'A Woman should know only how to do 3 Things: Tell the Truth, Ride a Horse, and Sign a Cheque.'

....or so said William Faulkner, according to Javier Marias' delightfully surreal 'Written Lives', which brings together a series of mini biographies of well-known writers, composed out of 'fragmentary and often...bizarre' anecdotal vignettes and tit-bits that 'treat these well-known literary figures as if they were fictional characters, which may well be how all writers, whether famous or obscure, would secretly like to be treated.' Of course, we know this to be absolutely true (in my case anyway - I used to frequently fake name people for the hell of it, and whilst temping, would make up fictional life histories and fake siblings and uncles just to pass the time.) 







Literature in Art, Part Two: The Cult of Beauty

     After spending the morning at the V&A exhibit that featured in Literature in Art:, Part One, I spent the afternoon at the V&A’s newest exhibit, The Cult of Beauty. This major collection focuses on the Aestheticism that developed in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, which featured Keats, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with Oscar Wilde as the poster boy, believing in truth, love and beauty as raison d’etre - in fact, all those lovely, life-affirming things they sing about in Moulin Rouge!. 

     Of course, finding literary inspiration in a movement that contained quite so much actual literature was never going to be hard; especially when it was so coloured by bohemia and decadence, sensuality and romanticism and a deep appreciation of the ephemeral beauty of life. The poetry practically writes itself, doesn’t it?