I still feel the heat, but you've not come back yet from Watling Street

[sovay]

It took all week, but I finally slept. The afternoon is full of brilliant sunshine which I am about to head out into. I am observing the boycott because I see no reason not to.

I had not re-read Tanith Lee's A Heroine of the World (1989) in at least a decade. All of the air still goes out of the tires of the second half for no obviously necessary reason, but I still enjoy the intricate jewelry of the first half and this time around discovered after a few chapters that Martin Jarvis had unexpectedly cast himself as the romantic antihero, the blond-maned, bitterly charming and compromised Thenser Zavion. I have no evidence that Lee had him in mind for the part. She was relatively open about her appropriation of actors for her characters, most famously Paul Darrow in Kill the Dead (1980), although she warned in the introduction to the 2013 reprint of that novel that "I think actually only Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jacqueline Pearce remained exactly physically like themselves throughout those several Lee novels they have adorned." But he has canonically a beautiful voice and it took no effort to hear its cast-iron crust after a harrowing duel, coolly deflecting the congratulations due a hero, "I think she thinks, quite rightly, he isn't much of one."

I am charmed that the Trials of Cato's "Bedlam Boys" (2022) establishes its lineage by opening with a distorted, recognizable sample of Steeleye Span.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I am impressed that you can catch her internal casting. I don't think I would ever pick up on that.

[thisbluespirit]

and Jacqueline Pearce remained exactly physically like themselves throughout those several Lee novels they have adorned."

<3<3<3

But of course she does! You couldn't do otherwise with her. Once she's walked into your head she would just rearrange it around her and find something fabulous to wear into the bargain.

that Martin Jarvis had unexpectedly cast himself as the romantic antihero, the blond-maned, bitterly charming and compromised Thenser Zavion.

Ha. XD These things will happen! It does sound like good casting for him, though. I would almost certainly have the same problem with a description like that. And, yeah, I'm sure you're right re. her own internal casting, but the man was around all the time she was writing being in some quite famous things and, as we all know by now, never off the radio. He could have crept in there a bit, you never know.

[asakiyume]

Interesting take on "Bedlam Boys"! I liked it, but even more I liked re-listening to the Steeleye Span version. So good.

[larryhammer]

I need to reread Heroine. It's been too long. I do remember the reticulated structure and wondering whether she'd tried too hard to make her story fit it.

[selkie]

“Bedlam Boys” is I think the fourth thing I heard you sing and the one that sold me on your corporeality, which the Menotti and the Lyke-Wake Dirge did not quite do.

[thistleingrey]

Yay, some sleep!

[anna_wing]

How fascinating! I'm still a huge fan of Blake's 7</i). Which Tanith Lee novels had someone who looked like Jacqueline Pearce?

[greenwoodside]

Trials of Cato! <3 I first heard them on Radio Nan Gàidheal a year or two ago. Their band name origin story amuses me almost as much as their music delights me.

[umadoshi]

Hooray for both sleep and sunshine! <3