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Stated simply, nobody had ever unearthed a work of genius with de Vere’s name stamped on it. Nor did we have an ad vivum painted portrait of Edward de Vere, only a seventeenth-century copy of a now lost circa-1575 portrait (artist unknown) that showed the earl posing beneath a wide-brimmed sugarloaf hat. A French cloak of gold braid (a proper dandy changed cloaks three times a day) was thrown over the left shoulder of a gold doublet uniquely tasseled at the wrist. Welbeck Abbey lent this portrait of de Vere to London’s National Portrait Gallery back in 1964, and for as long as I kept tabs on it, that portrait remained hidden inside an NPG storehouse in Wimbledon in spite of great public interest in de Vere. Was the NPG worried that tourists might flock like maenads to this dashing portrait of de Vere instead of ogling over the greatly unbeloved Chandos?
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Lee Durkee (Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint)
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The Books Lucia’s birthday gifts for September 1st: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie 2nd: Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg 3rd: Dogger by Shirley Hughes 4th: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll 5th: Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter 6th: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 7th: The Borrowers by Mary Norton 8th: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett 9th: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 10th: Matilda by Roald Dahl 11th: Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott 12th: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 13th: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 14th: Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman 15th: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters 16th: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 17th: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson 18th: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 19th: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 20th: Passing by Nella Larsen 21st: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 22nd: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 23rd: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell 24th: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie 25th: The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes 26th: Atonement by Ian McEwan 27th: Small Island by Andrea Levy 28th: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 29th: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson 30th: Harvest by Jim Crace 31st: A Secret Garden by Katie Fforde 32nd: Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel From Lucia’s life Bird at My Window by Rosa Guy Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle The Owl Service by Alan Garner The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault Story of O by Pauline Réage Illustrated Peter Pan by Arthur Rackham Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie Marina’s recommendation Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder The book club at September’s house The Color Purple by Alice Walker Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Silas Marner by George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss also mentioned) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith The book club’s birthday books for September’s 34th birthday Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai To Sir, With Love by E. R. Braithwaite Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Stephanie Butland (The Book of Kindness)