Nigel Bruce

Immortal Beloved

Holy Relics: Beethoven’s Hair and Skull

Beethoven died in 1827 at the age of 56. The autopsy revealed significant liver damage and since then multiple explanations have been given for his death. The most recent research indicates a genetic predisposition for liver disease (and he was known for heavy drinking), and a hepatitis B infection during

Homer's Women

Homer's Women - Timeline

* 1819 Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci * 1833 Tennyson’s first version of The Lady of Shalott * 1891 John William Waterhouse Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses * 1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses published * 1930 Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence) translation of the Odyssey * 1938 Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Odyssey: A

Precious Bodily Fluids

The House of Valois and 'Hamlet'

Could Hamlet have been influenced less by Danish politics and more by the French-Italian-Spanish political feuds of 1588 centered around the Spanish Armada? First, let's dismiss Denmark. The timing is right. Frederick II completed Kronborg castle in Helsingør (which sounds like Elsinore) in the 1580's and

The Whore's Revenge

'I Modi: the Sixteen Pleasures'

Casanova's and Venice's libertinism did not emerge from a vacuum. I Modi (aka "The Positions") is a notorious book of erotica that became famous in 16th century Italy, as much for being banned as for its racy content. After the Church destroyed early versions

Alice's Mirrors

'I Wish I Were a Man'

Up top is a painting that surprised me when I first saw it: how did Jean Delville get away with this L'Ecole de Platon? It may be titled "The School of Plato" but it looks like Jesus and the Disciples in coy homosexual poses. But what

Vampires in Venice

George Sand at 60

These photos of Sand were taken by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) in 1864 (when she was 60 years old). She outlived them all, except Liszt, and died at 71 in 1876. Below is a portrait of Sand by Achille Lemot from 1870 - presumably based off that photo - and below

Spinster

Images of Jane Austen

These are the best-known images of Jane Austen...

Immortal Beloved

Immortal Beloved - the film

Immortal Beloved

Immortal Beloved - Timeline

* 1770 Beethoven born in Bonn * 1774 First version of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther published; final version in 1787 * 1789 French Revolution * 1792 Beethoven moves to Vienna at the age of 22 * 1800 Relationship with Countess Giulietta Guicciardi begins; Beethoven by now famous throughout Europe * 1801 This year

Oz is China

Imperialist Fictions

Is it a coincidence that in 1900, when most of the earth’s peoples were under foreign domination, and disease wiped out more indigenous populations than at any other time in history, that European and American writers produced some of the finest fantasy and science fictions? The China of The

The House of Incest

Incest as an Artistic and Literary Theme

From Genesis to Nabokov, incest is inherently appealing to artists for its shock value. Sophocles and Freud, for example, exaggerated the Oedipus legend’s inherent risqué and tragic qualities for dramatic effect. But the heyday for incest as a literary theme came with 19th century Romantics, where it fitted right

The Whore's Revenge

Ireland's The Jealous Wall

The Jealous Wall or Jealousy Wall (shown below), is to be found at Belvedere House and Gardens south of Mullingar in central Ireland. It was built around 1760 by an Anglo-Irish monster straight out of a Gothic novel. That monster was one Robert Rochfort, the influential Earl of Belvedere, who

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Isis, Artemis and Aphrodite and New Age Feminism

There is a growing literature about the cycles women go through in life, the menstrual cycle of course, but also from maiden to mother to crone, just like the waxing of the moon, to the full moon, to the waning moon. Secular feminism has reached back to embrace pagan thinking,

Letters from Africa

Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest

As the Danish Mohammed cartoon contest brouhaha unfolded in 2006, the most witty cartoon was actually this one, from some Israelis in Tel Aviv. This was their logo when they announced the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves! “We’ll show the

The Whore's Revenge

'The Death of Socrates'

Casanova was fascinated by the Elixir of Life. Did Socrates get there first? Did he drink the hemlock not to die but to achieve immortality and he had failed? Here he is, reaching for the hemlock, in Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates (1787).

Precious Bodily Fluids

James (the Admirable) Crichton

James Crichton was born in 1560 into an aristocratic Scottish family and likely raised in Clunie, near Perth. His surviving writing does not support the idea that he was a great poet and polymath. His formidable reputation was developed in the 17th century, thanks to his enthusiastic Scottish prankster publicist,

Spinster

Jane Austen's Bath

Bath was Austen's home from 1801 to 1806. She partially set Northanger Abbey and Persuasion there, but she never liked the city. Perhaps she agreed with cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson, who suggested that most people coming to Bath were decrepit? The Circus (up top) is a famous and representative

Spinster

Jane Austen's grave

Below is a brass plaque by Jane Austen's grave inside Winchester Cathedral. Austen died in the city in 1817 while seeking medical treatment. She was 41. The most popular theory is that she suffered from Addison's disease, a rare disorder of the adrenal glands. When she

Spinster

Jane Austen's House, Chawton

The house that Jane Austen is most associated with is in Chawton, East Hampshire, which is really a suburb of Alton these days. It is now Jane Austen's House Museum - website here. Down the road a bit are Chawton House, shown below, which was the home of

Homer's Women

Jason and Medea

The tale of Jason, Medea and the Golden Fleece is as old the Odyssey. It is also much bloodier and it's hard to think of two less likeable characters in the ancient Greek legends. It all starts out so well: Later, Circe pops up as Medea's

Beauty & the Beast

Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête was released in 1946. Life imitates art. The shooting of the film which started on August 27, 1945 had to be interrupted because Cocteau fell ill, suffering from a variety of skin diseases, including severe impetigo and eczema. He concealed this

The Whore's Revenge

Jean-Honoré Fragonard's 'The Swing'

18th century pleasures in the park, as he looks up her dress and she knows it, and the unwitting husband is at the back pushing the swing. This is Fragonard's famous The Swing. In French it is known by the more evocative Les Hasards heureux de l'

Splendour in the Grass

Jessie Shanks

My grandmother. One of the heroes in this story.

From Russia with Love

'Jesus Christ Superstar'

In Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Pontius Pilate ambivalently consigns a terrorist, who suspiciously resembles Jesus Christ, to execution. Was the novel an inspiration for the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar? Or was it inspired by Nikolai Ge's brooding painting Quod Est Veritas? (What is

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

'Jimi Hendrix: The Wind Cries Mary'

Not to take anything away from Dylan, but the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix always inspired me more - he had an intuitive understanding of alchemical symbols and astrology (he believed in both). Like all great poets he could project a private space somehow outside of time. Curiously, I read later