COSTUME, CUSTOM and CONDUCT
Since Roman times, Bath’s hot mineral springs have pumped a quarter of a million gallons of spring water a day at a steady temperature of 49°c. In 1708, Thomas Harrison built the Bath Assembly House,...
View ArticleSTRAWBERRY HILLS FOREVER
The moon stood still on Strawberry Hill. Through dark and fetid dungeon passages, past amorous phantoms and shrieking monks, the Gothic novel led its trembling readers to a creaking door. What lay...
View ArticleIN THE CLUTCHES OF THE NETHER REACHES
Fate sits on these dark battlements, and frowns, And, as the portals open to receive me, Her voice, in sullen echoes through the courts, Tells of a nameless deed. ( Anne Radcliffe ) Horace Walpole set...
View ArticleABODES OF DESPAIR
Physically, perhaps emotionally, Matthew Lewis somehow never quite grew up. Small and neat, with pallid, projecting eyes that reminded Sir Walter Scott of those of an insect, he always retained his...
View ArticleDECAY, DEATH & DARING
”Fuseli’s protagonists are similarly given names that just ‘Sound’ right, his characters are equally formulaic, and it is in this disregard for narrative convention, and the moral instruction that was...
View ArticlePOMPEII: Adam and Adamesque
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. , the ensuing earthquake and volcanic ash buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum until their rediscovery in the eighteenth century. When the ruins came to...
View Articleomar the tent faker
How to escape the classic and enduring, reinforced Orientalist trappings, the colonialist “other” that keeps resurfacing in reinforced, ingenious and more invigorated fashion. Is this part of the...
View Articlehouse hunters
The Duke of Wellington’s prospects seemed pretty flat. The greatest war hero in English history, the Wonder of Waterloo could not dind a ducal home and the money was there from the Parliament. Lots of...
View Articlesearch for a less than humble abode
Parliament voted a king’s ransom to that the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley could have a home, a palace, a mansion, fit for his status as savior of the British empire. And after Waterloo that sum...
View Articleservice before show
The travails and perils of finding a home. In the case of the Duke of Wellington, it took on palatial magnitude. Poor chap. All he really wanted was a little place in the country to relax and hunt. But...
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