Norman Douglas
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Podcast about Unspeakable
Last week I spoke with Graham Foster at the Anthony Burgess Foundation about Norman Douglas and his role as a character in Burgess’s masterpiece, Earthly Powers. Burgess’s novel tells the story of a closeted gay novelist, Ken Toomey, who is haunted by the vision of Norman Douglas’s rapacious sexual appetite. Foster and I talk in…
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A New World of Delights: Capri
After an hour in Naples, I had dreams of returning to rent an apartment for a month. After a morning in Capri, I had dreams of buying a villa and staying forever. I’m not the first visitor to feel that way. Virginia and Mamie Pepworth-Norton, the elderly American lesbian heroines of Vestal Fire, Compton Mackenzie’s 1927 roman…
Axel Munthe, Blue Lagoon, Capri, Compton Mackenzie, Friederich Krupp, history of food, history of sexuality, Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, John Clay MacKowen, Mark Twain, Norman Douglas, Romaine Brooks, Shirley Hazzard, South Wind, Suetonius, The Innocents Abroad, Tiberius, Venus in the Kitchen, Vestal Fire
Historian. Novelist. Greedy Woman. 