If Claude is looking anxious, he has good reason. According to the latest Radio Times, Andrew Davies has been talking to Tom Hollander (who wants to play Quasimodo) about doing an adaptation of NDdP…

Andrew Davies…

I am already worried about his Les Misérables…

https://www.hbook.com/1998/01/creating-books/publishing/writing-backward-modern-models-in-historical-fiction/#_Read more... )

Sometimes I almost wish that 'cultural appropriation' were something you could justifiably arrest people for: Outlander, Braveheart, and now… Robespierre done Takarazuka-style…

( Read more... )

Honestly, The Rose of Versailles (middle, top row), while over-sweet, is the least dreadful visually… The top right is from Tetsuya’s Napoléon manga. Despite his sinister expression, the Tetsuya version is kind of hunky, but “hunky” is just not a word I would associate with Max, whose good looks are of rather more refined kind. The bottom row is ( Read more... )

I've ordered Jean-Clément Martin's Robespierre: la Fabrication d’un Monstre… The review looks very interesting (original French version here). It is fascinating that it has taken so long for so much of the myth-making to be dismantled. How long it takes for academic research to break down popular-level historical myths is another matter, especially ( Read more... )

I was pleased to see this in today's Grauniad online. It's very much taking the same line as Anne Scott McLeod's excellent article on historical fiction for the young. Nothing irritates me more than historical fiction making the characters modern people with modern values and mind-sets in fancy dress. I know it's been around since the birth of the ( Read more... )

“The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold” (L. Cohen, The Future)

2016 has not been a year I wish to repeat:

• An old evil is at large again: black of shirt, black of heart; blood has been spilled.
• I have been robbed against my will and consent of the only part of my citizenship that matched who I am culturally, intellectually and ( Read more... )

Remember I mentioned the published German essay, Claude Frollo als Typus des romantischen Helden in Victor Hugos "Notre-Dame de Paris"? Well, I now have it. And I was most amused to note that I get a bibliographic citation for a newspaper article I wrote several years ago!

So I've ordered one (in burgundy)...

It's been true since c. 1980-81.

You want t-shirts? You want cards?!
I've posted one of my designs...

I've also ordered for myself some of other people's from RedBubble: a "My soulmate is a fictional character" shirt, and another that bears a heart in which it says "Victor Hugo ruined my life"...