Two Miles High

Spinster

St. Nicholas Church, Steventon

Below is Steventon Church, where the Austens worshipped. Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, and the family lived there until the family moved to Bath in 1801 when Austen was 25. Her father planned to retire in Bath and he passed away there a few years later. The Steventon

Splendour in the Grass

Storks and Babies

The most compelling explanation for the stork as deliverer of babies may be that in medieval times migratory storks began nesting on high roofs and chimneys across northern Europe, and when parents needed to explain to children how babies arrive, they may have offered a convenient way to do so

Sacred Prostitute

Strauss' Salomé and Mozart's Idomeneo

More Severed Heads Oscar Wilde died in 1900, but Max Reinhardt staged Wilde's Salomé in 1903 in Berlin to great acclaim, after which came Richard Strauss’ opera of 1905. It still plays to strong interest these days, for example the performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in

From Russia with Love

Sturgeon Kiss

A Croatian critic ripped Putin for the photo below, saying: "With the gesture of an experienced porn star, fixing the observer with his chill gaze, Putin is sending an indirect kiss to the gay population: the long, slippery sturgeon in his hands could be a penis, and Putin is

Women in Trousers

Takarazuka and Harajuku

Takarazuka is an all-female theatre troupe named after the northern suburb of Osaka of the same name that was founded in 1913. The photo below is of the Grand Theater in Takarazuka (they have another in Tokyo). Unlike the all-male traditional Kabuki, Takarazuka is a hybrid of traditional Japanese and

Alice's Mirrors

Tangier and Mogador

Eugène Delacroix traveled to Algeria and Morocco in 1832, where he imagined an intense eroticism in the people, their clothing, the culture and the landscapes. The irony was that none of the women, Muslim or Jewish, would take their clothes off so Delacroix had to do it for them. The

Poison Pen Letters

'Ten Little Niggers'

The worst poison pen letter of them all? Ten Little Niggers (1939) is regarded by many as her finest mystery and it is said to be the best-selling of her novels. But it also revealed Agatha Christie as hopelessly insensitive on racial matters (see the original book cover below). American

Sacred Prostitute

Terry Jones' 'Barbarians'

Perhaps it's because he was Welsh? Terry Jones of Monty Python fame was scathing about the supposed civilization of the Romans. In Terry Jones' Barbarians, he and co-writer Alan Ereira wrote "We've all been sold a false history of Rome that has twisted our

The Age of Consent

The Avatar Child

Every generation of parents creates its own image of the child using the tools given it by the previous generation, often by reversing it. So if once Man was in a state of Original Sin, then one day there was an innocent child posed against this (Rousseau), before sooner or

Sacred Prostitute

The Basilica of Santiago de Compostela

The Catedral de Santiago de Compostela sits at the end of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), one of the three main pilgrimage routes of medieval times (more on that here). Inside is the world's largest botafumeiro (second image below), a huge incense burner that

Alice's Mirrors

The Bathhouse

What is it with bathhouses? After the medieval era, they are almost completely absent from Western literature and art, other than in Russian literature and art perhaps, like the image above. Vladimir Mayakovsky's satirical play The Bathhouse (1930) only uses the bathhouse as a metaphor, but there is

Kama Sutra

The Beatles in Rishikesh

India has long figured in the sexual imagination of Western writers and artists, but back in the 1840’s, when Burton arrived in India, Westerners considered India a declining and decadent culture. Gurus (teachers) had not really registered in the West – Vivekananda in the 1890's would be the

Loki's Children

The Bifröst Bridge

The Bifröst Bridge is the way to Asgard in the Viking stories. The god Heimdall who waits there is the guardian. He can hear the grass growing and leaves falling from Yggdrasil, he can see to the end of the world and he never sleeps. Or, it's the

Life as Opera

The Birth of Cabaret

Cabarets developed on two tracks: clubs and music halls and they were different. But, first they had to move inside. Les Hydropathes, founded in 1878 in the Latin Quarter, was short-lived but it was so named because its hosts professed to hate water and so had to drink wine or

A Tale of Two Women

The Black Legend

The Black Legend (La leyenda negra) was a term invented by Spanish historian Julián Juderías y Loyot in 1914. He was referring to the way Spain’s era of imperial conquest in the Americas had been blackened over the centuries by Spain’s enemies. Those enemies, he argued, were Protestant

Immortal Beloved

The Blue Flower of German Romanticism

Beethoven was influenced by - and played a major role in - German Romanticism, which is generally placed between 1770 and 1830. Its most representative literary symbol was Novalis' mysterious Blue Flower (Blaue Blume) that symbolized striving for the infinite and the unreachable, for ecstasy, for freedom. Your guess

Splendour in the Grass

The Bone People

The Bone People (1984) by Keri Hulme is the best New Zealand novel I have read and I have read a few. Some reviewers have difficulty with the style (a "shambles"), but they are unwilling or unable to enter the mind of someone so scattered, or shattered, and

Angel Incarnate

The Bonfire of the Vanities

The most famous Bonfire of the Vanities (Falò delle vanità) occurred in Florence in 1497 under the auspices of the controversial reformer Girolamo Savonarola. Books, paintings, mirrors, playing cards, dolls and other vanities perished in the flames. The irony, of course, is that he was burnt at the stake the

Kama Sutra

'The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night'

Sir Richard Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1888) has been better known as The Arabian Nights after Andrew Lang's subsequent abridged and retitled version (1898). This is from The Six Hundred and Fiftieth Night: "Then said she:--I

Letters from Africa

The Bride Market of Imilchil

Over three days in September, in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, some of the local Berber communities (the Ait Haddidou) come together at Imilchil to let their young people find a marriage partner or get a divorce before the snows close in again. This marriage moussem (“pilgrimage”) was devised to

The Whore's Revenge

The Bridge of Sighs

Below is a view from the Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri) in Venice, apparently the last view a convict would have as he entered the Leads Prison. Casanova became famous as the only man to escape from it. Byron gave the bridge its name: “I stood in Venice, on

From Russia with Love

The Bronze Horseman

If there is an iconic image of Russian imperial power and looking westward toward Europe, it is this enormous statue of Peter the Great, funded by his successor Catherine the Great, in Saint Petersburg. Known as The Bronze Horseman, it famously was celebrated in a hallucinatory Pushkin poem of 1833

The Whore's Revenge

The Castle of Dux today

Dux (German name) is now Duchcov in the Czech Republic, near the German border. Casanova was librarian there for 13 years until his death in 1798. This is a portrait of Casanova in the library... Not really. This is The Bookworm by German painter Carl Spitzweg (1850). Rear view of

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Cathars' Yellow Cross

The branding, the symbol of shame, which resembles the anti-Semitism and homophobia of the Nazis, the Scarlet Letter of Hawthorne's adultress... Former and repentant Cathars and even those related to them were forced by the Inquisition to wear the Yellow Cross to acknowledge their heresy, for the Cathars

Oz is China

The Chinese Zodiac

China adopted the Western solar calendar in 1911, but the traditional lunar calendar is still used for festivals such as the Chinese New Year. Chinese calendars usually show both solar and lunar. The 60-year cycle combines the 5 basic elements - metal, water, wood, fire and earth - with the