Nigel Bruce

The Woman in the Bower

'Becket'

Henry II and Eleanor appear in the film Becket (1964); Fair Rosamond does not. However, many find homoerotic undertones in the key relationship between Henry and Becket. The film is an adaptation of a 1959 play by Jean Anouilh and both feature a number of significant historical inaccuracies.

Immortal Beloved

Beethoven''s Grave in Zentralfriedhof, Vienna

Beethoven was buried initially at Währing in northern Vienna, but after the opening of Vienna's massive cemetery, Wiener Zentralfriedhof in 1874 (it is actually south of Vienna, not "Zentral" at all), his remains were relocated there. Schubert, Brahms, Salieri, the Strauss family, Schoenberg and many others

Immortal Beloved

Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament

Beethoven lived and worked in Vienna for 35 years and he moved constantly - he may have lived in at least 60 places during those years. In 1802, he was living in Heiligenstadt, then a rural village in one of the wine-growing areas (heurigen) and now in the northern suburbs

Splendour in the Grass

Benjamin Franklin and Illegitimacy

Benjamin Franklin had an illegitimate son named William in 1730. In 1747, he published the anonymous, satirical pamphlet The Speech of Polly Baker, revealing what he really thought about the matter. The brief pamphlet is the tale of a woman put on trial for having (yet another) illegitimate child. The

Letters from Africa

French Orientalist paintings

Below is a French Orientalist painting from 1870, by Émile Vernet-Lecomte: Berber Woman (Portrait dune Kabyle). She is sometimes described as "Dihya Berber Queen of the Aurès" or Al-Kahina, and the painter may have had her in mind, referring to a Berber queen who led resistance to the

Immortal Beloved

Paintings of the younger Beethoven

Letters from Africa

Bilikisu Sungbo

Portrait d'une négresse by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, from 1800. Not Queen Bilikisu Sungbo - because she lived a thousand years ago - but an unknown woman. Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1768 - 1826) was one of a small group of women painters in late 18th century France. She studied under Jacques-Louis

Loki's Children

'Blade Runner'

Is there a better exit speech in the history of cinema? I've seen things you people wouldn't believe; starships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've seen C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All these moments will be lost in

The Woman in the Bower

Blenheim Palace

The original Woodstock Palace may have been more of a hunting lodge than a palace and it was probably rebuilt several times. Now it is long gone and Blenheim Palace stands in its place. It is situated near the town of Woodstock, northwest of Oxford. All that remains of Rosamond,

Women in Trousers

Boccaccio's 'On Famous Women'

After Petrarch wrote biographies of famous men, Giovanni Boccaccio went one better with 106 biographies of Famous Women (De Mulieribus Claris). The famous women included Pope Joan. Written in Latin, the book spans Eve, Venus, Minerva, Circe and Penelope, Medea, Flora, Isis, Sappho, and Cleopatra, all the way up to

Letters from Africa

'Borat'

I don't mind Borat, but I think Sacha Baron Cohen unwittingly strayed into the very thing he criticizes. Whether he likes it or not, his use of Kazakhstan was racist and Kazakhs got upset (as did Roma, the Gypsies). Maybe that doesn't bother you but Cohen

From Russia with Love

'Boris Godunov'

Like any other country, Russia relives its past myths and they can be bloody, which is why Russia's artists have frequently attacked the culture of violence by showing its ugliness. In the deeply upsetting painting above, Ivan the Terrible embraces his dying son. What isn't shown

The Age of Consent

Hieronymus Bosch and 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'

This is the left panel of the triptych known as The Garden of Earthly Delights, this panel being The Garden of Eden, or Joining of Adam and Eve, and it can be interpreted a number of ways. You just know the forbidden fruit is next. The full triptych is here.

How to Look at a Naked Lady

Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim was a brilliant man but, faults or not, he has been the victim of some extraordinary character assassinations, enough to make one wonder about the sanity of his inquisitors. Consider the evaluation below and wonder what was really on their minds... Executive summary: Fraudulent child psychologist Many of

Beauty & the Beast

'Burnt Norton'

Burnt Norton (above) is a country house in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. Nowadays people like to get married there, but back in the 1930's, T.S. Eliot visited it frequently and the house and its rose garden evoked in him a nostalgia for Britain’s faded splendor and

Splendour in the Grass

Byron's Women

Let's tackle five of them. The first three were married when they had an affair with Byron and all were older than him. The aristocracy of the Regency era indulged in frequent love affairs and this was well accepted as long as the players showed discretion in public.

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Byzantium - Timeline

* 150 Protoevangelium of James (Gospel of James) * 325 First Council of Nicaea * 330 Foundation of the city of Constantinople * 410 Rome sacked by the Visigoths (and St. Augustine begins The City of God) * 430 Death of St. Augustine of Hippo * 431 Council of Ephesus (Nestorius exiled 4 years later) * 451

Sacred Prostitute

Antonio Canova's Magdalenes

In Italian it is known as Maddalena penitente and it is from 1796. Above is Maddalena Giacente (Recumbent Magdalene) (1819-1822), which Canova completed shortly before his death, was "found" again 200 years after his death. It was to be auctioned by Christies in 2022 but there has been

Voices and Saints

Capture at Compiègne

Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne in 1430 in controversial circumstances - did the city close the gates too soon and strand her outside the walls? Below is a painting of the siege from a late 15th century French illustrated book of poems

Alice's Mirrors

Caravaggio's 'Judith Beheading Holofernes'

Caravaggio painted the infamous picture shown below in 1598. The following year a Roman noblewoman Beatrice Cenci was executed for her part in a lurid murder of her father, who reportedly had raped her repeatedly. Beheading was a common form of execution at the time and this painting got everyone&

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova and Academia

Casanova would not live to see how later generations would discourage the genre of autobiography, seeing it as egotistical. Universities still avoid him like a venereal disease: his memoirs are almost never taught in university classes. In literature departments, the erotic arts are limited to the classes where de Sade,

The Whore's Revenge

Later Casanova portraits

The portrait of Casanova below is said to be around 1788 when he was 63 years old and living in Bohemia at Dux (Duchcov). It is an engraving that appeared in the front of his only work of fiction, Icosameron (1788), a long and rambling utopian fantasy which had the

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova in his Twenties

This is the most well known portrait of Giacomo Casanova; it was painted around 1750-1755 by his brother Francesco Casanova. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 and, for the first few decades, his home was in the central area of the city, just west of the large Campo Santo

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova's Henrietteʔ

It is speculated that she was Adélaide de Gueidan. This is her in a painting "Adélaïde de Gueidan et sa sœur au clavecin" ("Adelaide de Gueidan and her Younger Sister on Cembalo" (harpsichord) by Claude Arnulphy, circa 1735-40. I have also seen it attributed (wrongly?) to

The Whore's Revenge

Casanova's 'Histoire de ma Vie'

This is a watercolor illustration to a 1932 French edition of Casanova's Histoire de ma Vie, by the influential Auguste Leroux. There is ample historical evidence that in past centuries people had a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one