Nigel Bruce

Immortal Beloved

A Truly Unknown Woman?

In her diary, a young Fanny del Rio records the visit Beethoven made to her father in 1816. She writes that Beethoven said that five years earlier he had found the perfect love: “Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person, a more intimate union with whom he

Vampires in Venice

Absinthe, 'The Green Fairy'

Alfred de Musset appears to have died in 1857 from drinking too much absinthe. This anise-favored drink is powerful, with an alcohol content north of 45%, and it was all the rage in 19th century Paris and, before long, everywhere else. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, van Gogh, Oscar Wilde and Picasso

The Judgment of Paris

Achilles

The original storytellers of The Judgment of Paris don't seem overly concerned with chronology, because the golden apple is thrown by Eris, the goddess of discord, into the wedding of Achilles' parents because she wasn't invited, which implies that Achilles wasn't born yet.

Letters from Africa

Africans in European Painting

In European art, Africans are referred to as Negroes, Moors and Mulattoes, all of them intentionally demeaning or worse. I have assembled a small selection of "African" images, along with a few "Americans." The selection is idiosyncratic of course - these are the ones I find

Alice's Mirrors

'Afternoon of a Faun'

Who said ballet has to be boring? The most stimulating moment in ballet history surely must have been at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 1912 when Nijinsky ended The Afternoon of a Faun by simulating masturbation in front of a full house. It caused a riot just as

Poison Pen Letters

Agatha Christie and Modernism

The heyday of Agatha Christie occurred at the same time as the triumph of Modernism, which is surely no coincidence. Do they in fact have an affinity with each other or are they opposites? It's a trite question but often asked. Christie was as comfortable blowing up pre-

Poison Pen Letters

Agatha Christie and Orson Welles

Christie’s writings are very cinematic and Murder in Mesopotamia, it should be noted, precedes Welles’ onion layers in Citizen Kane, which carries this style to its logical conclusion, where exploration of character is the plot, or vice versa, if you prefer... Christie is better at it because her writing

Poison Pen Letters

Places associated with Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie and her husband are buried at St. Mary's Church, Cholsey, Oxfordshire. In a sense, Christie is buried in deepest Miss Marple territory. Even the church name evokes St. Mary Mead, the town associated with Miss Marple. It is where she attended church. A mile or two

From Russia with Love

Agnostic

To find out if you are an agnostic, start here (Putin's Kiss) or here (Pictures at an Exhibition) or here (The Poisoning of Litvinenko). YOU ARE AN AGNOSTIC This means you think anything is possible. You think it is possible for contradictions to be explained. Indeed you don&

The House of Incest

Anaïs Nin: book covers for 'Fire'

The House of Incest

Anaïs Nin in the 1970s

Nin was born in the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine  in 1903. She died in Los Angeles in 1977. Why do so many creative people end up in Los Angeles? Anyway, she lived in house with partner Rupert Pole in a "glass house" that overlooked Silver Lake reservoir

Angel Incarnate

'Angelo Incarnato'

Leonardo's Angel Incarnate (Angelo Incarnato) shows his assistant and lover Giacomo Salaì with a prominent erection pointing in the same direction as the pointing finger, toward God. In the mainstream media the image is always cropped above the nipple. Incarnate Angel is a charcoal drawing that likely dates

Life as Opera

The Strange Case of Anna O.

As the 19th century drew to a close, if dancing naked was symbolic of the New Woman, then its reversal also was possible - the adding of more layers. Repressed hysterics (or so they were "diagnosed") chose to push back this way. The most famous case study was

Beauty & the Beast

Anne Rice and Vampires

AIDS, and other blood diseases like leukemia, provide the sub-text for Anne Rice’s novels about the Vampire Lestat and the popularity of films and TV programs like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. AIDS and STDs lurk behind every teenage sexual encounter, so it seems. This

Angel Incarnate

Aquinas and Dante: the Woman Problem

In the medieval world, it was all about hierarchies. When it came to reading scripture, there was an initial literal or historical meaning and then three mystical levels built on top, like the layers of the Mount Purgatory wedding cake. Those three mystical layers on top were the allegorical (symbolic)

Alice's Mirrors

Art, Pornography and Picasso

It’s fair to say the silly debate between Art vs Pornography is now over. For all the millions of words defending or collapsing the difference, there is no Art, no Pornography. There is only art with sexual content or art without it. Not that art galleries and museums can

Alice's Mirrors

Artemisia Gentileschi

Could this be feminist art critics chopping off the head of a patriarch perhaps? Artemisia Gentileschi painted Judith Beheading Holofernes around 1612-13 and it has been the subject of much debate. In mid-1611, the 17-year-old Gentileschi may, or may not, have been raped by her tutor Agostino Tassi. Although Gentileschi

The Whore's Revenge

Arthur Machen's 'Casanova'

Over the centuries, who have been Casanova's defenders? One of them was Welsh author Arthur Machen, who translated the memoirs into English in the 1880's. An illustration from that edition is shown below. Machen was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, who was usually up for

Life as Opera

Aubrey Beardsley and 'Salomé'

Aubrey Beardsley illustrated Oscar Wilde's play Salomé: a tragedy in one act in 1894, although Wilde hated his illustrations as "too Japanese," whatever that means. They included the one above and the two below. Beardsley's excelled in erotic illustrations, however, like the hilarious ones

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

'Aurora Consurgens'

Saint Dominic's experience drinking the Virgin Mary's breast milk made its way into alchemical illustrated manuscripts like the Aurora Consurgens ("Dawn Rising"), from the 1420's. This is one of the most unusual works I come across. Once attributed to Thomas Aquinas, now

Letters from Africa

Bahia in Brazil

Slavery in Brazil was big business. Because of the high mortality rate, millions more slaves were shipped there from Africa than to anywhere else, including the United States, and Brazil was the last country to free its slaves, in 1888. Today the state of Bahia and its capital city Salvador

Letters from Africa

Balkis, Queen of Sheba

Balkis was actually the Queen of Sheba. She is known in Islam as Balkis (or Bilqis or Bilquis or Bilikisu Sungbo in Nigeria), as Malkat Shva in Israel, and in Ethiopia she is known as Queen Makeda. Ethiopia and Yemen both lay claim to ancient Sheba and say they have

Alice's Mirrors

Banned Books

Well, maybe not all banned. Some of them... In some places but not others. But definitely all controversial. And then a few related controversial record album covers from when you could get away with this stuff: Higher res versions and explanations are available in Wikipedia... They are from L to

Oz is China

Baum's Genocide editorials

Baum uncharacteristically did write in support of genocide. In an editorial of 1890, only five days after the murder of Sitting Bull, he wrote: “The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be

Sacred Prostitute

Beautiful Mary Magdalene Churches

I find Eastern Orthodox Magdalene churches more interesting architecturally than Western Catholic ones. The one above is in Mikaszówce, NE Poland, near the border with Belarus and Lithuania. The Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene on the slope of the Mount of Olives, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem is