Susan Hill - Andrew Marr TV - Kenneth Clark TV - Marilyn Manson - Norine Dresser - Simon Schama TV - Fred Dibnah TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Henry Hitchings - Jane Austen - Dorian Gray 2009 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Peter Ackroyd - Carved With Love: The Genius of British Woodwork TV - Thomas Hardy - Crimson Peak 2015 - Jonathan Foyle: People’s Palaces: The Golden Age of British Architecture TV - Richard Taylor TV - Tony Robinson TV -
They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial spectres and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs. Susan Hill, The Woman in Black
Allowing us to see our own world in a fresh and surprising way through a twisted, Gothic filter. Andrew Marr, Sleuths, Spies & Sourcerers II, BBC 2016
Great things were to be done in the next centuries of high Gothic. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 2/13: The Great Thaw, BBC 1969
The media has unfairly scapegoated the music industry and so-called Goth kids and has speculated, with no basis in truth, that artists like myself are in some way to blame. This tragedy was a product of ignorance, hatred and an access to guns. I hope the media’s irresponsible finger-pointing doesn’t create more discrimination against kids who look different. Marilyn Manson, re Columbine School Massacre
If a person wants to dress in black and sleep during the daytime and be awake at night and walk through the graveyards and listen to Gothic music, and that person is not hurting anyone ... I don’t see that that’s harming anyone. Norine Dresser, folklorist
Think of the Gothic cathedral and you think of the austerity of stone. Rows of saints and angels, and angels ushering the righteous into heaven and thrusting the damned into the halls of hell … The whole of the architectural design was meant to optimize that flood of heavenly coloured light. Shining down on you in Chartres cathedral were the stories of the Bible. Simon Schama, Civilisations 1e7: Radiance, BBC 2018
The magnificent town hall like this one here at Bolton is a grand example of Victorian civic pride. The success and prosperity that the industrial revolution brought to towns like this left us with some magnificent buildings. The Victorians loved to have everything ornate ... The great age of Victorian splendour. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain s1e6: Victorian Splendour, BBC 2002
Pugin had a great passion for Gothic architecture of the medieval cathedrals ... He really believed in it with his heart and soul. ibid.
The Houses of Parliament: this was the job that made Pugin’s name. He got it as a result of the old Palace of Westminster burning down in 1834 ... Pugin wanted to build something that would match Westminster Abbey next door. ibid.
Building began in 1837 and the Barry-Pugin partnership was right for the job. Pugin looked after the detail of the design. ibid.
What is Gothic? A word that implies the sinister, the supernatural, horror. It’s also a medieval style of architecture. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Gothic 1/3: Britain's Midnight Hour: Liberty Diversity Depravity, BBC 2014
A secret history of Britain itself during its greatest age of change. ibid.
The house he [Robert Walpole] built at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham – like his Gothic novel it’s a theatrical interpretation of the past. ibid.
Whimsical Gothic follies – eccentric medieval fantasies. ibid.
The cult of Ruins fell naturally into the cult of Nature. ibid.
As the modern world began to take shape it would be that dark side of Gothic which fed on anxiety and alienation – all the bad stuff – that really came into its own. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour 2/3: The City and the Soul
Mary Shelley: a novel about progress and the dangers that come with it that still sends a shiver up the spine today ... Frankenstein. ibid.
According to Blake art was the tree of life, science was the tree of death. ibid.
They were nicknamed Penny Dreadfuls, and they were popular because they tapped into working class fears about the modern city. ibid.
‘These ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards and coils itself to sleep in maggot numbers where the rain drips in and comes and goes fetching and carrying fever and sowing more evil in its every footprint.’ ibid. Dickens’ Bleak House
The Victorians loved Gothic colour, pageantry, chivalry, heraldry; they loved the idea of Gothic as a return to a spiritual world ... a fantasy of escaping from the present and into an idealised past. ibid.
Pugin, Contrasts – an argument for the superiority of the Gothic style. ibid.
The Houses of Parliament are the buildings for which Pugin is best remembered. ibid.
Vast institutions often became dumping grounds for problem people. ibid.
Gothic. It began with the desire to revive something that was dead: a style of medieval architecture. But it grew like graveyard ivy – more sinister at every twist and turn. By the mid-nineteenth century Gothic had spread in all direction. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Gothic: Britain’s Midnight Hour 3/3: Blood for Sale: Gothic Goes Global
Nowadays it’s everywhere. ibid.
‘The red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound’. ibid. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
‘My revenge is just begun. I spread it over centuries and time is on my side’. ibid.
In the world of the Gothic all roads lead to Dracula. ibid.
It held up a mirror to a society full of foreboding. ibid.
You can’t fault Morris’s idealism though ... He became more political ... the more militant Socialist League. ibid.
John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic ... The industrial revolution was a blight ... Printed by William Morris. ibid.
The greatest Gothic painter of the twentieth century is Francis Bacon. ibid.
We’re all Gothic now. ibid.
It’s the German Gothic Cathedral: Goethe likened it to: ‘A sublimely towering tree of God, with its thousand branches and millions of twigs.’ This is the Cathedral of Saint Peter. It was once the tallest building in the world. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Germany, BBC 2010
Crown of Thorns, the holiest relic in all of Christendom: Sainte Chapelle was built in flamboyant Gothic style to house the precious relic. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of France I: Plus Ca Change, BBC 2017
The inventor of the Gothic novel is Robert Walpole. Henry Hitchings, Birth of the British Novel, BBC 2011
She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Are you tired of looking at me yet? Certainly not. The more I look the more I see. Dorian Gray 2009 starring Ben Barnes & Colin Firth & Ben Chaplin & Rachel Hurd-Wood & Johnny Harris & Rebecca Hall & Emilia Fox & Fiona Shaw & Maryan d’Abo & Caoline Goodall et al, director Oliver Parker, Dorian in attic
Welcome to my little Hell Fire Club. ibid. Harry
There’s no shame in pleasure, Mr Gray. ibid.
This is my church [drinks]. ibid.
Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame. ibid.
Perhaps I should nail my soul to the devil’s altar. ibid. Dorian
There are no limits to the ugliness of old men. ibid. Firth
She loved you. She was going to have your child. And you killed her. ibid. Jim
There are no limits. ibid. Harry & Dorian
This will never age, never scar. ibid. Dorian to painter
If I told you, I’d have to kill you. ibid. Dorian