It was the scandal of the decade, if not of the twentieth century. The year was 1963, an austere time in England. We were still recovering from the devastation we had suffered during WWII. Rationing had only ended in the late 1950's. It was the height of the Cold War, when spying was rife and the threat of war was imminent, with the outbreak of the Cuban Missile Crisis.


And fear of spies was a reality. Britain was reeling from the revelations that Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were Soviet spies. There was sexual intrigue involving men high in the social scale. A Minister of the Crown; an eminent Harley Street doctor. Sex and lies from those very men that we looked up to. The idea that a British politician was not only cheating on his wife with a call girl and sharing the call girl with a Soviet diplomat, sent the public reeling.


This scandal of sex and betrayal saw the resignation of one Cabinet Minister, the retirement of a Prime Minister and I don’t think I am exaggerating, when I say that the scandal eventually caused the downfall of a government.


The 1960’s was the decade that the publisher Penguin was prosecuted for publishing D.H. Lawrence's racy novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Penguin won the case and was able to publish 200,000 copies as people raced to get their hands on it. The old order was being challenged and a new order was just beginning. The children born just after, and during the war were coming of age. The Beatles still had mop haircuts and had just released “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, Ian Fleming's spy novels had hit the screen starring the very sexy Sean Connery as 007. The newest actors in Britain were not Hollywoodized versions of British men, but actors like Albert Finney and Michael Caine who were working class.


New magazines like “Private Eye” which poked fun at everyone and everything was established. Beyond the Fringe starring Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller hit the West End. And David Frost became a national celebrity hosting the hit TV show That Was the Week that Was (a more topical version of VH-1's Best Week Ever).


Yet for all the changes, Britain was stuck in the 1950's. This was still the era when unmarried girls who found themselves pregnant, were packed off to places where they could have their babies in secret and then give them up for adoption.


And politically things were not good. Although Harold Macmillan had swept into office in 1959 with a majority in the House of Commons, there was discontent in the country. While Japan and Germany had recovered nicely from the war, the economy in Britain was stagnant. There was inflation and labour unrest. Unlike America, with its young, vibrant president, Irish-Catholic, war-hero with a beautiful young wife, and two adorable children, it seemed that politicians in office reflected a by-gone era, the era of Churchill and Lloyd-George, old school politicians.


So at the height of the cold war in the early 60s, as the established order was challenged as never before, Britons paid rapt attention to a sordid little affair which involved a cabinet minister, a showgirl and a Soviet naval attaché. It was an era in which anything was possible and nothing was safe; a time when the established order was being challenged, subverted, and ultimately buried.


Even today, in our peculiar society, we get excited when ministers and other public figures are caught with their pants down. In 1963, the very notion was deeply, deliciously shocking.


It was still mostly a pre-pill, pre-promiscuity age, when unmarried pregnancy was a matter of deep family shame, and back street abortionists thrived. The tabloid newspapers were already brash but not yet sex-crazed, and were by and large polite to politicians. But when the storm broke, it was not simply driven by sex; there was a deep, dark context of rank treachery.


The chief players in the unfolding drama were;


John Profumo - Secretary of State for War, married to the actress Valerie Hobson.
Harold Macmillan aka Supermac - Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Christine Keeler - goodtime girl and model
Mandy Rice-Davies - fellow goodtime girl and model
Stephen Ward - osteopath and panderer
Lord Astor - A member of an old, respected, aristocratic family. He was the owner of Cliveden, a large country house where sexual intrigues took place.


For months, rumours had circulated about the private life of John Dennis Profumo, secretary of state for war. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was a quintessential high Tory who had achieved cabinet rank after serving in a number of junior posts. He and his wife moved effortlessly in the crème of society.


In the deferential spirit of the 1950s, the rumours may have been restricted to salon gossip. Now, in the new age of iconoclasm, the whispers were amplified in the media. “That Was The Week That Was” scored a telling blow with a splendid parody of the old music hall number, “She was Poor but she was Honest”. The words of the new version went: "See him in the House of Commons / Making laws to put the blame / While the object of his passion / Walks the streets to hide her shame."


The "object of his passion" was a young woman whose name is now embedded in British political folklore: the incredibly beautiful Christine Keeler.

Christine Keeler, unlike Profumo, had had an extremely undistinguished life. Born in 1942, she left home at 16 after an unhappy childhood in the Thames Valley, and gravitated to London where she found work of a sort at Murray's cabaret club. There she met and befriended another showgirl, Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies. Soon, both young women had drifted into the racy circle around Stephen Ward, a fashionable West End osteopath and socialite.


Christine’s relationship with Stephen Ward was both torrid and rocky. They broke up several times, but he seemed to exercise an almost mesmeric influence on her, and always she drifted back. Soon both young women were celebrated players, albeit with bit parts, in Ward's sexual circus.


Not all the action was centred on Ward's Wimpole Mews flat, equipped with two-way mirrors and other aids to lubricity. Soon, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies were circulating in more exalted milieu, including Lord Astor's country mansion of Cliveden. It was there that John Profumo first laid eyes on her. A brief but passionate affair ensued, and tongues began to wag.


Even then, it might have been brushed under the carpet in the time honoured English way, but Profumo made a fundamental error: he lied to the House of Commons. In March 1963 he told the chamber that there was "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Christine Keeler. Ten weeks later he appeared before MPs again to say "with deep remorse" that he had misled the House, and would resign.


What brought Profumo down even more than his deceit of the Commons, was the startling revelation that Christine Keeler had also slept with Eugene Ivanov, the naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. It was that detail which captured world attention, notably in the United States, where the FBI compiled a detailed report called Operation Bowtie.


In Britain, Profumo's downfall naturally caused a huge sensation, inflated by the establishment's crude and cruel attempts to find scapegoats for its own embarrassment. As usual, official wrath was turned on those least able to defend themselves. Stephen Ward was prosecuted for living on immoral earnings. On the last day of his trial, he killed himself with an overdose of sleeping tablets.


In his suicide note Stephen Ward wrote; “I feel the day is lost. The ritual sacrifice is demanded, and I cannot face it. I’m sorry to disappoint the vultures”.


Some people think that Stephen Ward’s death is a little too convenient. They believe that he was murdered.


Christine Keeler was also tried and imprisoned on related charges. Mandy Rice-Davies, who escaped prosecution, earned a dubious immortality when, during the Ward trial, she was told that Lord Astor disputed her version of events and replied: "He would, wouldn't he?"


Less than two months after Ward's tragic and mysterious death, an official report was produced by Lord Denning, master of the rolls. It was a hot number: hundreds queued to buy a copy when it was released at midnight. But there were few juicy bits in Denning's findings. He criticised the government for failing to deal with the affair more quickly, but concluded that national security had not been compromised. And, to the dismay of the reading public, he failed to identify the man who, naked except for a mask, had served at Ward's dinner parties. There had been rumours that the "man in a mask" was a cabinet minister but Denning, who interviewed him, denied it.


There it ended, though it never really went away. The 1989 movie, Scandal reignited some of the controversy, and Christine Keeler raked over the embers in her autobiography, “The Truth At Last”, published early in 2001. In it, she revived some of the more startling claims made at the time - though alas she was unable to offer convincing new evidence to back them up.


John Profumo died in 2006. Christine Keeler is now in her 70s. After her prison term, she
repeatedly tried to restart her life, but the scandal continued to hang over her head like a sword of Damocles. She married and divorced twice, and has two sons. Over the years, she's held various jobs as a receptionist, and as a dinner lady in a school in London, all under an assumed name.


Mandy Rice-Davies traded on the notoriety the trial brought her, comparing herself to Nelson's mistress, Lady Hamilton. She married an Israeli businessman, Rafi Shauli, and went on to open a string of successful nightclubs and restaurants in Tel Aviv. The restaurants and nightclubs, which bore her name, were called: Mandy's, “Mandy's Candies” and “Mandy's Singing Bamboo”. Mandy Rice-Davies also parlayed her minor fame into a series of unsuccessful pop singles for the Ember label in the mid-'60s, including “Close Your Eyes” and “You Got What It Takes”. I am sure that I have seen her on television too.


Few attended poor Stephen Ward’s little funeral on that day in August, but a number of leading figures such as the writers Kenneth Tynan and John Osborne clubbed together to send a wreath of a hundred white carnations bearing the message 'To Stephen Ward, Victim of Hypocrisy'.


Check out my own version of Christine Keeler's famous chair pose at Francis Pott's lovely blog...here



This post was prepared using sources including Wikipedia and Derek Brown - 1963: The Profumo Scandal And from what I recall listening to my parent’s conversations about the case. A few years later, when I was 14, I wanted to go to London to train as a fashion model. My father would not let me go, citing Stephen Ward, Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler as his reasons.

Sometimes, something snaps inside our heads. We become disconnected; we can’t find our way. We are lost. We may be confused, babble, see visions. Sometimes, people take us away. The world whispers about us; around us. People say that we are mad.
And it is madness that inhabits the world of Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Not just madness, fear inhabits that world too.


I can’t claim, by a long way, to have read every novel written in the twentieth century, but I’ve read a helluva lot, and I really do believe that Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, published in 1962, is one of the finest. It’s startling in its originality; Kesey’s use of language is stunning in his poetic prose. He twists metaphor until it strains like tortured metal, and threatens to snap, and all the while, instantly, the reader knows exactly what Kesey is talking about. His novel deserves its reputation as a classic work of literature.


The narrative takes place in “the Big Nurse’s” ward in a mental institution. It sounds as if you are in for a tough read, but you’re not. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is funny, Kesey’s sharp sense of humour rescues the book from bleakness.


The novel is also poignant and ultimately heartbreaking.


The two main players in Kesey’s novel are McMurphy and “the Big Nurse;” Nurse Ratched.


Kesey has gravitas. His writing has dignity. Our emotions may be miniscule, set against the great profundities that human beings have to pit themselves against, but any writer who can make us think; “yes, I have felt like that too,” is worthy indeed.


Kesey demonstrates this understanding after McMurphy observes in the group therapy session, how the residents turn against Harding. “Pecking at him, like he was a wounded chicken”, all under the eye of Nurse Ratched and the doctor. McMurphy says that Nurse Ratched is a “Ball breaker” -- she sits with a small smile on her face as Harding is emotionally castrated.


“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is told in the first person, by Chief Bromden. The Chief is a patient on the Big Nurse’s ward. He has been there the longest of all the patients, and despite being considered a hopeless case, he has learnt to carve out a life for himself. He knows how to survive. The staff and patients all think that the Chief is mute; deaf and dumb. He isn’t; he can hear as well as anyone, and if he chose to, he could speak. Through the Chief, readers are treated to a cynical look at society and its rules. He refers to the authority figures in the book as “The Combine”, in reference to the mechanical way they manipulate individuals. The story is really a modern day parable about the abuse of power.



The Chief describes Nurse Ratched;

“Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh coloured enamel, blend of white and cream and baby blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils -- everything working together except the colour on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big womanly breasts on what would otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.”


The Chief introduces us to the ward. We immediately understand that this is a domain of lost souls. People with no power, who at some time in their lives have had their grip on sanity slip, never to regain their footing.


Enter, Randle P. McMurphy.


Faking insanity to get out of prison for a battery charge, McMurphy immediately begins upsetting Nurse Ratched’s routines, embroiling the two in a power struggle. As an upbeat character, McMurphy easily convinces the other patients—including the stuttering Billy Bibbit, the effeminate Dale Harding and the germaphobic George Sorenson—to gamble, to vote to watch the World Series on TV, to take a fishing trip and to start questioning the demands of the hospital staff. McMurphy is a strong, but flawed character; one who, at times, struggles with the expectations he has manipulated and the consequences he has brought about.

McMurphy represents the freedom that the patients have voluntarily given up – and it is McMurphy who shows them how to find the courage to reclaim their place in the world.

When McMurphy first enters the ward, the thing that immediately distinguishes him, aside from his lack of fear, are his jokes. He laughs out loud at everything, and makes fun of everyone. Laughter is very rarely heard in the ward, and by not taking anything too seriously, McMurphy is able to exert power over it. He manages to avoid any sort of insult or invasion by making a joke of it. And laughter is something that men do. McMurphy’s gut wrenching belly laugh is absolutely male. The Chief notices McMurphy’s calloused hands; his sunburnt skin. McMurphy is a man; a concept that the men in the ward have forgotten. Even through the pervasive odour of hospital smells, the stench of incontinence, the Chief scents on McMurphy;

“…the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work.”

McMurphy, having bet the rest of the men that he can get the Big Nurse to crack within a week, makes his first step by the use of a long joke. The Big Nurse is unable to fight back because it takes her by surprise. By making fun of her, he subverts her authority, and eliminates any power she might have over him.

McMurphy tells the other men jokes in an attempt to get them to laugh, but such an act smacks of rebellion, and the other men are unable to accomplish it. Laughter is equated with strength and an ability to not take everything seriously. It also means having an emotional reaction to something that isn't fear, an idea of which the men of the ward are terrified.


When for the first time, the men take part in the joke, pretending to be dangerous mental patients, they frighten the people around them into treating them with respect, giving the men a feeling of power. They become a team against the world, which they always were, but a team with an ability to actively fight back. For the first time, the joke is at the expense of the society that has terrorized them.


McMurphy laughs at seeing the men the way they are, both laughing at them and with them. He is able to survive for so long against the world that has destroyed the rest of them because he can laugh at it. He takes everything seriously by taking nothing seriously. He doesn't deny that there is pain and hardship, but he refuses to let that define and ruin him.

But McMurphy misunderstands the enormity of what he has taken on. He is playing a dangerous game. These men, really are people who are very ill. They are emotionally frail and while McMurphy reminds them of what it is like to have fun, there is danger ahead. And Nurse Ratched is a formidable foe.

The Chief muses;

"I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference.... To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that."



McMurphy slips up and shows the danger of constant jokes. The Big Nurse warns him of the possibility of a lobotomy, but instead of taking it seriously, he turns it into a joke about his testicles. McMurphy has no intention of backing down at this point, but by turning the warning into the joke, he increases the chances of it being acted upon.



Friday is the day that the men go to the X-Ray room to get checked up. While they wait, McMurphy notices another door and asks where it leads. Harding tells him that it goes to the Shock Shop, and explains the theory behind electro-shock therapy. Once again, it is revealed that the Big Nurse has the power to order such treatment as well as lobotomies. McMurphy realizes that it's the system that's behind everything, and tries to explain this to the rest of them; how even if they got rid of the Big Nurse, things wouldn't change, really. The men don't understand, and Harding finally admits that they've noticed that he's stopped fighting against the Nurse. McMurphy agrees, and tells them he realised he had as much to lose as the rest of them. Harding tells him no, McMurphy has more to lose, since all the Acutes are there voluntarily. McMurphy can't believe this, and he starts accosting all of them, until Billy Bibbit breaks down.


"'You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.'"



It’s the beginning of a downward spiralling tragedy, that for the Chief culminates in triumphant liberation, and ends in disaster for others.

McMurphy gets the doctor on his side, and they organise a fishing trip. It’s a chance to remind the men of who they are, outside the confines of the hospital. On the fishing expedition the patients laugh and feel complete humans again. This happens with McMurphy's guidance, his laughter booming in the face of chaos.


But later, all the men who went on the boat trip have to take a special shower, because Nurse Ratched thinks they might have caught some sort of bug. While they're in the shower, the black aides attack George, trying to get him to put on salve. George refuses, because of his neatness obsession and pathological fear of germs. McMurphy steps in to defend him, and he gets in a fight with the aides. The Chief helps throw them off, and the two of them get strapped down and sent up to “Disturbed”.



Things are dangerously out of control for McMurphy. This passage, where they are driving home from the fishing trip, stands out for me. The Chief narrates;

“Then -- as he was talking -- a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy’s face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was only allowed because he figured it’d be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn’t enough time left for something he had to do…While his relaxed, good natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meagre honours -- for all of us to dream ourselves into.”


This is a story of sacrifice. While the Chief and McMurphy are waiting for Electric Shock Treatment, Kesey sprinkles his prose with Christ images.

McMurphy arranges himself willingly on the table in a crucifix; arms outstretched, his ankles clamped together, he’s clamped down at the wrists.

“They put graphite salve on his temples. ‘What is it?’ he says. ‘Conductant.’ the technician says. ‘Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?’”

Electro Shock Treatment is an obscene ritual and Kesey tells it so casually and that’s what makes it so horrifying. It is only when the Chief describes McMurphy’s body arcing, as the volts slam through him, that the reader offers up a silent scream.

“…light arcs across, stiffens him, bridges him up off the table till nothing is down but his wrists and ankles…”

The Chief is brought back to the ward, and the rest of the men greet him like a hero. They ask him all sorts of questions about what's going on with McMurphy, and when he responds, no one thinks it odd that the Chief is talking now.


The Big Nurse sees that McMurphy's legend is growing, and while he's away he's just getting bigger and bigger, so she starts making plans to bring him back down. The men anticipate this, and work out a plan to get McMurphy out of the ward that Saturday, forgetting it's the day that McMurphy has set up for Billy's date with Candy. They tell their plans to McMurphy when he returns to the ward, but he refuses to leave until after that night. He says to consider it his going away party.


McMurphy bribes the night aide, Mr. Turkle, with the promise of “booze and broads“, in order to get him to open up a window that night. Candy is late, but when she arrives, she's got a friend with her, the woman, Sandy, who was supposed to be with her earlier at the boat trip. The group hides from the night supervisor, and proceeds to get drunk on the liquor the women brought with them, along with whatever medication Harding can get out of the cabinet. Billy and Candy eventually sneak off for some privacy, and Harding tries to get McMurphy to leave. McMurphy asks why the others don't come with him, but all of them need a little more time. He asks Harding what made them so scared. Harding isn't able to say, exactly, just that they were beaten down by the rest of the world for the things they did, and who they were, and that they didn't have the strength to fight back. McMurphy says that he's always had people bugging him, and it's never brought him down that much. Harding admits that this is true, but that he's figured out who drives strong people like McMurphy to weakness.


"'Yeah? Not that I'm admitting I'm down that road, but what is this something else?'
'It is us.' He swept his hand about him in a soft white circle and repeated, 'Us.'"



It's five am, and McMurphy decides to get some sleep before leaving. He says goodbye to Harding and the Chief, then settles into bed. All of them fall asleep and don't wake up till the black aides come on the ward at six-thirty.


Harding tries to get McMurphy to leave in the morning, but he claims that he's too drunk to move. When roll call shows that Billy is missing, the aides and the Big Nurse do a room check. They find him and Candy in bed in one of the rooms. Nurse Ratched is shocked, and keeps telling Billy how ashamed she is for him, but Billy doesn't seem to notice, just gets his clothes together and comes out into the hall. He responds to her questions without a stutter. However, the Big Nurse knows what buttons to push in the end. "'What worries me, Billy,' she said- I could hear the change in her voice- 'is how your mother is going to take this.'" Billy immediately panics. He begs Nurse Ratched not to call his mother, and when the nurse refuses, he starts to blame the fact that he was in bed with a woman on everyone else in the room, saying they made him do it. He is taken away to wait alone in the doctor's office.


All the men sit down in the day room, and they tell McMurphy that they don't blame him at all, they know it wasn't his fault. He just relaxes and looks like he's waiting for something. The doctor yells for the nurse from his office, and she and the aides go running. She comes back alone, and speaks directly to McMurphy. She tells him that Billy cut his throat with some instruments in the doctor's desk.


"'First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you're finally satisfied. Playing with human lives- gambling with human lives- as if you thought yourself to be a God!'"


She goes back into her office. The Chief knows that McMurphy is going to do something, and at first he thinks to try and stop it; but then he realises that he can't stop it, because he and the rest of the men of the ward are forcing McMurphy to do it. They force him to get out of his chair and go over to nurses' station. He rips open the Big Nurse's shirt, revealing those too large breasts, and tries to strangle her.

When the doctors and aides rip him off her, he cries out. The Chief describes it as;

“A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.”


McMurphy’s fate is sealed. When he is returned to the ward, he has had a lobotomy. The mythology of McMurphy lives on. The men on the ward discuss whether this ruined spectacle is really him.

“After a minute of silence, Scanlon turned and spat on the floor. ‘Ah what’s the old bitch tryin’ to put over on us anyhow, for craps sake. That ain’t him.’”

“‘Nothing like him,’ Martini said.”

“‘How stupid she think we are?’”

The chief knows it is McMurphy and he tries to think of what McMurphy would have done.

“I was sure of only one thing: he wouldn’t have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.”

Nurse Ratched may think that she has won the game, but the Chief’s final actions before he leaves the ward, make it a hollow victory.


The title of the book is a line from a nursery rhyme.

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.


Chief Bromden's grandmother sang this song to him when he was young, and they had a game about it.

The inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came while working on the night shift (with Gordon Lish) at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital. There, Kesey often spent time talking to the patients, sometimes under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs, with which he had volunteered to experiment. Kesey did not believe that these patients were insane, rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave. Published in 1962, it was an immediate success; in 1963, it was adapted into a successful stage play by Dale Wasserman; in 1975, Miloš Forman directed a screen adaptation, which won the "Big Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director (Forman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman).


Kesey was originally involved in creating the film, but left two weeks into production. He claimed never to have seen the movie because of a dispute over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the film rights. Kesey loathed the fact that, unlike the book, the film was not narrated by the Chief Bromden character, and he disagreed with Jack Nicholson being cast as Randle McMurphy (he wanted Gene Hackman). Despite this, Faye Kesey has stated that Ken was generally supportive of the film and was pleased that it was made.

These days, we’re used to the term “moral panic”. But in case you haven’t come across it it’s “an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.” We’ve seen it happen in our own times; the threat of immigrants, the threat of asylum seekers, the threat of paedophiles, homophobia…the threat of homosexuals. At some point in our present, and recent past, all of these “folk devils,” have been seen as a threat to our social order.


And fear appears to be the catalyst. The status quo is sensitive and protective of itself. The status quo is suspicious of difference; it doesn’t like criticism. It doesn’t like change.


Rewind the clock back to Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s and we have the anti-Semitism which resulted in the holocaust and the horrors of the gas chambers; resentment against the Jews had been simmering for centuries. According to popular thinking at the time, the Jews were responsible for everything that was wrong in Germany. Failure to win the First World War was the catalyst for the horrors that followed. Germany had been demoralized once too often and it was the Jews’ fault.


“Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tensions and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its centre is taboo. The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.”
Stanley Cohen


I think that probably the earliest example of a moral panic is the 16th century witch hunt.


“Before 1750, they were legally sanctioned and involved official witchcraft trials. The classical period of witch hunts in Europe, and North America, falls into the Early Modern period of about 1480 – 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the 30 Years’ War. The trials resulted in an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 executions.”

WIKI

It appears not to matter whether they fall into a time of plenty, or a time of frugality, a society can be susceptible to a moral panic at any time. It’s 1918, the final year of World War I and there was an atmosphere of gloom throughout England. The sight of so many men with grotesque wounds was a dispiriting reminder of a war that seemed to have no end. And the mood was no better in the trenches. Britain was not doing well. The German troops were flourishing.


Some wondered why we seemed incapable of victory. Might it somehow be our own fault? Could there be something rotten at the heart of the British ruling class? One man certainly though so. The maverick MP, Noel Pemberton-Billing.


Billing was a colourful self publicist, who believed that Britain was being sabotaged by thousands of perverts in the pay of the Hun. He alleged that powerful figures in Britain had been corrupted by perverted German spies.


“They have used,” he claimed. “Practices that all decent men had thought had perished at Sodom and Lesbia.”


These astonishing allegations found a ready audience by a people frustrated by their failure to win the war. They would also land him in court.


On the morning of 29th May 1918, a great crowd gather at the Old Bailey, for what promised to be the most sensational court case in Britain for many years. It was a newspaper man’s dream and it involved an exotic dancer, high politics, enemy spies and sexual deviancy. It threatened to blow the lid off the British Establishment.


According to Billing, 47,000 British people had been corrupted. Their names had been written in a secret dossier which Billing called “the black book”. He claimed that the black book held the names of Cabinet Ministers, Privy Counsellors, Newspaper Proprietors, even members of the King’s own Household. And he said that the wives of senior public figures were in especial danger because in the throes of lesbian ecstasy, the most sacred secrets of the state were betrayed.


So where were these degenerate traitors to be found? At the theatre of course! Specifically at a private production of Oscar Wilde’s banned play, “Salome” starring the voluptuous actress Maud Allan.


In an article entitled, “the Cult of the Clitoris”, Billing asserted that the actress was having an affair with Margot Asquith, wife of the former Prime Minister.


Billing was charged with Criminal Libel.


Conducting his own defense, he used his trial as a platform to reveal to the nation how far the moral rot had spread. He called, as a witness, a woman who claimed to have seen the black book, listing all the people who had been corrupted by the filthy German agents.


“Is Mrs Asquith’s name in the book?” he asked.

“Yes,” the witness replied enthusiastically
. “It is!”

“Is Mr Asquith’s name in the book?”

“It is!” she responded.

And Billing pointed to the judge. “Is the Judge’s name in the book?”

“It is!” she screamed.


There was complete chaos in the Court. It was all nonsense of course, but Mr Justice Darling was out of his depth and rapidly lost control of proceedings. This absurd trial lasted for 6 days. On 4th June 1918 the Jury returned their verdict. Pemberton-Billing was not guilty of Libel. He left the court to thunderous applause and when he got onto the street outside the Old Bailey his supporters threw flowers at his feet.


And Pemberton-Billing’s ridiculous rantings had struck a chord -- people were worried. And at this stage of the war there was much to be worried about. The balance of power was with Germany.



(This blog post has been put together using sources from the Web and the BBC/Open University documentary series, Britain’s Great War, presented by Jeremy Paxman. If you are in the UK and have access to BBC IPlayer you will find the series there.)

My Experience with Erotica Writers on Social Media


As a blogger I have been using social media for almost half of a decade. I have crossed paths with various bloggers who cover different subject matter utilizing various styles.


Lately, I have worked my way in with any number of erotica writers on Twitter. This is interesting to me because although I have written about subjects that do include human sexuality, I have never explored erotica as a genre.


Many of these erotica writers are very talented and produce not only tantalizing tales but also include posts about sexual health, sexually transmitted diseases, and social commentary related to sexuality.
It seems to me, as an outsider on the subject of erotica, that the challenge for many of these authors and bloggers is how to connect with a wider group of potential readers who are not necessarily seeking out sexual stimulation. Many of these potential readers may not realize that the erotica genre encompasses a great deal of information and displays a wealth of writing skills worth perusing. One of the hurdles attributed to this disconnect is the word “porn.”


It has been said that one man’s music is another man’s noise. Much the same can be said about erotica and pornography.


Erotica to me, in the classic interpretation of Eros in regard to love or desire, is an artistic depiction of human sexuality that celebrates the instinctual sexual attraction we all share. Pornography is a more graphic and in your face (no pun intended) representation of explicit sex acts. It should be worth noting that some people recognize little distinction between erotica and porn.


Andy Warhol once infamously stated that, “Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.” Much has been inferred by what he may have meant by this but for me the take away is simple.


We live in a society that represents an odd dichotomy in regard to sex. We both celebrate and suppress sexuality. In this process sexuality becomes more than what it really is. At its core sexuality is just another natural part of life.


We certainly enjoy cooking and trying new recipes to help us enjoy eating. A little spice here and there adds zest to meals we have eaten a hundred times before. In the same vein sometimes a relationship needs a little zing.


For example, within the context of an adult consensual relationship where trust and respect abound, a woman may enjoy submitting to a bad boy and a man may enjoy the shaky breath of fear coming out of his damsel in distress. For the less adventurous the old fashioned game of the cable guy visiting the lonely wife may be in order. Erotica can help conjure up ideas and fantasies for many couples. Good sex, as they say and I believe that it is true, is largely mental.


Porn may have its place too. Just about everybody at one time or another has checked out porn. My only caution with porn, as with so many other things in life including eating and drinking, is to keep it in moderation. For too many people porn is becoming a replacement for real sex. Just as socially we often tweet people on the other side of the world but may not know the name of our next-door neighbor, technology is providing better and increasingly interactive virtual realities where we can have sex but is also creating a situation where we can forget about how to deal with real human relationships.


My experience with erotica specifically on social media would lead me to believe that the human experience in regard to erotic content should be presented in a creative and positive way. I believe there are a fair number of potential readers out there who could be brought into the erotica genre never before having considered it.


Again, erotica is not my forte. But to reach fuddy-duddies like me I would recommend these few suggestions.


Keep avatars and bios modest. If your avatar is a picture of human genitalia I will not follow you. If your bio is an exhibition of four letter words in regard to your sexual exploits I will not follow you. Many of my followers are professional writers and marketers who do not expect a picture of a woman with a penis jammed into every orifice of her body showing up in my timeline.


Do not lead with posts that are designed to shock. People who are seeking jaw-dropping material will find it on your site if you decide to offer it. The last thing you want to do is scare away a somewhat potentially interested reader.


Appeal to women. A set of breasts crammed into an avatar will attract men but not necessarily the best followers. Where women go men will follow. It doesn’t necessarily work the other way around. My years around the nightclub industry taught me that male review nights attracting women were a lot more fun to work than female review nights attracting men. Women just don’t care about a bunch of horny guys coming out to watch strippers. That is the whole point of Lady’s Night and not Men’s Night. If women are tweeting about you, male followers will also appear and those men will be more interested in your content.


Erotica at its best should enhance the way people enjoy love and sexuality. Erotica should be about people and the human experience. Erotica should put a naughty smile on your face as much as a warm spot in your jeans.




Thought provoking stuff this week from Billy Dees. I think that all writers, and readers of the erotica genre should read this. Billy contacted me on Twitter, a while ago -- expressing much of what he says here about the erotica genre – it is to Billy’s talent as a writer that he managed to convey, very succinctly, his complex ideas in a Tweet. (To those of you who don’t understand Twitter, that’s a message in only 140 characters.) I asked Billy if he would write something for my blog and here it is.

Billy can be found at his journal and on Twitter @billydees

“Sauveur à l'hostie et au calice (101 x 63 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Budapest” de Juan de Juanes (1523 – 1579).



The Body of Christ
A short story by
Jan Vander Laenen


"Ce qu'il avait fait de mieux
contre l'infâme de M. de Voltaire,
ç'avait e'te' un jour
dame! on fait ce qu'on peut-
de donner un paquet d'hosties a' des cochons!"

(Barbey d'AUREVILLY, A un dîner d'Athe'es)


The number of communion wafers that I have ever partaken of must be roughly the same as the number of men with whom I have hitherto made homosexual love, or so I concluded last summer. It was the eve of World Gay Pride in Rome, and I lay on the bed in my hotel room, somewhere in the district of the Campo dei Fiori, thinking about my own little life in general and the unusual event of the previous day in particular.
My own little life ­ I am now forty ­ can be fairly schematically split into two halves.
The first half was characterised by a very middle-class, Catholic education in a small village in the Kempen region and a boarding school near fascist Antwerp. From age 6 to age 20, about twice a week I attended Mass there and consumed a Body of Christ, which with a little arithmetic adds up to somthing like 1,456 communion wafers.

Add to that a conservative fifty of these sacred items that I, together with other blasphemious pals, went one night and pinched from the pyx in the chapel in order to supplement our poor boarding-school fare, and we reach the round sum of 1,500. During the second half of my life, I have virtually entirely lost my interest in the Body of Christ, although I have nonetheless developed a most overwhelming passion for the bodies of less holy men.

Dwelling on this passion here is of little profit: I have probably experienced a career in love similar to that of a good many of my libertine brothers and it therefore seems to me acceptable to estimate the number of bedmates I have had at something like fifteen hundred.

And whilst in virtually all Catholic regions the Body of Christ has pretty much the same taste and consistency and in principle can only be taken in a church and in the context of the celebration of the Eucharist, the range of tastes of the bodies of other men and the places where one might sample them are naturally much more extensive and varied. The same goes for the emotions that go hand in hand with performance of the two aforementioned activities.

To the best of my recollection, I have always downed my communion wafers somewhat indifferently, or perhaps with a hint of devotion, in short a very nondescript emotion in comparison with the feelings of passion, lust, loving and subservience that my many horseplay partners have been able to wrest from me.

So much for that: these mullings are my foreword to the unusual event that happened to me last summer. I was strolling through the centre of the Eternal City and having walked past twenty-or-so monuments without regard, I was suddenly taken by an unexpected mood of devotion.

Yes, I wanted to confess, I wanted to pray to God and the Holy Virgin and to have myself cleansed by imbibing a Body of Christ. Happily, Rome ­ as everybody knows ­is just riddled with basilicas, churches and chapels, and about a hundred yards up the street I located a small, Baroque house of God in which I could assuage my religious hunger.

And so I set foot into the little church, made the sign of the cross with a few drops of holy water and went and sat on a pew at the back, as the Mass had started. And after first casting my gaze over the interior's sculptures and paintings, my eye suddenly fell on the priest, who was just magicking a chalice of wine into the Blood of Christ. He wore a chasuble. He had a full beard and a serious expression. I reckoned he was about forty. He struck me as familiar, although at that moment I could not remember at all where I might ever have met the man, and I immediately then dismissed this thought as one of those crazy notions that had frequently occurred to me in recent times.

Ten or so minutes later, as I was shuffling up the queue for my portion of Holy Bread, however, I got a clearer look at the man, and as I eventually stood plum in front of him, looked at him and stuck my tongue out, I thought I could read something akin to amazement in his eyes. Indeed, he was staring at me in wonder, wafer in hand, and for a long moment he stood in this position, as though turned to stone.
'Hello, Jan, how's things?' he eventually said to me in Dutch, at which he gathered himself, murmured 'body of Christ' and with trembling hand laid the wafer on my tongue.

I went and drank a Campari after the Mass, and it was at the pavement cafe that, having racked my brains for ten minutes that the priests' name suddenly dawned on me: Paul Van Gelder.

Well I never, Paul Van Gelder, it was a long time ago, in Brussels, both of us twenty and gay and each not daring to admit it to the other. And all the trouble we went to all those evenings in the student bars round Sint-Gorik's Square to avoid the subject, whilst we were both head over heels in love with one another.

And so on until that evening, that dark November night when you stood unexpected before the door of my study. I let you in, you took me in your arms and changed my mind with a French kiss as passionate as it was long. After this, you took your leave of me and with wavering voice told me that you would be going away from Brussels the next day to start training as a priest.

And so, Paul Van Gelder, you really did become a priest and, as fate had it, twenty years later our paths momentarily crossed again, in Rome, and in a church to boot, in the Holy Year and the day before World Gay Pride. Thanks, Paul Van Gelder, you gave me the most cleansing Body of Christ ever in my sinful existence.

Jan Vander Laenen



“Matthew 26:26-28: Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”


"Transubstantiation" is the official Roman Catholic concept referring to the change that takes place during the sacrament of Holy Communion (Eucharist). This change involves the substances of bread and wine being turned miraculously into the substance of Christ himself. The underlying essence of these elements is changed, and they retain only the appearance, taste, and texture of bread and wine. Catholic doctrine holds that the Godhead is indivisible, so every particle or drop thus changed is wholly identical in substance with the divinity, body, and blood of the Saviour.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci”

John Keats

The painting is by Frank Dicksee; the same theme & title.




There must be a group for men like me, at odds with social convention but at peace with my own nature. "Hi, I'm Ed and I am a spanked husband." Chairs in a circle, maybe a box of tissues set on the floor. With any luck, several guys are there with me both to tell their stories and tell me they know where I am coming from. I have yet to find such a collective of submissive odd fellows but if I ever do, I will follow my terse introduction with a narrative that, outside that circle of acceptance and shared vulnerability, would expose me to a hail of derision.


I was with Lisa for nearly twenty years, from dating and engagement to estrangement and now divorce. My personal story, however, is but indicative of the shifting dynamics of mating and relating that already have existed in a substratum of Western society for a very long time. Today, the world speaks of Empowered Women. In private, in shadowy precincts of swooning fetishes and closely guarded secrets among countless couples burrowed in the aggregate intimacy of the race, there are and ever will be dominant ladies and the submissive males under their feet. Thus, Lisa and Ed. For that matter, there are your neighbors and friends; bosses and co-workers and for God's sake, a handful of your relatives too.


About myself and my union with a woman whom I have loved for over half my life, I will share some stories and then offer a few tentative conclusions about where I suspect evolution is pushing women and men; that is, awkwardly and fractiously toward a realignment of gender roles in the 21st Century. Believing that experience is the best teacher and knowing how much people enjoy reading erotic details of other's lives, let me elaborate on my own transformation from self-indulgent jerk to disciplined husband.


Being male, there is a primal fact that permits no rebuttal: I think with my penis. That makes me like almost every other male, naturally. But not every man is joined to a woman who consistently lays the law down with a practiced poise so effective that the marriage itself reflects the exercise of her will. Here is a perfect example from our early days. Before our engagement, I used to accompany Lisa to the local fashion mall whenever she liked because there were sure to be plenty of young female employees wearing sexy outfits. I wanted all of them. Don't get me wrong here because I was already in love with Lisa. My cock nevertheless had not yet signed off on my future plans. I flirted intensely with all manner of attractive females when opportunities arose. Occasionally, I would seek out a certain statuesque blonde at a large department store, sidling up to whatever counter she was working that day. I really looked forward to seeing her and talking breezily about most anything, my day at work or some car I wanted, you name it. All to hold her attention and invite her lovely gaze. Her makeup was immaculately matched to her shoulder-length hair and I used to think there was an artist inside, showing her off to the world. Moreover, she seemed to relish the attention as much as I loved lavishing it on her! One night, I thought the coast was clear while Lisa was trying on dresses in a store two doors down across the wide and crowded walkway. I was making pretty good time with this young lady, I figured and while chatting her up, fantasized about how I could arrange a rendezvous. Then Lisa walked up quietly behind me. I watched the face of my luscious Amazon flush crimson as she averted her eyes and got suddenly very busy with stocking merchandise. It was the sum of all fears for a roué. Busted! Lisa had chided me repeatedly about conversing with women whom we did not know mutually. I could do nothing now but beg the question of my guilt. "Oh, hi honey. I was just..." That is as far as I got. "Go out to the car," Lisa commanded coolly. I started to protest that I didn't mean any harm. An obvious lie. "What did I just tell you?" Lisa was in no mood for games so I replied with a feeble "Yeah, OK. Sure," and did as I was told. It was maybe another 15 minutes before Lisa came out, took the keys away from me and drove us to her home silently. I don't know to this day what she told my alluring blonde acquaintance but never again did the two of us flirt or even acknowledge each other though Lisa and I still shop there often. When we got home, Lisa told me that my days as a skirt-chasing dog were over. She had trusted me on my own and I had let her down, badly. Seeing the dire straits I was in, I clumsily confessed to my treachery and apologized profusely while she sat on the couch, listening with an implacable scowl.


Clearly I was only digging myself in deeper. "Are you through?" I was definitely through, I thought. Finished. Lisa straightened herself and pulled up her skirt to form a straight line across her thighs. "You have just earned yourself a good spanking," she declared. "Take your pants down." I was not about to refuse and lose Lisa. I loved her, more so than any woman before and couldn't imagine myself considering marriage to another lady. This was a make-or-break moment. So I unbuckled my belt and dropped my pants to the floor. She reached out, grabbed my hand and pulled me across her lap. "You know damned well you have this coming," she said as she took down my boxers and strategically positioned my bottom so that it rose like a hillock over her stockinged knee. Lisa used a stern hand on me, cupped for a punishing resonance that soon brought intense heat and a ruby red blush to all four of my cheeks. In subsequent spankings, Lisa discovered the effect her hairbrush had both on my bare behind and on my behavior. Still, her point was soundly made that first time. She probably delivered about a hundred swats to each cheek, alternating with authority and scolding me throughout. I was reduced to tears, as much from shame and humiliation as from the sharp sting applied with building intensity. Afterward, I was banished to a corner of her living room with my pants all the way off, standing there for an hour while Lisa poured a glass of wine and admired her handiwork.


Thereafter, punishment spankings became the norm for me as Lisa evaluated then fulfilled my deep need for discipline. Her sturdy wooden hairbrush was always close at hand and worked wonders in reshaping my attitudes in our relationship and conduct outside the home, where by the way I was not immune from being turned over her knee! If I acted up, my pants came down even if that meant hauling me into an empty family rest room in a public venue. Lisa was my loving wife but a consistently strict and skilled disciplinarian. I must have divined this side of her nature when courting her. She was always confident and assertive from the beginning. What I did not anticipate was how much I would come to crave the control Lisa exerted over me. I did all that I could to maintain her trust in me because it was a long way to go winning it back after obvious flirtations and The Mall Incident. When I failed her in any significant way, particularly by disrespecting her feminine authority, Lisa exercised her matriarchal marital right to take my pants down (or make me do it for her to reinforce my submission) and administer the old-fashioned spanking we both knew I had earned. It was characteristic of a comprehensive lifestyle that served us well for years. Femdom spanking guided our marriage into a sexual wilderness.


END OF PART ONE

The painting La Belle Dame sans Merci (The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy) is by Frank Dicksee 1901
Oil on canvas.
Can be seen at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (UK)

Paedophilia isn’t something I spend a great deal of time thinking about. I know that some people do. They probably have kids and grandkids, so I suppose they are bound to. I know when I was a kid, my mum always told me that if a strange man tried to talk to me, then I should run and find a lady and tell her. Then along came Myra Hindley, in the 1960’s, and more recently, Vanessa George.


I guess my mum was naïve, I am sure that there have always been predatory women around. You just don’t hear about them very often. But both women have become archetypes of evil, because they stepped out of the traditional role of women as nurturers, instead embracing, and seemingly relishing, doing harm to children.



It’s not good enough to say that both women were under the influence of charismatic men. They knew right from wrong. It seems that some dark, latent, fascination was drawn from them, by the compelling influence of the men who came into their lives. Without those men, maybe the two women would have led quiet suburban lives; but we just don’t know.


Myra Hindley was working quietly in an office, in the 1960’s when she met Ian Brady. He introduced her to the writings of the Marquis de Sade and Adolf Hitler. They were lovers, but lovers who embarked on a spree of rape and murder. Myra’s role was to lure and abduct. Ian Brady raped then murdered the children that she procured for him. He sucked the life out of them like a greedy vampire. They buried their poor little violated remains on bleak Saddleworth Moor.



In 2009, Vanessa George, a mother of two, and a worker in a children’s nursery, appeared in court, having been charged with seven offences, including two of sexual assault by penetration and two of sexual assault by touching children in her care. She was also charged with making, possessing and distributing indecent images of children. Vanessa George, 39, was arrested after indecent images of children taken at Little Ted’s Day Nursery in Plymouth, were found on a computer disc seized by police from a suspected paedophile in Manchester. Police said that the photographs included pictures of children’s torsos taken on a camera phone at the nursery, where Vanessa George had worked for the past two years.


So far, none of the children has been identified, and the officer leading the investigation said that some of them might never be. Parents of the 64 children, aged between 2 and 5, have been asked to complete a questionnaire and list any features that could help to identify individual children from the images.



Russ Middleton, the head of Plymouth CID, said: “At this time we have been unable to identify any images of individual children and it is right to say some images may never be identified.” The number of photographs being examined by the computer experts could eventually run into thousands, Mr Middleton said, though he could not say how many had been taken in the nursery.



He added: “We have specially trained officers looking at the images. We have a large number taken from laptops and PCs but the starting point was from a camera phone. Some of these images were clearly taken inside the nursery but it is impossible to say where others were taken.”


Vanessa George’s arrest followed that of Colin Blanchard, who appeared at Trafford Magistrates’ Court charged with possessing and distributing indecent images.


Officers searched a caravan that Mrs George owns at Harlyn Bay near Padstow, Cornwall, in addition to the family home in the Efford area of Plymouth. Police said that her husband, Andrew, and two teenage children had been taken into “protective care”.


Police will be speaking to the nursery’s 15 other members of staff but say they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the investigation.”


Vanessa George still refuses to say which children she abused.


Paedophilia isn’t a topic that sits easily with writers. Perhaps there is a fear of being identified, associated with the crime, let alone the idea of finding a someone to publish it. But a paedophile with a female accomplice? Myra Hindley had Ian Brady, Vanessa George’s mentor was Colin Blanchard.

From Wiki

Then there is also the case of “Marc Dutroux a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of havingkidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls during 1995 and 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was arrested in 1996 and has been in prison ever since. His widely publicised trial took place in 2004. He married at the age of 19 and fathered two children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1983. By then he already had had an affair with Michelle Martin. They would eventually have three children together, and married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, also while in prison."


Michelle Martin was complicit and indulged in Dutroux’ atrocities.


Henry James anticipates this type of insidious, dark exchange in 1898, with his novella, “The Turn of the Screw”.


“The Turn of the Screw”, is essentially a ghost story. The subtle indications of paedophilia are there, but in a more “creeping up behind you”, dark manner than in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”, which tackles it head on.


A young governess, is sent to a country house to take care of two orphans, Miles, aged ten, and Flora, aged eight. Soon after her arrival, Miles is expelled from boarding school. Although charmed by her young charge, she secretly fears there are ominous reasons behind his expulsion.


With Miles back at home, the governess starts noticing ethereal figures roaming the estate's grounds. Desperate to learn more about these sinister sightings she discovers that the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of her predecessor, Miss Jessel, hold grim implications for herself.


As she becomes increasingly fearful that malevolent forces are stalking the children the governess is determined to save them, risking herself and her sanity in the process.


Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are the bad guys in “The Turn of the Screw”.


Peter Quint had been a servant at the house at Bly; Miss Jessel was the children’s previous governess. They had an intense erotic interest in one another. Both are now dead; Peter Quint in some sort of brawl. Miss Jessel, under strange circumstances, after she left Bly.


It is much more than a ghost story, “The Turn of the Screw”, is an enthusiastic romance of children and sex. The implication that Miles, the young ward of an impressionable governess, is sexually aware, sexually experienced, and sexually hungry has its draw. Titillating in its inappropriateness, the novel suggests through metaphor and silences what was, and still is, unmentionable.



A dialogue between the narrator and the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, emphasises this;
Mrs Grose says that she was afraid of Peter Quint. “I daresay I was wrong, but, really I was very afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of the things that man could do. Quint was so clever -- he was so deep.”
I took this in still more than, probably I showed. “You weren’t afraid of anything else? Not of his effect --?”
“His effect?” she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I faltered.
“On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.”


So the new governess, has strong suspicions that Peter Quint has corrupted young Miles, in addition to seducing and corrupting Miss Jessel.


Peter Quint and Miss Jessel haunt the house at Bly, they also haunt the children’s new governess. It seems that even in death the ghosts want the children for themselves.


When Mrs Grose and the narrator next converse they speak of the children as their darlings, their little dears. But Quint and Jessel, even as ghosts are still a threat. They narrator is certain that Quint and Jessel want to possess the children.


“They’re not mine -- they’re not ours. They’re his and hers!”
“Quint’s and that woman’s?”
“Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get them.”


Poet and literary critic Craig Raine in his essay on Sex in nineteenth-century literature states quite categorically his belief that Victorian readers would have identified the two ghosts as child-molesters.


Mrs Grose tells the governess about Quint’s relationship with Miles;
“It was Quint’s own fancy. To play, with him I mean -- to spoil him.” She paused a moment; then she added; “Quint was much too free.”


Psychoanalytically, the governess, who is alluded to as being sexually inexperienced and sexually repressed, has attached the image of raw, animalistic sexuality with the ghost of Peter Quint, which explains why she is fervent in her efforts to keep this ghost away from the young and impressionable Miles. The housekeeper, Mrs Grose, early in the novel, implies that Peter Quint, who acted as master of the house at times, and the young Miles may have engaged in some man-boy intimate contact, and thus the strange behaviour of Miles can be read in this manner.


Quint represents a scary threat: sex. We know that he seduced the unfortunate Miss Jessel; Quint is a destroyer of young ladies, and that he spent far too much time alone with young Miles. Quint is described as handsome but dastardly, and he is seductive and frightening in equal measure. Basically, Peter Quint stands for everything the Governess is afraid of, and this sense of menace is his most distinguishing characteristic.


The narrator tells Mrs Grose about the ghostly vision that she’d had of Miss Jessel.
She describes her as “handsome, but infamous.”
Mrs Grose replies; “Miss Jessel was infamous…they were both infamous.”


But what is it that the governess is so afraid of? It seems that her entire focus is on the “corruption” of the children -- she is certain that they were corrupted by Quint and Jessel when they were alive and that they continue to be corrupted now that they are ghosts. Before she even knows about Quint, the governess guesses that Miles has been accused of corrupting other children. Although corruption is a euphemism that permits the governess to be vague about what she means, the clear implication is that corruption means exposure to the knowledge of sex. For the governess, the children’s exposure to the knowledge of sex is a far more terrifying concept than confronting the living dead, or of being killed.


In the final chapter, Miles tells the narrator the reason he was expelled from school.


“I said things.”

When asked how many boys he had “said things” to, he replies;

“No -- only a few. Those I liked.”

Then later:
“…they must have repeated them. To those they liked.”

The narrator asks; “What were these things?”


Events take over and we never find out for sure. Although we share the narrator’s suspicions.

Consequently, her attempt to save the children takes the form of a relentless quest to find out what they know -- to make them confess, rather than predict what may happen to them in the future. Her fear of innocence being corrupted seems to be a big part of the reason she approaches the problem indirectly -- it’s not just that the ghosts are unmentionable, but that what the ghosts have said to them or introduced them to that is unspeakable.


But what the hell is going on with this current governess? She is the narrator and we only ever see things from her point of view. Is she reliable? Can the reader trust her? At times her narration seems to border on the hysterical. She describes the children as “little dears”. “Our sweet darlings”. But just pages later, she hints that they are duplicitous; colluding with the ghosts. And what about her own relationship with the children, especially Miles? On their walk to the church, their dialogue reads like an adult flirtation.


“I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation.”


Then later, the narrator is so overwhelmed, she cannot bring herself to follow Miles into the church.


“…it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew; he would be so much more sure than ever, to pass his arm into mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him.”


Let’s not forget that Miles is a ten year old boy and the governess is a woman in her twenties. Does she have an infatuation with Miles? She speaks of their relationship as if she is violently, sexually attracted to him. Is she as guilty in her secret thoughts of the sin that she condemns Quint and Jessel for? Or maybe she is just flustered around males; she is seduced by Miles -- she continually tells us of his goodness; but it is plain that he makes her nervous. She has certainly been attracted to Miles’ uncle, when he interviewed her for the position of governess in Harley Street. And Peter Quint’s raw, animalistic sexuality terrifies her. It’s as if she can scent Quint’s musky, relentless, sexual arousal. Quint is primal, feral. He takes what he wants.


Henry James clearly knew what he was doing, when he created his characters and this malevolent situation. Never is he explicit, he lets his words work on us, like burrowing maggots. What we, as readers can imagine is vastly more frightening and haunting than what he, the author, could have ever committed to the page.


Perhaps James is asking us to consider; what is the source of evil? We know that evil exists, but where does it come from? He "turns the screw" on the conventional notion of evil, by introducing the innocence of children.


Miss Jessel, Myra Hindley, Vanessa George, Michelle Martin. What are we to make of them?


Paedophilia is silenced. Okay, these days we talk a lot about it. We babble and say nothing. When we try for a constructive dialogue, we end up screaming at each other. We panic.


What is less admissible, more unspeakable than paedophilia? And what then is more silenced than female paedophilia?

To all males that willingly, even eagerly, submit to the dominance of the female, there comes a moment in the life of the id when they, that is, WE, fantasize about a society run by alluring, erotically sophisticated and completely indomitable women. I have no doubt that there are households around the globe where the functional equivalent already exists. For the rest of men, this ultimate state of servitude remains a steamy urge nursed in private.


Perhaps more articulately than any other contemporary female erotica writer I have read, billierosie has fashioned in tight prose just such a realm. Read
her story, Rebellious Slave and you will be swept away by a tide of lust and psychological surrender to a secret society where women rule men with a will and creative genius designed to ensure that Nature is guaranteed to have Her way over vain men who in a more conventional world, hold the illusion of the upper hand.



The plot turns on what has become of Reuben, a natural submissive whose wandering eyes have betrayed him and set him on the path of ruin. But the prospect of calamity does not threaten only this lone weak male; a breach of order in The Coterie might expose the secret subculture to the enmity of the outside world. This, determines Mistress Claudia, ruler of the sect, cannot be left to chance.


In her stern elegance, with European manners and an iron will, Mistress Claudia is native to rulership over any man and fit to raise a generation of dominant women whose long training will shift the balance of power between the genders. She is coolly forceful and strategically brilliant. And she is as revered by her chosen pupils as she is feared by the men whose destinies she shapes with her confident hands and regal words. Her path of conquest is established, following a centuries-old tradition, a lineage of female supremacy that will not be unraveled over a meaningless tryst.

Then there is Melissa, Reuben's wife and a favorite in the court of Claudia. Her story, the fate of the hapless Reuben and the future of The Coterie are interwoven shrewdly by the writer. Raw eroticism is on display too as this story unfolds. The weakness that short-circuits the male mind and goads his libido into fatal mistakes is stripped bare in a seductive narrative that reveals the feverish tension between the sexes. Melissa holds a lot of promise as a dominatrix; Mistress Claudia would not waste her valuable time on a foolish girl, a poseur. But her young charge has erred badly and the implications are ominous for everyone. Bad judgment leads to bad behavior and soon, the damage is done. But is it irreparable? At Coterie HQ, the doyenne of female domination anticipates the threat and responds with her creative and uncompromising will.

Rebellious Slave is a story of the world as countless men and women already feel it in their loins. For them, it is real enough.



Rebellious Slave is at Amazon US and at Amazon UK as Kindle e-reads.

In 1953, the police entered number 10 Rillington Place in London. It was a house of horrors. The scene of 8 horrific murders. The man believed to be responsible for these brutal killings was John Reginald Christie. How was it that a decade of destruction went undetected and how was Christie able to frame one of his neighbours, Timothy Evans, for a murder he didn’t commit?




During the 1940s and 1950s Christie gained the trust of vulnerable women and exploited that trust to sexually abuse, then kill them. He hid their bodies in his house.


How did he get away with it and why wasn’t he brought to justice earlier?


Christie was born in Halifax in 1899. One of 7 children, he was the youngest male in what was a largely female household and he resented the fact that the girls had power over him. It made him crave the opportunity for authority.


As a child, Christie joined the scouts and he sang in the choir. When he joined the scouts, he had a uniform which he wore all the time, even though he wasn’t supposed to. It gave him authority; it gave him a role to play.




Women played an important role in Christie’s life. One of his first teenage sexual experiences is believed to have made a significant impact on the way he viewed the opposite sex. The girl he went with was slightly more experienced and he wasn’t able to have sex with her.


Of course, she told her friends, who told their friends and his name became “can’t do it Christie” or “Reggie no dick.” Christie was humiliated in his small community. These early problems with women were to haunt him all his life and were to play a pivotal role in Christie becoming a serial killer and nechrophiliac. He had impotence problems, certainly when he was with a woman who had power over him; the power that came from her sex, her gender. And that was a pattern for the way that Christie was to behave later with the women that he killed.




On leaving school, Christie worked as a cinema operator and then he found work with the Post Office as a postman. When he was 21 he met Ethel Waddington. She was plain and homely. They married and the marriage appeared to be happy for a while. They were seen as a respectable married couple. But they had their problems. He was to admit later that sex was always sporadic; there was no possibility of children. During his job as a postman, Christie began to steal postal orders. When he was found out, he went to prison for a while. His image of respectability began to crumble.



On his release from prison he separated from Ethel and travelled to London. He became addicted to the seedier sides of life. For a 10 year period Christie existed in a twilight zone, where he lived within the criminal world, visiting prostitutes, mixing with low life; having a job here, losing a job there. He had no particular home; he drifted, going into prison 3 or 4 times.



By the end of World War 2, Christie decided he wanted respectability. He persuaded Ethel to return to him and they relocated to London’s Notting Hill. They moved into a small flat at 10 Rillington Place. Here, nobody knew of Christie’s criminal past and he set about to establish himself as a respected member of the community.


He saw an advertisement in the newspaper for the British Reserve. He applied, not mentioning his previous convictions. No one checked and Christie, the criminal was suddenly in uniform; he was the symbol of all that is good and he was on the right side of the law. And being a Special Constable, gave him further opportunities to meet and engage with people; specifically young women. He was so tenacious about his role that the neighbours described him as; “the Himmler of Rillington Place.” Christie’s position gave him power over the community and he exploited it. If prostitutes gave him free entertainment, he turned a blind eye to their soliciting.



Rillington Place was in a poor neighbourhood, but it was in a perfect position for, the now respectable Christie, to continue with his seedier pastime. Prostitution was a big problem. By the end of the war many women had lost husbands and boyfriends, so there were a lot of women with no men to support a family. And the only way they could earn a living was prostitution.




With no contraception and no legal abortion many of the women found themselves with unwanted pregnancies. Christie and Ethel capitalised on this and performed illegal abortions in their kitchen. Ethel would perform the abortion, while Christie would set up the anaesthetec. A rubber tube from the gas stove put the women out with coal gas. The scheme worked well. The Christies became well known in the area for their procedures.





But life changed in 1943, when Ethel went to visit her sister in Sheffield. With his wife away, Christie became involved with Ruth Fuerst, a local prostitute. She was an Austrian émigré. She came to England to train as a nurse, but by the time she met Christie she was selling sexual services to U.S. air force men. Ruth became a regular visitor at 10 Rillington Place.


A telegram arrived from Ethel informed Christie that she was returning to London. Christie was in a difficult position. Would Ruth spread rumours about him? Was she going to turn up and tell Ethel exactly what had been going on? Christie had to dispose of Ruth.






During their final sexual encounter, Christie strangled Ruth. Years later he would tell the police; “she was completely naked. I tried to put her clothes back on her. I wrapped her leopard skin coat around her. I took her from the bedroom and put her under the floorboards.”


In killing Ruth, Christie had found that he could attain the ultimate form of power over women. This was the beginning of a sexual fetish that informed an emerging pattern. His first kill had given him a thrill. He was soon looking for another victim to satisfy his desires.




The year was 1944. Christie had given up his job as a Special Constable and got a job at the Ultra Radio Works in Acton. It was there that he met Muriel Eady. She was from a respectable family; a spinster in her 30’s. They met regularly in the canteen and Muriel told Christie that she had a problem with catarrh. That set Christie’s mind rolling. His wife was away again and Christie offered to cure Muriel of her affliction using a breathing device. When she visited 10 Rillington Place Christie put a mask on her face; it was connected to the gas supply. It rendered Muriel unconscious. Christie liked women unconscious because that way he could control them further, as opposed to a living breathing woman who might have her own views about what might be happening in terms of the relationship.




With his victim unconscious, Christie raped her and then strangled her. Christie is quoted as saying; “I had this wonderful sense of excitement. A wonderful sense of release.” Christie had now taken the lives of 2 young women; he buried their bodies in the garden. Nobody knew that they had been visiting Christie, which meant he was free to continue his murderous spree. It wouldn’t take him long to strike again.

Christie hid behind his established air of respectability. He was now working as a ledger clerk at the Post Office. He and Ethel returned to their system of helping out young women with unwanted pregnancies.

In 1948 a married couple by the name of Evans moved into the flat above the Christies. Timothy and Beryl Evans were expecting their first baby and they quickly attracted the attention of their sinister neighbour. The Evans were from mid-Wales and they were in London for Timothy Evans to seek work. With a very low IQ he could only find work as a van driver. But it was his wife that interested Christie.


The Evans had their first baby, Geraldine. But family life wasn’t all that they had hoped it would be. The cramped and squalid conditions at 10 Rillington Place were not the ideal conditions to raise a child. With a second child on the way their problems were magnified. Timothy Evans’ wage of £7 a week was not enough. Unknown to Beryl, Christie knew of their situation and he had a solution; an abortion. Beryl agreed, but her husband was against it. Beryl tried to terminate her pregnancy herself with medication and a douche. It didn’t work. While Evans was at work, Beryl was in Christie’s hands.


When Timothy Evans returned from work, he returned to a tragedy. Christie told him that he had tried to carry out an abortion on Beryl, be she had died during the procedure. Christie told him that he, Timothy Evans, was to blame for his wife’s death. With his low IQ, Evans was no match for Christie’s manipulative sophistry. Christie told Evans that both of them would go to jail; Christie for the botched abortion and Timothy Evans for knowing about it. Timothy Evans would be found guilty as an accessory. They decided that the whole mess should be covered up. Beryl’s body was dumped in an empty room at 10 Rillington Place. Christie told Evans that he would get rid of her in a drainage manhole outside. Evans was now left with a small child and having to explain the disappearance to Beryl’s family. And he was susceptible to another idea from Christie. Christie suggested to Evans that he let a couple he knew in Acton have Geraldine. There she would be safe and Evans would be able to visit her.


No such couple existed.


Timothy Evans was a young, unworldly man. He was stressed and he couldn’t have known how to react. He must have thought that Christie was looking after his best interests, so he simply did as he was told. With his wife dead, Evan’s decided to return to Wales. Both his relatives, and Beryl’s asked questions about her death and the whereabouts of Geraldine. On the 30th of November 1948 Evans was unable to maintain the pretense any longer. Racked with guilt he went to the police station in Merthyr Tydfil. He made 2 statements. In the first statement, he said that Beryl had died in a botched abortion and he had put her body into a manhole. The police in London searched the manhole but found nothing. If they had searched the house and garden they would have found Beryl and the bodies of the other 2 victims.


Evans then made a second statement implicating Christie. The police went again to 10 Rillington Place and this time knocked on Christie’s door. The Christies’ presented a united front and denied any wrong doing. The word of a respectable married couple was worth more than the word of working class Evans. Christie told the police that Evans was an abusive alcoholic. When he told the police that he hadn’t seen Beryl for weeks the police carried out a full scale search of the house. They found the bodies of Beryl and little Geraldine behind a woodpile in the wash house. Both had been beaten and strangled. Beryl’s corpse showed signs of sexual interference.


But the suspicion of guilt didn’t fall on Christie. Evans was taken to see the bodies and was of course shocked that Geraldine was dead. He’d believed Christie’s lie about her being safe with a loving family in Acton. At an interrogation at Notting Hill police station the easily led Evans changed his story again. He confessed to murdering his wife and child.


On the 11th of January 1950 Evans was on trial at London’s Old Bailey charged with the murders of his wife and child. By this time he had changed his statement again and he accused Christie of the murders. Evans’ plea was not guilty, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. Christie stood as a key witness against him. The trial lasted 3 days and after just 40 minutes of deliberation the jury found Evans guilty of the double murder and he was sentenced to death. Christie’s evidence had been instrumental in convicting him.


The bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady lay undiscovered; Christie was still free from suspicion. As the Christies left the court Evans’ mother shouted “murderer”. Ethel leapt to his defense. “Don’t you dare call my husband a murderer! He’s a good man!”


Evans’ legal team appealed to the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede. His appeal was denied and Timothy Evans was hanged at Pentonville prison by the famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint on the 9th of March 1950. Evans protested his innocence to the end.


Relations between Christie and Ethel began to break down. She had caught Christie fondling the genitalia of one of their victims. On the 14th of December 1952 Christie strangled his wife in their bed with a stocking. Unlike his other victims Christie did not have sex with her. He buried Ethel under the floorboards.


A robbery occurred at 10 Rillington Place and the police were called. They paid Christie a visit and were invited in to the killer’s home. One police officer remarked later on the strange smell in the flat.


Christie explained Ethel’s disappearance by saying she’d gone to visit her sick sister in Birmingham. With his wife gone, Christie was free to indulge himself and he actively went looking for new victims.


Rita Nelson worked at a local tea shop and found herself with an unwanted pregnancy. She turned to Christie for a solution. She had gone to Christie for help, but she became the 6th victim at 10 Rillington Place. Kathleen Maloney appealed to Christie’s skills as an abortionist. Christie strangled her and buried her body beneath the floor boards – alongside Ethel.


With Ethel alive Christie had to exercise some sort of control over his behaviour. With Ethel dead the serial killer was out of control. The bodies increased and the time gap between his victims narrowed. Christie was operating in a world that made sense to him as a killer rather than to approach his behaviour in a cognitive way. He was murdering vulnerable women that he knew would not be missed.


Hectorina McGlellan was in need of somewhere to live. Christie heard about her plight and offered her his flat. But Hectorina wasn’t alone. Her boyfriend, Alex Baker moved in with her. After 3 days they decided to leave. Christie asked her to pay a final visit before she moved on; it would be her fatal mistake. He strangled her, before having sex with her. Alex Baker came to Christie’s flat looking for her. Christie let him search the whole house, but he couldn’t find her.


Christie was becoming nervous. The bodies of his victims were beginning to stack up. He decided to move away from the scene of his crimes, but he had no money. He decided to sub-let the flat to a couple from whom he took about £7 – the equivalent of £181 in today’s money. This was fraud. Christie did not own the house. But he took their money anyway and moved away leaving behind him the house that had seen 8 murders and still contained 6 of the bodies.


The landlord visited 10 Rillington Place that same evening and finding people in his house that had no right to be there demanded that the couple leave the next morning. The tenant of the top floor flat, Beresford-Brown asked the landlord if he could use Christie’s kitchen. On the 24th of March 1953 Beresford-Brown was fixing a bracket to the wall at 10 Rillington Place. He noticed that there was wallpaper covering an alcove. He removed it and discovered 3 bodies. The police were called and a citywide search for Christie began. The manhunt was one of the biggest ever seen.


The police left no stone unturned. All 6 bodies were discovered in the house and the 2 bodies buried in the garden. 10 Rillington Place had turned into a real house of horrors.


On the 31st of March a man was stopped by the police on the Thames embankment near Putney Bridge. He told them his name was John Waddington. On further examination they discovered that the man was John Reginald Christie. He was taken to Putney police station. Christie described his killings as acts of mercy, self-defense, or accidents of suicide.

On the 22nd June 1953 it was standing room only at Court number 1 at the Old Bailey. Journalists and the public crammed into the court, keen to see the man whose crimes had shocked Britain. Christie was charged with Ethel’s murder; the trial lasted 4 days. When asked if he’d committed more murders, he said. “I can’t say exactly. I might have done. (He was pleading insanity) He showed little emotion, only bursting into tears at the mention of Ethel’s name. He refused to take responsibility for the murder of Geraldine, the Evans’ baby; the crime that Timothy Evans had been hanged for.


In his summing up, the Judge said; “That just because a man behaved like a monster, it did not mean he was insane.”


After just 1 hour and 20 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Christie was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. Whilst awaiting his fate at Pentonville Prison Christie received a letter from Timothy Evans’ mother. She wanted him to confess to the murder of baby Geraldine, the crime for which her son had been hanged. Christie not only refused, he retracted his confession of killing Beryl Evans.


It seems that Christie was controlling women, in one way or another, right up to the bitter end.


On the 15th of July 1953 Christie was hanged at Pentonville Prison. He was 54 years old.


But even after his death his crimes and confessions left questions unanswered. In 1966 Timothy Evans received a posthumous pardon but attempts to formally quash his conviction have failed. A judicial review in 2004 described Evans’ fate as an historic and unique injustice. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and inadvertently moved into a murderer’s lair.


A year later Rillington Place changed its name to Ruston Close; number 10 continued to be rented out to tenants. In the early 1970’s, after the film 10 Rillington Place was filmed, the whole street was demolished. It has been removed from the London map.

Most mornings I watch a television talk show; The Wright Stuff. It’s hosted by Matthew Wright, a journalist. It’s the usual sort of format; Matthew has three guests and they talk about various topical issues. Then, viewers are invited to phone in. Last week the topic was HIV: Is complacency killing us?

Here’s how Matthew introduced the issue.

“Following a sharp rise in the number of men infected with HIV I’m asking if we’ve become too complacent for our good? Do we need more billboards warning us not to die of ignorance as we had in the 80s? Or is the problem more complicated: maybe medical advances mean we no longer perceive HIV infection as a death sentence? Either way is our complacency bad news?”


Part of our complacency seems to arise from the treatments that are in 2012 available. To be HIV Positive, is no longer a death sentence. Even with such a diagnosis, people with the virus can live well into their 70’s. Thousands of men and women with HIV in the UK, US and across the world are heading into an old age they never expected to see.

There are record numbers of Gay men being diagnosed with HIV. 1 in 4 men don’t know that they’ve got the virus. There are over 100,000 people in the UK with HIV.

Some cases were diagnosed years ago. Some are people who have been diagnosed late, having lived for years without knowing they were infected. And many people are now becoming infected later in life.

So people are still being diagnosed as HIV Positive and not only the people in the high risk groups; the black African community and men who have sex with men.

“Laura is a white, heterosexual, divorced mother of two. At the age of 52 she started a new relationship and then suddenly became ill. Because her symptoms were similar to those of a friend who had been diagnosed with HIV, she took a test. When she was told it was positive, she felt numbness and shock, she said. She cannot believe, as a well-educated person, that she stopped using condoms with her partner and allowed it to happen.”



And on The Wright Stuff show, Julie phoned in. She is a woman, in her 40’s and some years previously, had been date raped. She started to experience illnesses, some severe, some not so problematic. Julie was misdiagnosed for 7 years, until finally, she was told that she was HIV Positive. Julie had many blood tests, but was never screened for HIV. She has passed the virus on to a previous male partner, who in turn has passed the virus on to a female partner. I believe that Julia has also infected her current partner. Julie says that ordinary doctors, GP’s in the UK, are clueless about HIV and need to be more aware. Had she been diagnosed earlier, her immune system would be stronger.

This point was picked up by Genevieve Edwards, who was in Matthew Wright’s audience representing the Terrence Higgins Trust.

“Every day someone dies, because they didn’t get diagnosed early enough. Their immune systems are damaged and weakened. Their immune systems pull back but never fully recover.”
Genevieve says that we are missing opportunities. The young should be taught that safe sex isn’t just about pregnancy.

Penny Smith, a TV presenter and journalist, was on Matthew Wright’s panel, she said;

“It is simply that men don’t like using condoms.”

Perhaps she has a point, but women have to take responsibility too. How about telling the guy “No, not without protection!” Difficult in the heady heat of the moment, but it’s better than dying -- isn’t it?

The figures quoted always seem to be about Gay and Bisexual men and the black community -- the perception being, that if you don’t fall into that category, you’re okay.

Genevieve Edwards, from Terrence Higgins, says that we all need to be more aware of what we are doing. Sound advice.

There’s something strangely alluring about the sight of a strong man in ropes and chains, struggling to be free of his bonds. Well, I think so, anyway. All that muscle, straining. His sweat making the bonds slippery, ever tighter. The struggle is hopeless; he sees defeat staring him in the face and still he is spirited enough to fight on.

You’ve only got to type in the word ’bondage’ into any search engine, to be overwhelmed with images, and stories, of  men and women, bound and helpless. Mostly, it’s consensual, at least I hope it is. A little piece of BDSM, being acted out by adults involved in a highly charged erotic game.

But bondage is nothing new. The Internet generation cannot claim to have discovered it. Neither can writers of porn and erotica. Bondage is in ancient art and old, old stories.

Laocoon  and his sons are bound and helpless by fierce serpents. There’s a statue of Laocoon in his death throes, in the Vatican in Rome. Pliny attributes it to three Rhodian sculptures, Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus.

Laocoon’s exotic, erotic punishment is for committing a sacrilegious act; that of procreation in a place holy to the god, Poseidon.

Punishment through bondage, for a sin, real or imagined and often trivial, is the catalyst for many modern bondage stories. A slave forgets to collect his master’s dry cleaning, and is tied to a whipping bar; he is helpless and is whipped. The whipping is secondary; it is the fact that he is bound and helpless, that is the important part of the ritual. In another story, a submissive craves his punishment and will contrive to get it by inventing any misdemeanour. He visits his Mistress in his lunch break and is forced to return to his office, wearing a cock cage beneath his pants. The cage is screwed tightly, pressing painfully against his balls, yet still his cock struggles valiantly for an erection that just cannot happen.


The old stories are even in the Bible. Delilah contrives to discover the secret of Samson’s great strength. This is a man so strong and powerful, he has ripped a lion in two. Eventually, he tells her. His strength is because of his long hair. Delilah tells Samson’s secret to the Philistines, and Samson is shorn of his locks while he sleeps. His strength is gone and Samson is bound and chained. His eyes are put out and Delilah pockets the silver that the Philistines have paid her.

The eroticism, the beauty of bondage, whether in art, or literature give us our images, our stories, our fantasies.

Strength and power are contained, controlled and relinquished. There is beauty in their bonds. The victims suffer in their strength.

This blog post was compiled using sources from the web.

Hello Jan. Thanks for coming to my blog. Tell my followers a bit about yourself and the sort of things you to write about...

Thanks for inviting me, billierosie. About writing, it has always been very easy for me, and it certainly helps to grow up in a totally mad and dysfunctional Flemish family: as a child I had to retreat into my own fantasy world in order to cope with the violence and drama around me. The results were my first tales, read aloud by my teachers in the classroom. I also read a lot, every fairy tale I could come across, and then during my adolescence I made a 180° switch to everything horror: I discovered Edgar Allan Poe and subsequently plunged into the world of Dracula, Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray and the horror pulp fiction of the seventies.


(BR)Yes, those wonderful tales that fire a writer’s imagination. But what about Jan; tell us a little bit about yourself as an adult.


(JVL)When I was in my early twenties and a student of art history, I met the first love of my life during a holiday in Italy, a Tuscan man. What began as a beach flirt lasted for twenty one years, and Italy and his family became my second home. It is not for nothing that so many plays and gothic novels are set in this country, for if you’re a bit open minded there is colour and drama and comedy and scheming and -especially- lust at every corner of the street.


(BR)What about your first tales and how they were received?


(JVL)My first collection of short stories was published in Dutch in 1988, “A spark of genius”, with very Italianate dark tales featuring cut fingers, skulls, suicide, burying alive, betrayal and murder. It aroused a lot of interest at the Frankfurt book fair from abroad, a Frenchman translated the title tale, but apparently the Flemings didn’t want to invest in an author who didn’t write about lofty subjects such as the Flemish identity and whose tales were “archaic” and set in another country.


(BR)I think it was James Joyce who first broached the concept of a writer being an exile in his own country. It’s sad but true, that writers are often shunned by the very people who should feel proud of their work. A Twitter friend, also a talented writer, has mentioned many times that he “frightens the mainstream.” And this has happened to you. But you continued to write?


(JVL)Since then I have never been able to stop writing, hundreds and hundreds of pages, novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, academic papers. As I said before, writing is easy, but being a writer can be a bit more complicated: you are thrown into a market place where second guessing the tastes of the public in order to gain a lot of money is paramount and where a lot of critics and publishers are apparently brain dead. I don’t want to sound too negative, but when you write -and you know it too!- from your guts and about things that undermine the natural longing for a bit of predictability and security in life, you can get into trouble. It’s a bit of a contradiction: on the one hand sex and violence are the two main ingredients in a lot of books and films, but when you let the devil out and describe how violence and depravity lurk in everyone of us, waiting for the occasion to be released, you can get some nasty reactions. People accused me of being insane having written such a tale as “Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty”, the story of a married man who makes love to a dying boy, while they think nothing about the Stallone and Schwarzenegger films where hundreds of people get - very superficially - killed.


(BR)How does being gay affect and inform your writing?


First of all, I consider myself -and I had never problems with it and never had to hide myself- as a homosexual, or to put it simply as a man who prefers to have sex with another man instead of a woman, although I have had stories with women. As for being gay, I have my doubts; I certainly like Abba and Céline Dion, and yes, I have a tattoo, the signature of Mozart, on my upper arm, but I don’t feel very attracted to our subculture, it seems we have to be gay and being in the spotlight all the time. And oh, I’m very happy to be 54 now, when I was younger the general opinion was that ageing was the most terrible thing to happen to a homosexual, but I’ve come to the conclusion that love and sex -and especially love- aren’t all about being young and handsome.


Another thing, as a writer I had some of my more depressing moments with the gay community, publishers not paying me and receiving vicious attacks that I write “homophobic stuff”.


I most certainly participate in the battle for equal rights and I’m horrified when I read about how we were and still are considered and treated in many countries, but I also think I have the right to explore the more unusual aspects of sex, in my case sex between men. And I simply refuse to censor myself: if I come up with the idea of a man wanting to eat the excrements of his lover from his arse and stabbing himself afterwards in order to smear the content of his stomach all over his body, I go sit down before my computer and tell the story. It brings me to mind Stephen King who once said: “I ask myself what I can’t write about, and then I write about it.” Before I can ask myself that question, the story has generally already taken form on paper...


(BR)You live in Brussels, Belgium, now, and you have a relationship with an Algerian man of your age...


(JVL)In the last few decades Brussels has become a very interesting city! I remember how in “Plenty”, a film set here during WWII with Meryl Streep, an Englishman spoke about “this most debilitating city”. Well, those times have gone, and the particular thing about Brussels is that there is no majority anymore and that, contrary to other cities where the different nationalities have all more or less their own neighbourhood, some 180 nationalities are thrown together here on a few square miles. It can get edgy and you certainly have to keep your wits about you, but on the other hand it’s very inspiring. I wrote some 70 tales in a year about things happening here, from buildings collapsing due to neglect over being picked up on the street by a married African man to “pub wisdom”.


(BR)A final question: what do you think about being a writer and do you have a specific genre?


(JVL)I more feel like a storyteller. As for genre, I like tales and urban legends, and I like horror and comedy. Many psychiatrists think that horror mainly generates from the suppression of sexual desire, and that’s what certainly explains the incredible power of the 19th century English and American horror novels. In France (and Belgium) however, where there is more flexibility in sexual matters, horror has a more diluted character. When horror appears in my tales, it’s most likely psychological, more the inner demon than torture porn. But even when I think I have written “dead serious” things, some readers tell me they have been laughing to tears. Maybe that’s the one thing about writing: “to elicit emotions”, whether it be tears, laughter, disgust or downright hostility...


(BR) Another final question! The two stories you have on Twitter; the Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty and the Body of Christ have been immensely popular and have now been read by thousands. I know that this pleases you, all writers want their work to be read...but does it surprise you?


(JVL)Thanks to all my readers, it’s a tremendous compliment to know that people like my tales. And yes, it is a very pleasant surprise when you tell me how many people have read my stories. But thanks to you, billierosie, for creating a blog that is original, instructive, sexy, open minded, without at all costs wanting to be shocking or provocative.

***


BIO: Jan Vander Laenen (° 1960) lives in Brussels, Belgium, where he works as an art historian and translator (Dutch, French and Italian). He is also the author of numerous collections of short stories, plays, and screenplays which have attracted keen interest abroad.
A romantic comedy, "Oscar Divo", and a thriller, “The Card Game”, have been optioned in Hollywood, while his short fiction collections, "The Butler" and "Poète maudit", and his horror play "A Mother's Revenge" are eliciting the requisite accolades in Italy.


Jan’s most recent publication are the tales “A Glass of Cognac” available as a free read here.

“The Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty” in the Bram Stoker Award winning “Unspeakable Horror” is available at my blog here

as is “The Body of Christ.” Here.

“Fire at the Chelsea Hotel” in “Best Gay Love Stories 2009” (Alyson Press) is here

“The Stuffed Turkey” in “Best Gay Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press), here.

“The Corpse Washer” in Best S/M III (Logical Lust), here.

“Lise” in “Strange Tales of Horror” (NorGus Press) here;

The E-Books “Skilfully and Lovingly” is here;

“The Centrefold and other Stories of working Men” is here.

The Dutch and French version of Jan’s novel “The housekeeper and other scabrous tales” may be a little difficult to track down, but try this link.





Jan is a member of the Poe Studies Association and the Horror Writers Association. He presented his paper "Hypotheses on Poe's homosexuality" at the Bicentennial Congress in Philadelphia in October 2009, and his paper “The monstrous and the fantastic in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe and the paintings by Antoine Wiertz” at the 33rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida, in March 2012.

Lectures on Poe, Baudelaire, Wiertz, Andersen, Grand Guignol and the guillotine were given in 2013 at the universities of New Orleans, Porto (Portugal) and the Paris Sorbonne. Four more lectures are scheduled in 2014 in Paris, Louisville (Kentucky), Madrid and Milan.


Jan is currently working on a play/screenplay around the life of the Romantic Belgian "horror" painter Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865), a novel called "The Psychomanteum" around the practice of mirror gazing, and a screenplay around the life of Lucida Mansi.

“Namio Harukawa, born in 1947, in Osaka Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese artist known for his realistic femdom erotica drawings. Harukawa drawings feature voluptuous women with large breasts, wide hips, round buttocks and thick legs dominating, overpowering and humiliating smaller men. Harukawa women are both Asian and European in appearance, and a few times African.




“Harukawa women usually have an aloof look on their faces as they dominate hopeless men. By far the most common Harukawa theme is the face sitting of the weaker men by the larger, voluptuous women, but his work also includes smothering, urolagnia, bondage, coprophilia and cunnilingus. Other works by Harukawa have a cuckoldry theme.




“Harukawa has developed a worldwide cult following and his works are often displayed on femdom websites.”

WIKI





Patrick Whitehurst points out that none of the paintings appear to be for sale. He wonders why that is? Maybe they are in private collections -- I don’t know.





The collection is vast: you can see the prolific scale of Namio Harukawa’s work by googling his name.

Recently, my blog featured a post about porn and erotica. I featured works of art that, it seemed to me, could fall into either category. And I was chastised. A fellow Tweeter asked why hadn’t I mentioned Gay porn, Gay erotica? Does my omission mean that I think that all alluring images of male erotica are pornographic? Absolutely not! I hope that this new post about homoerotica redresses the balance. I cannot remember your Twitter name – the guy who made the point. I hope that you read my post and let me know what you think.


Homoerotica has a long, long history. For many years, a lot of women, and a lot of men too, have looked at, studied and lusted after the male form. These days we look at eroticised photographs, we surf the web, we can look at the art of Tom of Finland. In long centuries ago, Artists and Sculptors, such as Caravaggio and Michelangelo, eroticised the male form through the medium of Biblical and mythological stories. Retelling the tales created opportunities for a subtext.

Perhaps the male form has always been fetishised -- whether the viewer has a predilection for the male erection, shoulders, groins, pectorals, abdomens, buttocks or all of the above, painters and sculptors have delivered. The pleasure is for the viewer -- a male in the prime of his life -- muscles and limbs, stretched out, on display.



Caravaggio; The Flagellation of Our Lord.



A poet of dramatic stimulation, Caravaggio was fascinated by the intrusion of the divine into the mundane world; in canvas after canvas he used shifting planes of light and dark to fashion a moment of spiritual anagnorisis, that moment of perception that precipitates the reversal of the action in Greek drama.


Is Caravaggio’s painting as it seems, or is the Artist giving us a subtext? Is there a story within a story? Is Caravaggio telling the story of the Passion of Christ, or does he have a different agenda? There’s a dark moodiness about the painting. A sort of what happens next? Is there going to be a rape or a life snuffed out?



During the Baroque period of the 16th century Guido Reni painted the image of the martyred Saint Sebastian. Sebastian’s story tells of the saint’s refusal to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods and his absolute refusal to reject Christianity. For his crimes Sebastian was stripped, taken to a field and shot until his body was full of arrows. The story has been told many times over the centuries by many different artists. The image of Sebastian pierced by arrows has regularly been described as homoerotic.


And again -- a photographic interpretation. Saint Sebastian. Yukio Mishima 1970




David. MichelAngelo


The Biblical tale is well known. The youth, David, defeats the gigantic Philistine Goliath, with a single shot; a pebble from a homemade sling.

Sculpted from 1501 to 1504, David is a masterpiece of Renaissance art and one of Michelangelo's two greatest works of sculpture, the other being his Pietà. It is the David alone that almost certainly holds the title of the most recognizable statue in the history of art. It has become regarded as a symbol both of strength and youthful human beauty. The 5.17 meter (17 ft) marble statue portrays the Biblical David at the moment that he is to do battle with Goliath.'




THE SWIMMING HOLE

“The Swimming Hole (also known as Swimming and The Old Swimming Hole) is an 1884–85 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) Executed in oil on canvas, it depicts six men swimming naked in a lake, and is considered a masterpiece of American painting.

In this work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted, and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th century life when nudity was on display. The Swimming Hole develops themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of the human form; in some cases it is uncertain as to whether the forms portrayed are male or female. Although the theme of male bathers was familiar in Western art, having been explored by artists from Michelangelo to Daumier, Eakins' treatment was novel in American art at the time. The Swimming Hole has been "widely cited as a prime example of homoeroticism in American art".
The art critic, Tom Lubbock described Eakins' work as:

‘a classic of American painting. It shows a scene of healthy, manly, outdoor activity: a group of young fellows having stripped off for a dip. It is based on the swimming excursions that were enjoyed by the artist and his students. Eakins himself appears in the water at bottom right – in signature position, so to speak.’

Let’s have a look at some contemporary, photographic images by Robert Mapplethorpe. His images are beautiful, some are beautifully erotic, some are beautifully pornographic.



Mapplethorpe chronicles real life, albeit in a world most of us never inhabit. Whenever the argument of art versus pornography arises, Mapplethorpe's name is always thrown into the debate, with as many supporters as detractors. Yet few would dispute the quality of his work and materials and even those who find his images unpalatable rarely argue that his intention was to titillate in the way of pornography.

The image speaks of grace; elegance. A celebration of the vitality of the male form. As does this photograph below.




What about this one from his Calla Lilies series. It’s just a lovely flower – or is it?



“Touko Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) was a Finnish artist notable for his stylised androerotic and fetish art and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.


Over the course of four decades he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits: heavily muscled torsos, limbs, and buttocks, and large penises. Tight or partially removed clothing showed off these traits, with the penis often visible as a bulge in tight trousers or prominently displayed for the viewer. His drawings frequently feature two or more men either immediately preceding or during explicit sexual activity. Nearly all of his characters were versatile and obviously enjoyed the bottom as well as the top role during sex.
Wiki


I am unable to post any images from Tom of Finland. The images are fiercely protected by tight copyright laws. But here is a video which features some of his Art.


And here’s a link to Robert Mapplethorpe’s pornographic photographs.



Finally, a piece of literary homoerotica, from The Go-Between, by L.P.Hartley


“ Believing himself to be unseen by the other bathers he gave himself up to being alone with his body. He wriggled his toes, breathed hard through his nose, twisted his brown moustache where some drops of water still clung, and looked himself critically all over. The scrutiny seemed to satisfy him, as well it might. I whose only acquaintance was with bodies and minds developing, was suddenly confronted by maturity in its most undeniable form; and I wondered, what it must feel like to be him, master of those limbs which have passed beyond the need of gym and playing field, and exist for their own strength and beauty? What can they do, I thought, to be conscious of themselves?
Now he had a plantain stalk in his left hand and was rubbing it gently along the hairs of his right forearm; they glinted in the sun and were paler than his arms, which were mahogany coloured to above the elbow. Then he stretched both arms high above his chest, which was so white it might have belonged to another person, except below his neck where the sun had burnt a copper breastplate; and he smiled to himself, an intimate, pleased smile, that would have looked childish or imbecile on most people, but on him had the effect of a feather on a tiger -- it pointed to a contrast, and all to his advantage.”


This blog post has been compiled using my own ideas, backed up by sources from the Web.

How far can you go?

Incest and bestiality are illegal, at least in the UK, but the boundaries aren’t clear. Full sex with my brother clearly counts as incest, and fucking a donkey counts as bestiality, but what about heavy petting, for example?

In Ginger, the toothless cat enjoys licking and chewing Gladys’s ‘thingy’. It’s his favourite, and he prefers it even to mashed sardines. Does that count as bestiality? Gladys enjoys it too, but it isn’t actual sex. A cat licking sardines off a finger is obviously okay, but what about the same cat licking fish sauce off an elderly woman’s ‘boobies’? She tries the sauce on her arm first, to see if the cat likes it, and that’s presumably okay. If I had infinite patience, I could write different versions of the story, with the cat licking a different bit of Gladys in each one, and see where on the scale of finger to thingy Amazon decides to ban it.

If I share a bed with my brother, or my sister, and we just sleep, that’s probably fine. If we kiss each other goodnight, that’s probably also fine. Maybe we can have a bit of a cuddle if it’s cold. However, somewhere along that line we reach the point at which Amazon starts banning things.

Am I allowed to wank my brother with my hand? There’s no penetration involved. What about fingering my sister? Is clit play okay, or do I have to limit myself to kissing her boobs? What about kissing my brother’s chest? He hasn’t got boobs, so that’s presumably all fine, and if I can kiss his chest, surely I can kiss my sister’s chest.

In Butcher And Baker, the brother sticks his finger in his sister’s arse, to see if she likes it. She doesn’t, so it presumably doesn’t count as sex, in which case it isn’t incest. If he were a proctologist, he could be checking her out as a favour, and that wouldn’t be incest. If she likes it, though, does it become incest, or do they have to go further than that? Supposing he were only her half brother? Would he be allowed to go that little bit further before it becomes incest, or are the lines in the same place?

In the UK, first cousin marriages are legal, even if the cousins are ‘double cousins’, who share 25% of their genes. If I had a half brother, though, I wouldn’t be allowed to have sex with him, because we would be too closely related, with 25% of our genes in common.

According to Wikipedia, consensual incest is legal between adults in Spain and the Netherlands, and I haven’t noticed society falling apart in either country. Maybe I should just translate Butcher And Baker into Spanish, and put it on amazon.es, where it presumably wouldn’t be banned, since the brother and sister are both in their fifties, and they want to do it, thereby sitting solidly within the law.

In the circumstances, it’s a lucky thing I don’t fancy either my brother or my sister, and I haven’t got a donkey, or even a cat. Life's complicated enough.


Butcher and Baker

Ginger

Post Mortem (UK)

Amazon US

Milk Amazon(UK) and Amazon US

Billy and Rosie; a Tale of Innocence and Taboo is here.

Rose is @rosew007 on Twitter and her blog is http://roseworms.blogspot.co.uk/

My name is Ed: Part 2

For the past 35 years or so, since before I could do anything about it, I have been drawn to the mystery and magic of dominant women. There are millions of men just like me, though relatively few discuss it openly. In fact, many overcompensate with a macho pose that reminds me of teen boys who think smoking makes them look cool. You know the type: they pinch a cigarette with a pinky jutting out that has no other place to go at the moment. Holding a smoke in an inexperienced hand, the kid announces to the world his nervous foray into manhood, or at least an awkward semblance of it.


It is that way with men I have known for many years; also men I have met only recently are the same regarding their sexuality. They talk about women as though they understand them and appreciate and ultimately conquer them with a rakish style and heady cologne of swagger. They fool some of their mates who try to keep up the charade but they don't fool me. Never have. I have been submissive to exotic and commanding women since before many of these chintzy peacocks were born. And what have I discovered? Exactly this: any lady with a healthy dose of self-esteem and cultivated air of authority, practiced daily with self-determination, will bring any man to his knees whenever she pleases.

Even when being coyly submissive, she is in control of herself, the situation and the overheated male who is blind to his own complicity in her plans for whatever seduction she has in mind. It probably has been like this forever. If there indeed was a Garden of Eden, it was Eve after all that wielded the apple, plunged Adam from his perch of grace and blamed it all on a lying snake. That she also was banished from Paradise only authenticates her humanity, else countless men would be tempted over and over again by her sweet, swaying sorcery. Heaven would never be rid of us.


Yet don't we men clumsily forget that essential fact, her very powerful humanity, as applied to the domination of males throughout the ages? If Woman was Divine and not mortal, where would be the glory in her triumph? Goddesses at play are a provocative Myth; the power of Womanhood is tangibly real. In the fever swamp of Lust, up to our eyes in desire, we men surrender our tenuous grip on good sense, common enough but maddeningly ephemeral, and we fall to our knees and worship the source of our physical being. No price is too high or any sacrifice so exorbitant that we can resist saying "Yes" meekly when "No" shouts stern insistent warnings to rouse our self-respect. And then we jump madly, all primally enchanted fools, into the pink folds of a lady's fatal snare, the ultimate trap, a honey-moistened delta of destruction awaiting our swollen Egos.


And if that lady is at all clever in her erotic wickedness, she will have us begging for more. In the inescapable clutch of her talons, our pride bleeds away as our seed splashes into the Void. Thus Yin encloses and conquers the Yang and the archetypal Femme Fatale is celebrated, adored and obeyed by the very victims that would greedily have held her for ransom had they been conceived with the pluck to outwit Mother Nature.


I do not know a man alive or dead (starting with myself!) who would not play out this eternal drama to infinity, Sisyphus grunting and pushing his damnable rock, so long as occasionally, as might satisfy our women rulers, her gates of Heaven opened, however sparingly, admitting unworthy me, that is we, all of us simple salty males, to enjoy however fleetingly the ecstasy of release, madly shooting spasms of our essence through her portal to the stars.


Men are proud beggars, an irony of hard muscle and weak will. Women who grasp this verity are fit to rule their men, from affairs of the boudoir to the politics of the planet. It is the next Great Awakening.

This is the story of two aristocratic ladies who eloped together to Wales in 1778 and lived happily ever after in a cottage ornée, surrounded by gardens full of Gothic follies. Their names were Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, but they were better known as the Ladies of Llangollen, "the two most celebrated virgins in Europe".

Although the Ladies wished to live in "delightful retirement" - reading, writing, drawing and gardening - the fashionable world soon beat a path to their cottage door. Their visitors included the Duke of Wellington, Lady Caroline Lamb, Josiah Wedgwood, William Wordsworth, Thomas de Quincey, Prince Paul Esterhazy and the Duke of Gloucester; their pen-friends included Queen Charlotte, Lord Byron and Louis XVI's aunt. There were many days when the Ladies had up to 20 visitors in relays, entertaining literally morning, noon and night.

Why did two country spinsters become so famous? It is hard to imagine today how sensational it was in the 18th century for unmarried ladies to live independently, whether singly or together. In addition, the circumstances of Eleanor and Sarah's elopement were positively melodramatic.

Eleanor was the youngest daughter of the de jure Earl of Ormonde, of Kilkenny Castle (his titles were attainted, like those of other devoutly Catholic Irish peers). Eleanor's brother, Robert, paved the way for restoration of the Ormonde earldom by converting to Protestantism, and he made a brilliant marriage. Eleanor's sisters married well, too.

But for Eleanor - clever, bookish, satirical and already 39 - there was no such hope. What better way, then, to make amends to God for brother Robert's apostasy, than by putting Eleanor in a nunnery? It would be a cheap way to dispose of her, too.

Twelve miles away, at the mansion of Woodstock, her orphaned 23-year-old friend Sarah Ponsonby was suffering the unwanted attentions of her middle-aged guardian, Sir William Fownes. His wife, Betty, whom Sarah dearly loved, was still alive, but her health was failing and Sir William over-eagerly anticipated the day when he could take pretty Sarah as the second Lady Fownes.

Both women felt trapped in an unbearable situation. Clandestine correspondence flew back and forth between Kilkenny Castle and Woodstock, and they decided to elope to England together (elope did not have the same marital connotation that it does today, it just meant run away). Dressed as men, carrying a pistol and Sarah's dog Frisk, they rode through the night to catch the ferry at Waterford, but it did not sail and they were forced to hide in a barn. They were caught and taken home.

Sarah fell seriously ill with a fever, but Eleanor, faced with imminent incarceration in a French convent, ran away again - this time to Woodstock, where she hid in Sarah's bedroom and a housemaid, Mary Carryll, smuggled food in to her. When this was discovered, the Ormondes declined to collect their errant daughter and after 10 days the Fownes family caved in. Sarah and Eleanor were free to go.

No melodrama, however, would be complete without retribution - while Eleanor, Sarah and their maid, Mary, were touring Wales in search of a home, Sir William was struck down with "strangulation of the stomach", followed by a stroke, and after a fortnight of barbaric treatments - "blistered and glistered and physick'd" - he died in agony.

The nature of Sarah and Eleanor's "romantic friendship" has naturally excited curiosity over the years. They referred to each other as "My Beloved" (or "My B"), then later as "My Better Half"; were certainly as devoted as any married couple; slept in the same bed; cropped their hair into short curls and habitually wore riding habits with mannish beaver hats.

So they were lesbians - or were they? Few who visited them thought so. The word romantic simply meant fanciful or eccentric in the 18th century. And it was the fashion for friends - male as well as female - to write and speak to each other in language which we now reserve for sexual partners.

Nor was it uncommon to share a bed with a sister or friend. The Ladies' hairstyles and hats followed a French fashion - besides, they were practical for the country - and they spent their money on books and home improvements, not on frivolous clothes.

My guess, from reading Elizabeth Mavor's excellent biography, is that Eleanor was a lesbian, whether she realised it or not (likely not, as it was unheard-of until an outbreak of "sapphism" at the French court brought it to English society's notice in 1789); but that Sarah - if she had not met Eleanor at the impressionable age of 13, and if she had not needed to escape from her guardian - might have settled down just as happily with a husband.

As it was, she settled down, for 50 years, with Eleanor. They took a five-roomed stone cottage on a hillside above Llangollen, renamed it Plas Newydd (New Hall) and began to extend and embellish it. Windows were gothicised and old stained glass panels inserted into them. A library was filled with finely bound books and curiosities of all kinds, including a lock of Mary Queen of Scots' hair.

They developed a passion for old, carved wood - whether from medieval churches or broken-up Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture. The staircase hall was lined with it, and a bizarre trio of canopies built on to the door and windows. The front porch incorporates, inter alia, carvings of the four evangelists, Latin inscriptions, 17th-century bedposts and lions donated by the Duke of Wellington (visitors soon learnt that to appear with gifts of carvings ensured a welcome).

The grounds became similarly elaborate as time went on and acres were added. Passing through a "ruined" Gothic archway, visitors could cross the rushing stream in its miniature ravine on rustic bridges; visit Lady Eleanor's Bower, overhanging the ravine, and a temple complete with a font stolen from Valle Crucis Abbey's ruins; see butter being made in the circular model dairy; admire peaches, nectarines and melons growing in the ornate glasshouse; and read poetic quotations on boards tacked to tree trunks.

It was all highly, fashionably Picturesque; it was also highly expensive. The Ladies never did learn to manage on a small income. Despite their family allowances and state pensions, they were often in debt - and when this happened, to cheer themselves up, they embarked on new improvements. They drank the best wine and kept several servants, including the faithful Mary Carryll as their housekeeper.

Mary was uncouth and formidable (her Irish nickname had been Molly the Bruiser), but the Ladies were touchingly devoted to her, and she to them. When she died, they erected an elaborate stone monument, under which they later joined her; and she bequeathed them an additional field, bought with her life savings.

After their deaths, Plas Newydd had several owners, including one, General John Yorke, who left an indelible mark on the house. Following their enthusiasm for old, carved oak, he elaborately lined their kitchen to form the present-day Oak Room, where all that remains from the Ladies' time is their initials carved into the mantelpiece.

General Yorke also half-timbered the house facade in black and white, with curious, carved decorations between the beams; and he crammed the interiors with oddities, including mementoes of the Ladies and such esoterica as the skeletal head of a sea-serpent.


In 1932 the house was taken over by Llangollen Urban District Council, and it opened to the public a year later. The house is well-maintained but the garden's remaining features are in sad need of restoration - for which a National Lottery Fund grant is awaited.

Plas Newydd is in Llangollen, Clwyd (signposted from the town centre) (01978 861314). Open daily until end October, 10am-5pm (last admission to house 4.15pm). Admission £2.50 adult, £1.25 child.

Elizabeth Mavor's biography, `The Ladies of Llangollen' (Penguin, £4.99), is on sale at the house.

Also available at as an eread at Amazon UK and Amazon US

The article is from The Daily Telegraph, 4th May 2002
by Anne Campbell Dixon

Plas Newydd is set in peaceful gardens surrounded by trees and includes the font from the nearby Valle Crucis Abbey.
The house is now a museum run by Denbighshire County Council. The circle of stones, in the grounds of Plas Newydd was used for the 1908 Llangollen National Eisteddfod.
Open Easter to October 10.00-17.00
Telephone +44 1978 861314

Paul Thomas is a fellow tweeter. That is all I know about him. I don’t know where to find him on the planet other than in the Twitter archives.



 Like a lot of artists, Paul is elusive; an enigma. He is also a great photographer and I am delighted to share with you Paul’s wildly erotic pictures.



So it is from Twitter that I have got to know Paul’s work. Weeks will go by and nothing. Then he will post a couple of pictures; he teases and titillates!  Then again, for a while, there will be nothing at all.



Others post their pictures, usually with a “that’s what I call sexy” tweet. I tweet sarcastically -- “not sexy! Where’s Paul Thomas when you need him?” Then Paul will surprise me, maybe posting 5 or 6 erotic photographs. Bliss!



Whenever Paul posts a picture, I re-tweet it. Then I began playing with the idea of running a blog post featuring his work. So I asked his permission: I posted a tweet into the void. “I’d love to run a blog post about your stuff!”



 Like any reclusive artist, he ignores me. I persist -- still nothing. “Are you listening Paul Thomas?” Then finally, “Yes pse run a blog post hugs!”



Paul’s erotica inspires my own erotic stories; the images ooze sensuality. There are any number of narratives to be discoved. Beautiful women in bondage; tied, gagged, blindfolded -- and acquiescing.





 Paul deconstructs the female image, sometimes just a slender ankle, the foot in impossibly high heeled shoes.




 At other times the woman confronts the viewer; she stares back at us, challenging us. Judge her if you dare. This is the position she has chosen, and her choice is a decision born of the intellect. And she gives pleasure; the pleasure is all for the viewer.




Through his pictures Paul celebrates the female form.




As I say, I don’t know which country, or continent to begin searching for Paul Thomas. I don’t even know if Paul Thomas is his real name.




 But I will say no more -- I offer no commentary. The viewer doesn’t need to be guided. I’ll let Paul’s erotica speak for itself.

I am so pleased and happy to announce that my new book is out! Fetish Transcendence; the dark side of desire. The new collection of erotica from billierosie. Twelve stories; each story celebrating the magical, mystical diversity of human sexual experience. Those secrets and lies that we keep well hidden; that we dare not admit to ourselves, but make their presence felt through our fantasies and dreams. Dark desires that arouse in the heat of the night when our darker side cannot help but give in.

There’s a potpourri of fetish within these pages; it’s a collection that will impress the connoisseur of erotic fiction and the new reader, whose only experience of erotica is Fifty Shades of Grey…You’ll find Dominants and their submissives in strange, unexpected places in Fetish Transcendence. The opening tale tells of Freddie, the security guard in an exclusive London store, who has a very creative way of dealing with shoplifters.

Lovers, Allen and Clara elope, but there are dangers on the road to the little church where they can legally marry. In Fruits de Mer you’ll learn of Josiah’s exotic, erotic taste for les moules, while in Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of the Moonstone, Sherlock Holmes and Watson solve yet another intriguing mystery through the powerful force of outrageous sex.

One dirty phone call precipitates another in Touch, while in Body Swap, Simon and Clarice turn their unique, extrasensory gift to their advantage; love and lust carries them through the generations. They have no fear of the tomb; they have defeated death itself.

The rocky road to attaining sanctity is told through a terrible, sacrilegious confession to Father Abraham. It’s a confession of an abomination; an unspeakable sexual perversion that threatens the immortal soul.

The heat of the crowd generates its own dark mood of erotica. There’s hardly any room to breathe let alone move. It’s hot and sweaty. Someone presses up close behind you; too close. You know exactly what is going on but you are powerless to stop it; to do anything about it. You can’t even turn around to confront your violator. Poor Julia! Will she ever get over the humiliation?

And there’s a holiday romance; a romance with a difference for this submissive male and the Dominant woman who knows how he can achieve real pleasure.

The two final tales tell of Anastasia; the lucky lady who inherits millions. You’d think she would be happy, but there is Marcus whom she adores, but who doesn’t want her. And driving the narrative there is a diary. A piece of pornography that teaches Anastasia about a long ago sexual awakening – an awakening worthy of the Marquis de Sade himself.

Fetish Transcendence is available now as a Kindle e-read at Amazon UK and at Amazon US

None of the stories featured in Fetish Transcendence have been used on Twitter as 'free reads''Security' appeared in Sizzler's 'London' anthology; 'Winnat's Pass' appeared in Sizzler's 'The Love That Never Dies; erotic encounters with undead' anthology; 'Fruits de Mer' appeared in Sizzler's 'Hunger' anthology; 'Retribution' appeared in Logical Lust's 'Best S&M III; And 'Sherlock Holmes & the Curse of the Moonstone' appeared in Sizzler's 'My Love of All that is Bizarre, the erotic adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. The rest of the stories are brand spanking new -- as I say, you will not have read any of these stories on Twitter.


And do please use Amazon's "look inside" feature for a taster!

And a huge and massive thanks to Francis Potts for his infinite patience – my book would never have seen the light of day without Francis’ help.

I want to introduce Jenny Ainslie-Turner to you; Jenny is my friend and we follow each other on Twitter. Jenny is also a sex chat line worker. I asked her to tell me about her life as a sex chat line worker and how she got into it. As her alter ego, Jolene, Jenny talks about anything and everything to her clients. The phone calls that she responds to are graphic; taboo, not for the fainthearted. As Jolene, Jenny spins a confection of seductive dreams and garish, ghoulish nightmares, fetish and fantasy for her clients; the men who call her….Here’s what Jenny told me…it’s an intriguing slice of life…



I started doing sex chat some 12 years ago, with Datapro Services I was a complete novice at talking dirty and they gave no training. I had always worked with Army and RAF
lads for 18 years prior to this, so I sort of already knew how their minds worked.

It was at a time where I’d just broken up from my second husband and thanks to him selling my home from underneath me I became homeless. My mother, back in my home town of
Newark, found me a place close to her. So, leaving all my friends and the area that I knew and loved so well I became rather isolated. Shortly after moving back to Newark my mother suffered a heart attack and needed to be care for. I became a carer for her but the benefits to help with her care were a pittance and I was used to taking care of myself financially. I had actually seen a documentary on Channel 4 about single mums who, once their kids were at school, logged on to a sex chat company and straight away I knew that was the job for me.

I’d been around men most of my working life and rather missed the banter. And, as I was always a suggestive digestive, a prick-teaser in other words. It was the perfect job for me and I could do the hours to fit around taking care of mum. Not long into the job I realised I’d got this outrageously dirty imagination. I had discovered my writing abilities a few years before but as I was not educated I struggled to perfect my writing skills over quite a few years. As I found myself creating little fantasy worlds for my callers my writing also improved.

So, I wrote my book, “How To Talk Dirty, A Hands on Guide to Phone Sex”.

My video on YouTube was picked by a TV production company, they thought I’d look good on TV and was perfect for their doc, ’My Phone Sex Secrets’ which was shown on Channel 4. Who would have thought the documentary that started me in my line of work would eventually have me starring in a similar documentary.

Also, I now give relationship advice as part of a panel in the Metro Monday supplement. My next achievement is to have my own column of sex advice and tips. I just love helping people in all kind of ways. And, thanks to my documentary I have a successful training business, teaching would be chat girls and all ladies in the art of phone sex.

Added to this, I am writing my first work of fiction – it’s not totally fiction because there’s a good part of me and my chat calls in the book. I am writing it with one of my callers Alix James; by coincidence he’s a writer too and when we created our fantasies together over the phone we discovered a compatibility neither of us had experienced before, so much so we plan to write many books together. In fact we have become the very best of friends and I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

Alix and I are really good close friends now. I’ve met him and his family many times. We have another book out, “Dragon's Flame”. It's the first in a trilogy of shape-shifting dragons. We plan to write many more in the next two years. That's what I hope to be, just an author.

You can find Jenny at her website. Jenny’s books are available there too.

Jenny can be found on Twitter; jennyjo121

Her books are all available at Amazon UK and Amazon US