Brideshead Visited

Bloody hell, it was cold today. Walking from the car to work this morning I was shivering so hard that I've made my shoulders ache. It's drastically different to yesterday, when I went out with only a hoodie and jacket, not my usual 12 layers of arctic-weather clothing. Why isn't it summer yet? How inconsiderate the seasons are.

On Saturday night I watched Brideshead Revisited (the new, Matthew Goode/Ben Whishaw version) for the first time. What a sad, sad story. I mean, I loved it, but it was so sad. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it because I'm not normally one for any type of cotume drama. Then again, I do tend to be attracted to tales of heartbreak and loneliness, so that might explain it.

The film inspired my family and I to take a trip to Castle Howard, where both the old and the new version of Brideshead Revisited were filmed. I think the house is closed during winter so we just went round the grounds and gardens, but it is such a stunning place. The really epic thing though is that the Howard family actually still live there. A family actually still owns it and lives in one side of it (the private side, where the public can't go. But they do use the public areas as well when everyone leaves, or so I've read). It would be insanely cool to live in a stately home. It's a small (and of course achievable) dream of mine to one day live in a place like Castle Howard.

Another grand day out in Yorkshire with my family. And more sunshine please?

It's my brother's 20th birthday today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY REES!

Inspire #20

his beautiful eyes are his fortune

Unless you are in any way interested in John Keats or Ben Whishaw, my recent posts will have been of absolutely no interest to you whatsoever. Sorry about that. My head and heart have been brimming with Keats and the actor who portrayed him in my new favourite film recently, and I have been devouring every piece of information I could get about either of them (I highly recommend Posthumous Keats by Stanley Plumly; it is very opinionated by very beautiful all the same), so I have not had the time to think about much else. I promise though that I will move on now - at least where my blog is concerned - because I know that I get bored reading other blogs where people post the same things over and over. I'll end the subject with this:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness, -

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

I have still heard no word on my PGCE application. How long do these things take, do you suppose? What I'm wondering is how long do I wait before I start panicking about whether or not they're going to invite me for an interview.

Oh! Tonight I am going to see Scissor Sisters. There'll be some serious girl crush-ing going on when I see Ana Matronic and her delicious red hair.

Inspire #19 - poetry embodied.

Another day, another obsession. What a beautifully fragile man Ben Whishaw is. Like a baby bird. Also, his hair may be my favourite thing on the planet.

his quiet other-worldliness

I've mostly been reading poetry and storming through the snow in Doc Martens these past few days. Desperate for sleep and surviving on Lucozade and Ben Whishaw interviews. Taking photographs of frosty trees. I'm going to move to Paris, pretend to smoke Gauloises and wander around obscure art exhibitions to keep warm. I'll probably marry a writer who cannot afford to eat; we'll stand on our balcony barefoot and shiver together, and he'll end up hating me because I'll complain that I can't stand his pensive silence.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold

I am in love with a man who has been dead for 189 years.

It's true. I am in love with John Keats.

I have always been a fan of Keats' poetry; I think his work is just about as beautiful as words strung together can get. The way that he writes is as lovely and romantic as it is despairing and heart-breaking, and his poetry inspires emotions in me in a way that few other poets do. When I was in Rome in the summer I dragged my brother all the way down to the Protestant cemetary at the bottom of the city to see Keats' gravestone, as well as Percy Shelley's and Joseph Severn's. Severn cared for Keats in the months leading up to his death.
As part of my Romantics poetry course at uni this semester, we have just started studying the work of John Keats. If I loved his work before, I love the man now, also.

Keat's story is so, so sad. He was a beautifully talented poet; he loved poetry, he lived for poetry, but he spent a large portion of his teenage years and very early twenties in medical school, or caring for his youngest brother Thomas, who died of tuberculosis. His other brother George also died of tuberculosis, as would Keats himself.
Reading biographies on him, and letters that he sent to his friends, family and girlfriend (fiance, love of his life, whatever you call it) he seemed like such a nice lad, and he was so excited about his poetry. He was confident, but also very self-deprecating. He died when he was 25 years old.
(I think this is one of Keats' last letters to Fanny).

Today I watched the film Bright Star, which is about John Keats' love affair with Fanny Brawne, the above mentioned girlfriend, and ohmygod I cried my eyes out for almost the entire second half of the film! It's the saddest, most touching film I have seen in a very long time, but it was so perfect as well. Ben Whishaw plays Keats, and he is exactly how you imagine him to be when you read his poems. He pulls off the sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful poet magnificently, and he does it whilst breaking your heart and having a perfect haircut. Bravo, Ben. (You may recognise him as one of the Dylan's in I'm Not There, incidentally one of my favourite films).

Oh, and he also happens to have the prettiest voice in the world. Listen to him reading one of my favourite Keats poems. Listen to the language, the words, and imagine yourself there.


I don't know what it is about tragic men that effects me so much; I feel entirely the same way about Vincent Van Gogh as I do John Keats. My heart just breaks for them, and for their lost genius.