Nigel Bruce

Voices and Saints

Flag of Free France

The flag of Free France, shown above, contains the Cross of Lorraine, also known as the Cross of Anjou. Why Lorraine? Because - as with Joan of Arc - it symbolized the lost provinces of France, on this occasion lost to Germany after 1871. It was the only official flag

Life as Opera

Folies Bergère in postcards

Life as opera! The Folies-Bergère is still around, but it was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890's through the 1920's. Visit today and you might see shows like Fantasma Circus Erotica, but most shows these days aren't erotica -

Spinster

Following the Fashion

It can't have been easy "following the fashion" in Austen's time. That's the name of the satirical caricature above by James Gillray from 1794. Gillray is mocking the high-waisted dresses of the time, with the aristocratic woman on the left (from St.

How to Look at a Naked Lady

The Forest of Arden

The Forest of Arden today is near Coventry - or at least a surviving piece of it is to the south of the city. Historically, it was much larger. Its wood pasture and ancient grasslands occupied the area between Birmingham and Coventry, creating a natural buffer between the two cities.

Alice's Mirrors

Fowey, Cornwall

Fowey in Cornwall has many literary associations going back to Joseph of Arimathea, of Holy Grail fame no less. Joseph, introduced in Luke 23, is known for burying the body of Jesus in the tomb, assisted by Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus. But there is a legend

Alice's Mirrors

François Boucher and Reinterpreting Greek Classics

Boucher, one of the most celebrated French painters of the 18th century, was in the eyes of his detractors (like Diderot), nothing but a pimp. He used his beautiful wife as a model and he privately indulged in erotica like the painting below, Leda and the Swan, which is only

Angel Incarnate

François Rabelais on Marriage

There are many things one could say about François Rabelais... Physician, lay priest, scourge of hypocrites, advocate for marriage, advocate for "Do as Thou Wilt"? The 5-part La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel series, for which he is rightfully admired, received a hostile reception from the Sorbonne

The Whore's Revenge

Frank Harris - 'My Life and Loves'

These days if you didn't know this book existed, you'd be hard pressed to ever hear about it. Yet it's one of the great memoirs of all time, full of bawdy sex, wonderful portraits of people and hilarious anecdotes. The first section (volume) was

A Tale of Two Women

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait: Coatlicue at the Opera?

Coatlicue, the Aztec mother of gods, is a powerful symbol in Kahlo’s self-portraits. And Kahlo at the opera? "It was the entrance of an Aztec goddess, perhaps Coatlicue, the mother deity wrapped in her skirt of serpents, exhibiting her own lacerated, bloody hands the way other women sport

Poison Pen Letters

From Agatha Christie’s autobiography

An Autobiography was published posthumously in the U.K. and the U.S. in November 1977, almost two years after her death in January 1976. Below are some of her classic lines: “You’ve got to hand it to Victorian women, they got their menfolk where they wanted them. They

The Whore's Revenge

Fuseli's 'The Nightmare'

Henry Fuseli, like la Charpillon, was Swiss-born but he moved to London in 1765, well after Casanova's escapades there. Perhaps this painting neatly captures the Charpillon point of view: Casanova as some incubus sitting on her chest. Of course there's a horse in the room too.

Beauty & the Beast

Gaston - Kill the Beast

Kill the Beast: time to sort out the riffraff

Beauty & the Beast

Gaston - The Hero

Gaston is the true hero of Beauty & the Beast

Beauty & the Beast

Gaston Ditches Belle

Vampires in Venice

George Sand in the Opinion of Her Peers

The French literary historian, Sainte-Beuve, who knew Sand, argued that he couldn’t imagine anything worse than an affair with a woman writer – because your private life would always end up in print. This is why Oscar Wilde, commenting at the end of the 19th century, could write, “Like Goethe,

Vampires in Venice

George Sand and Nohant

George Sand grew up in Nohant - she also did most of her writing there and she is buried there. Over the years, but especially in the early 1840's, the guest list included Liszt, Balzac, Flaubert, Chopin of course, and Delacroix painted the gardens (and the hosts) on

Life as Opera

Georges Bizet

Bizet married Geneviève Halévy in 1869 but the marriage was cut short when he died in 1875 from a heart attack at age 36, only three months after Carmen's opening. Halévy is shown in the lower image. This painting below of Halévy is by Jules-Élie Delaunay from 1876

Immortal Beloved

German Romanticism and Caspar David Friedrich

"Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life" (Musik ist der Mondschein in der düsteren Nacht des Lebens) - the writer Jean Paul The German Romantics - writers, painters, musicians - celebrated the moon and moonlight, sunset and sunrise, rocky outcrops in the mountains, church ruins

Voices and Saints

Gilles de Rais and Bluebeard

He was a leader in the French army and probably he fought alongside Joan of Arc. What did he do later that was so bad and was it true? He confessed, of course, as everyone did, and he was executed in 1440. The Black Baron: The Strange Life of Gilles

Angel Incarnate

Girolamo Savonarola

Fra Girolamo Savonarola was one of the great reformers of the Catholic Church in the years before the Protestant Reformation. He counted many of Florence's intellectuals among his colleagues and friends and his charismatic preaching attracted large crowds of women admirers. He was widely read around Europe, including

Kama Sutra

Glass Onion

Glass Onion as a metaphor? Lennon's choice of an onion is hilarious, for glass has a long history as a metaphor. The glass metaphor was well known in Europe from the 15th-17th centuries, when sufferers imagined their body was made of glass and that it could shatter at

The Woman in the Bower

Godstow Nunnery ruins

All that remains of Godstow Nunnery are these ruins, in Oxford’s northern suburbs, just up the Thames. Nearby is the Trout Inn (at bottom), which puts in appearances in the Inspector Morse TV series. Rosamond's home town of Clifford is further west, near Hay-on-Wye, by the Welsh

The Judgment of Paris

Goethe in Italy

The painting below is Goethe's most famous portrait: Goethe in Campagna (1787) by Tischbein, a German painter who had spent many years in Italy, and with whom Goethe stayed when he was in Rome. He was 38. The Campagna refers to the Roman Campagna, the area surrounding Rome,

How to Look at a Naked Lady

'Gold Diggers of 1933'

A classic movie, full of visually striking images, great songs, hilarious dialogue and even pathos. This photo above is from one of those songs - "Pettin' in the Park." The cast are caught in a rainstorm and they go backstage to change out of their wet clothes.

The Whore's Revenge

Goya

Goya as a Spanish Casanova? They were contemporaries after all... When Francisco Goya painted his infamous La maja desnuda ("The Nude Maja") between 1798 and 1800, it would get him in trouble with the Inquisition (in 1815), whom he despised. This is his only erotic painting that we