“He started as one man I knew and then changed into myself.” That’s how the author described his most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. And on the evidence currently available there’s no reason to doubt him. Discoveries made by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Horst Kruse suggest that the ‘one man’ he knew was Max Gerlach, whose…
George Shanks and the Protocols Matrix
On the 100th anniversary of the book being exposed as a forgery, a recent discovery I made in the archives in Dublin suggests that the 1920 British translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Jewish Peril) was not the work of ‘lone wolf’ anti-Semite George Shanks, but part of a sophisticated propaganda…
Monocled Mutineer – Mutiny at the BBC
Why did Bleasdale’s drama cause such a media storm? Why was the BBC Director Alasdair Milne removed? And what were Willie Whitelaw’s links to Toplis’ killer?
The Enchanting Secret Behind the Monocled Mutineer
Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. What makes the legend of the Monocled Mutineer such a compelling mystery?
Absolution — F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby’s Forgotten Prologue
Many people won’t know that The Great Gatsby once had a prologue. It was ditched by Fitzgerald when he realised that it didn’ fit with the ’general neatness’ of the book’s design. Instead, he offered to H. L. Mencken’s new American Mercury magazine for a $118. It’ s a deeply enigmatic tale, so what is…
A Film about Studio Electrophonique. Ken Patten — Sheffield’s Joe Meek.
I have an entry in my ‘Dairy Diary’ for 1984: Wednesday, July 18, 1984: “Demo Day. Got up at 8.00am and had a drink, then took sarnies and guitar up to Frazer’s. We left for Sheffield about 9.00am. We got there about 9.40 and got properly started about 10.05. We did Freezeframe first, then Friction (1…
J.G. ROBIN — The Incredible Rise and Fall of the Ukrainian Gatsby
The scholar Thomas P. Riggio was among the first to explore the similarities between Theodore Dreiser’s Mr X in Twelve Men and Fitzgerald’s titular hero, Jay Gatsby, but few if any have explored Robin’s life in any real detail. This mini-book takes a look at the life and times of the sky-rocket millionaire from his…
Colwell and Young. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s trip to London, November 1925
In an entry in his ledger dated November 1925 Scott mentions his second trip to London. Like previous entries it is difficult to piece together any kind of meaningful narrative from the handful of names and places he lists and much of our understanding of this trip has been gleaned from supporting diary entries made…
Venice: The City of Dreamers. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ruth Sturtevant and the 1921 trip to Venice
Before heading south to Rome, Scott and Zelda spent several days in Venice — the so-called ‘Queen of the Adriatic’. As with Paris and London, little of what they did here was ever recorded. In letters and writings the pair produced after their return home the references and allusions amount to little more than scraps….
A Confederacy of Dreamers: Scott Fitzgerald, his father and the American Civil War.
A discovery I made recently reveals that the best man at the wedding of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s parents, Edward and Mollie, was a lineal descendant of America’s first president, General George Washington. A look at the Fitzgerald family’s links to Washington D.C, Sixteenth Street and America’s founding fathers. During his time at prep school and…
поддельные новости: The Monocled Mutineer and the Red Under the Bed documentary
As news emerges that actor Ricky Tomlinson and members of the so-called Shrewsbury 24 are to have their 1970s convictions reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, we look at the role played in that conviction by Woodrow Wyatt’s Red Under the Bed documentary. The Monocled Mutineer wasn’t the only occasion that the book’s author…
Back to New York with Ambassador Bryce. Freedom in the Old World. Censorship in the New World.
In this final look look at Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s trip to Europe in 1921 we see the couple head back on the RMS Celtic to New York. Topics include The Anglo-Irish Treaty, the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Shane Leslie’s review of Ulysses, Prince Val Engalitcheff, the Cotillo-Jesse Clean Book Bill and Sherwood Anderson’s…
American Dreamer — Listen now at Audible.co.uk. Who was the Real Jay Gatsby?
It’s 11.30am on Friday, June 23 2023. I’ve been rifling the archives and punching in keywords for the past few hours. Suddenly I’m excited. I’ve found a report in a copy of Variety Magazine dated July 27, 1927. It’s unlikely to have been seen by another pair of eyes for close to a 100 years….
Fitzgerald back in London: The Hotel Cecil, the Empire Council and the Fourth of July Celebrations
In Part One of this look at Scott Fitzgerald’s trip to Europe in the summer of 1921 we discovered that when the author left for England on the R.M.S Aquitania on May 3rd he was joined by some of the most prominent men in New York and Washington including the new American Ambassador, George Harvey,…