific author (and champion figure skater) takes on “perhaps the most accomplished liar in literature”.
Doubles: Marie Corelli
A prolific author (and champion figure skater) takes on “perhaps the most accomplished liar in literature”.
Light in the darkness
Dear friends – colour and light from my home to yours. I wish you a peaceful, happy, healthy solstice. Thanks for sticking with the erratic publishing schedule, and here’s to what can only be a better 2021.
Light in the darkness
Dear friends – colour and light from my home to yours. I wish you a peaceful, happy, healthy solstice. Thanks for sticking with the erratic publishing schedule, and here’s to what can only be a better 2021.
Places: Schloss Zwickledt
The Austrian manor house where illustrator Alfred Kubin died, 60 years ago today.
Places: Schloss Zwickledt
The Austrian manor house where illustrator Alfred Kubin died, 60 years ago today.
18 books for 2018
Three Marcels, two Nutters and a Sissi: imaginary lives and lives beyond imagining.
18 books for 2018
Three Marcels, two Nutters and a Sissi: imaginary lives and lives beyond imagining.
Places: a Turin trinity
A stroll through good and evil, light and shadow, life and death, genius and madness, heaven and hell.
Places: a Turin trinity
A stroll through good and evil, light and shadow, life and death, genius and madness, heaven and hell.
At home with Count Eric Stenbock
The poet’s estate rises once more
At home with Franz von Stuck
Paying homage in the temple of the self
At home with Prince Zaleski
“The hall was constructed in the manner of a Roman atrium, and from the oblong pool of turgid water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly squealing at my approach.”
At home with Prince Zaleski
“The hall was constructed in the manner of a Roman atrium, and from the oblong pool of turgid water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly squealing at my approach.”
D’Annunzio’s Cave
The hand-held camera makes constant scything motions as if trying to slash through the pomposity, pausing every now and then to leer in contemptuous close-up, offering up some decorative detail for mockery.
D’Annunzio’s Cave
The hand-held camera makes constant scything motions as if trying to slash through the pomposity, pausing every now and then to leer in contemptuous close-up, offering up some decorative detail for mockery.
Huncke Burning Ghat
Neither was an actor by either training or instinct, but this miniature is still a rare and wonderful thing with the gamey savour of lived reality.
Huncke Burning Ghat
Neither was an actor by either training or instinct, but this miniature is still a rare and wonderful thing with the gamey savour of lived reality.
Places: Palais Rose, Le Vésinet
Montesquiou first laid eyes on the house in 1908 and announced that he would die if it were not his the following day. Well, it took two days to secure a sale agreement but the silly old drama queen somehow managed to cling to life.
Places: Palais Rose, Le Vésinet
Montesquiou first laid eyes on the house in 1908 and announced that he would die if it were not his the following day. Well, it took two days to secure a sale agreement but the silly old drama queen somehow managed to cling to life.
The man in the moon
It’s been 60 years to the day since occultist/rocket scientist Jack Parsons blew himself up while mixing chemicals, in an accident which numerous conspiracy theorists claim was anything but.
The man in the moon
It’s been 60 years to the day since occultist/rocket scientist Jack Parsons blew himself up while mixing chemicals, in an accident which numerous conspiracy theorists claim was anything but.
Look back with Anger
We saw Kenneth Anger yesterday, kicking around the semi-ruin of Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema. He’s also been on my screen in Martina Kudláček’s brilliant 2006 documentary Notes on Marie Menken, which I’ve watched twice over the last few days.
Look back with Anger
We saw Kenneth Anger yesterday, kicking around the semi-ruin of Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema. He’s also been on my screen in Martina Kudláček’s brilliant 2006 documentary Notes on Marie Menken, which I’ve watched twice over the last few days.
At home with Edward James
What wonders this journey brings! James describes the travelling menagerie that was his life in the high, piping voice which contemporaries always remarked upon. His irascible temperament and bitterness are also much in evidence.
At home with Edward James
What wonders this journey brings! James describes the travelling menagerie that was his life in the high, piping voice which contemporaries always remarked upon. His irascible temperament and bitterness are also much in evidence.
At home with Alfred Kubin
This footage shows Alfred Kubin in the very space where his nightmarish visions originated, greeting the camera with a grandpaternal smile and flicking through his terrifying images as if leafing through old family snapshots.
At home with Alfred Kubin
This footage shows Alfred Kubin in the very space where his nightmarish visions originated, greeting the camera with a grandpaternal smile and flicking through his terrifying images as if leafing through old family snapshots.
Places: Place Vendôme
One of the countess’s most notorious public appearances saw her arrive at a ball in a sheer dress, slashed at the sides, decorated with hearts. The Empress caught sight of one such strategically placed ornament. “Your heart seems a little low,” she commented coolly.
Places: Place Vendôme
One of the countess’s most notorious public appearances saw her arrive at a ball in a sheer dress, slashed at the sides, decorated with hearts. The Empress caught sight of one such strategically placed ornament. “Your heart seems a little low,” she commented coolly.
Places: Vittoriale degli italiani
Mussolini cribbed much of his style and many of his tactics from the older man but was disinclined to have the dangerously charismatic war hero around to challenge his authority. Il Vittoriale was generously-funded busy work for d’Annunzio, an al fresco manifestation of the creation myths of totalitarianism.
Places: Vittoriale degli italiani
Mussolini cribbed much of his style and many of his tactics from the older man but was disinclined to have the dangerously charismatic war hero around to challenge his authority. Il Vittoriale was generously-funded busy work for d’Annunzio, an al fresco manifestation of the creation myths of totalitarianism.
Bohemian twilight
This newsreel footage dating from 1944 shows Augustus John at Fordingbridge, pottering around the garden, reading to a young boy and working with a model in his studio (and what a studio! A gorgeous, light, clean-lined Modernist construction on John’s estate).
Bohemian twilight
This newsreel footage dating from 1944 shows Augustus John at Fordingbridge, pottering around the garden, reading to a young boy and working with a model in his studio (and what a studio! A gorgeous, light, clean-lined Modernist construction on John’s estate).
Strange Flowers guide to Berlin: part 3
The retro-revellers at Bohème Sauvage are responding to a particular idea of Weimar Berlin, a fragile, frantic golden age of sexual license and social mobility, lewd and doomed. The undying allure of the Weimar Berlin evoked by Isherwood’s books ensures that the reality of the city in that era can never be divorced from its fictional echoes.
Strange Flowers guide to Berlin: part 3
The retro-revellers at Bohème Sauvage are responding to a particular idea of Weimar Berlin, a fragile, frantic golden age of sexual license and social mobility, lewd and doomed. The undying allure of the Weimar Berlin evoked by Isherwood’s books ensures that the reality of the city in that era can never be divorced from its fictional echoes.
Strange Flowers 