Two Miles High
  • A Tale of Two Women
  • The Age of Consent
  • Alice's Mirrors
  • Angel Incarnate
  • Beauty & the Beast
  • Dreaming of the Virgin Mary
  • From Russia with Love
  • Homer's Women
  • The House of Incest
  • How to Look at a Naked Lady
  • Immortal Beloved
  • The Judgment of Paris
  • Kama Sutra
  • Letters from Africa
  • Life as Opera
  • Loki's Children
  • Oz is China
  • Poison Pen Letters
  • Precious Bodily Fluids
  • Sacred Prostitute
  • Spinster
  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice
  • Splendour in the Grass
  • The Town Square
  • The Whore's Revenge
  • The Woman in the Bower
  • Vampires in Venice
  • Voices and Saints
  • Women in Trousers
  • About the Author
Splendour in the Grass

Jessie Shanks

  • Nigel Bruce

Nigel Bruce

Jul 31, 2023
Jessie Shanks

My grandmother. One of the heroes in this story.

Jessie-Shanks
Cairo - al-Qāhirah (القاهرة)

Cairo - al-Qāhirah (القاهرة)

She needed to walk the Cairo streets at the time she loved them most: early on a Friday morning in October, when the summer’s heat had finally subsided, replaced by a crisp breeze just cool enough to sting her nose, when the sprawling city was mostly still sleeping. -
Jan 4, 2026 3 min read
Semiramis and Bathsheba

Semiramis and Bathsheba

In the hilariously operatic painting above, Assyrian beauty Semiramis seems to have killed herself after the death of her second husband, King Ninus. This didn't happen of course because, in the legend, she went on to become a powerful warrior queen after her husband's death. Years
Dec 29, 2025 3 min read
'The Kissing Ceremony'

'The Kissing Ceremony'

Russian artists in the late 19th century excelled in narrative storytelling. Take Konstantin Makovsky's The Kissing Ceremony (at the Feast of Boyar Morozov), for example. Romantic, idealized and nostalgic, it captures one of the most suspenseful scenes in Alexei Tolstoy’s (a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy) 1862
Dec 8, 2025 2 min read
Two Miles High © 2026
  • A Tale of Two Women
  • The Age of Consent
  • Alice's Mirrors
  • Angel Incarnate
  • Beauty & the Beast
  • Dreaming of the Virgin Mary
  • From Russia with Love
  • Homer's Women
  • The House of Incest
  • How to Look at a Naked Lady
  • Immortal Beloved
  • The Judgment of Paris
  • Kama Sutra
  • Letters from Africa
  • Life as Opera
  • Loki's Children
  • Oz is China
  • Poison Pen Letters
  • Precious Bodily Fluids
  • Sacred Prostitute
  • Spinster
  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice
  • Splendour in the Grass
  • The Town Square
  • Vampires in Venice
  • Voices and Saints
  • The Whore's Revenge
  • The Woman in the Bower
  • Women in Trousers
  • About the Author
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