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A Genius in Arcadia

Juliet Blaxland

rank 1001

A Genius in Arcadia

Juliet Blaxland

The Wizard of Durham and the Shugborough Code: an architectural whodunnit mystery tour, exploring idyllic follies, a Menagerie and a Hermit's Cell, looking for clues.

D OUOSVAVV M

The Shugborough Code is a cryptic inscription on the Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough Hall; a Holy Grail-hunter's dream. One day, an article appeared in The Daily Telegraph: 'It has confounded some of the finest minds of the last 150 years, and proved irresistible to hundreds of conspiracy theorists...' But it was the accompanying photograph of the Shepherd's Monument which had the effect of an instant architectural madeleine, prompting a nostalgic search for a tatty old blue-bound manuscript...

The story which follows is an introduction to an unsung national treasure. The chief protagonist, our hero, is Thomas Wright, a most endearing character: astronomer to the aristocracy; architect of castles for cows; eccentric landscape designer; artful code-setting suspect; a genius in Arcadia...

'I have recently met with much pleasure in the acquaintance of Mr. Wright, a great mathematician and a very ingenious and good-natured Man. I have been at his House, which is the strangest-looking place I ever beheld, and appears very much like the Abode of a Wizard.' (1738)

This is part of a mission to popularise 'The Wizard of Durham' and his extraordinary architecture; to 'save from oblivion' Wright's memory, as his devoted friends wished to do.

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Fox Pop London

Juliet Blaxland

rank 499

Fox Pop London

Juliet Blaxland

London is overrun with foxes, just as the President is due on a State Visit...

"Unspeakable, Uneatable, Unmissable!" ******

London's fox population has finally reached crisis point, affecting trade and tourism, and disrupting the lives of millions. To cap it all, the President is due to arrive on a State Visit next week. It's time to launch Operation FOX POP LONDON and call in The F.A.F.

The Foxpert Action Force, led by Lily Todhunter, a vet, can expect spirited opposition from the SCRUFFs, led by Dan Bunting, an 'animal rights parkour artist' who speaks his own purdy precast parly. But there is a more sinister threat lurking, in the form of Sir Simon de Vile, mock-smiley boss of LyCo, and of Vulpes, Vulpes & Wolfe (and subsidiary bad company).

"There was something of the dainty doily about Sir Slimy de Vile..."

Global diplomacy and human health is at stake. Can the disparate fox-interested tribes unite against the interfering interlopers, to pull off a super-humane feat of fox-vanishing in time for the State Visit?
Will the fastidious President be impressed?

Or will it all descend into a typically British foxy fiasco?

Goodies, baddies, a villain, a car chase, children, animals, love...
FOX POP LONDON ticks every fox!

'Filmic Fiction' [not a screenplay]
A Squealing Comedy, 2012

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The Easternmost House: A Year....

Juliet Blaxland

rank 1796

The Easternmost House: A Year....

Juliet Blaxland

Utopian cliff-top dispatches from a windblown coastal cottage, conjuring a magical landscape of light and sky and water, and the wild creatures that share it.

Being the first to see the sun each day invests this place with a primitive spirit of optimism

This little book may bore you to tears or send you into a hypnotic trance with its unavoidable soundtrack of crashing waves. The 'characters' may be wild animals or birds and the 'plot' may be a sandstorm or a shipwreck, but all of it is true and real.

Life here is brightened and disrupted by nature and the outdoors, but it is not the neatly visited outdoors of rucksacks and rambling and the nature-spotter's notebook. This is the lived-in outdoors of the everyday, of the firewood forager, the improviser, the poet-adventurer.

This is essentially a book of solace and escape: from modernity, from urban life, from the tyranny of office walls and hours, and even from the mass of humanity itself. I wish you could come and stay in this bright landscape of land and sea and sky, but you can always visit the Easternmost House vicariously instead, cleverly avoiding the untidy inconveniences and creature discomforts inherent in a life lived so closely connected to the natural world. There is no better place than this.

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Crumbling Country

Juliet Blaxland

rank 690

Crumbling Country

Juliet Blaxland

The cliff is crumbling; society is crumbling; England is crumbling; but can old-fashioned values triumph against a tide of modernity during one sunny Suffolk summer?

This is the England of sunlit uplands and daisies on lawns, of Ladybird Books and P.G. Wodehouse, of plimsolls and wooden tennis rackets, where village cricket still happens and blue wheelie-bins overflow bounteously on a hot summer's day...

There is a recycling crisis in the outbuildings, and the local dearth of a crucial ingredient for making elderflower cordial is a bit of a trial. An unidentified livestock-worrying creature may be on the prowl in this gentle landscape, and some prize-winning free-range pigs need to be rounded up and rescued off the beach. An artistic crop circle is slain by the roar of big yellow combines, making clouds of harvest dust in the great drought. The church is empty, hunting has been banned and inventive fund-raising ideas are running dry. To cap it all, people no longer seem able to write proper thank-you letters.

The country is clearly going to the dogs; but a stiff upper lip and the solid old-fashioned values of rural England will surely prevail over the transient irritations of modern life...

Cold Comfort Farm hides Straw Dogs in the woodshed.
[Complete manuscript available]

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