#character. elizabeth thatcher

[abardnamedreginald]

im a wolf-demon-salamander-grey treefrog-katydid-cricket-luna moth-klingon-trad vampire-cat-romulan-harry potter wizard-gnome-drow-orc-wood elf-high elf-werewolf-twilight vampire-chihuahua-android-bard-druid-sorcerer-d&d wizard-lotr wizard-mind flayer-kraken-owlbear-genetically modified human-andes mint-harry potter merperson-h20 mermaid-great white shark-raven named nevermore-amontillado-sewer clown-animatronic-ink person-reality bender-ringwraith-chicken-fairy-telescreen-multibear-manic pixie dream girl-d class-horcrux-dragon-unicorn-pegasus-among us crewmate-among us imposter-game master-sharpie king size marker-dwarf-dragonborn-toothbrush-rock-paper-scissors-lizard-vulcan-politician-god-phone guy-icebreakers ice cubes pineapple-a doctor not a miracle worker-troll-ent-poodle-rabbit-Bear.-orange zombie-purple zombie-green zombie-professor plum-col. mustard-in the library-with a knife-hoola dancer-fish-villager-pelecan-defense against the dark arts professer-mafia boss-peep rabbit-peep chicken-gymnast-hairbrush-philosopher-music freak-school teacher-kidnapper-police lieutenant-farmer-trash can-dumpster out back-turtle-tribble-my little pony-kratt brother-high diver-pearl diver, dive, dive, deeper-chef-fire-earth-water-wind-wasp-bee-hornet-yellowjacket-mud dabber-grasshopper-rattlesnake-armadillo-cowboy-flashlight-starfleet science officer-harlet-elephant-gater-muppet-emo-goth-preppy-teabag-loser-sucker-mouse-rat-a puppet-a pauper-a pirate-a poet-a pawn-and a king-father albert-the pope-a nun-pastor jeff-gambler-metalhead-death rocker-the grim reaper-angel-lighthouse-paw patrol dog-hobbit-starfish-sponge-crab-squid-shrimp-jellyfish-chipmunk-hammerhead shark-nurse shark-humpback whale-blue whale-orca-sexual harrassment panda-south park character-jakoffasaurus-scrabble board-ouija board-pillow-toilet paper-period pad-tampon-baby diaper-elderly diaper-martian-touch tone telephone-starfleet operations-starfleet command-kirk-spock-bones-sulu-chekov-uhura-scotty-yeoman rand-KHAN!!!-mudd-the uss enterprise-the uss reliant-botany bay-v'ger-valeris-saavik-sybok-surak-sarek-the abbreviation 'idk'-sheldon-leonard-penny-howard-raj-amy-bernadette-mary cooper-george sr-george jr-missy cooper-meemaw-tam-dr sturgis-dr linkletter-dr jack bright-dr clef-dr gears-dr kondraki-dr mann-dr iceberg-dr crow-dr rights-dr sherman-scp 049-scp 3008-scp 4231-scp 166-scp 682-scp 2521-scp 590-O5 6-bill cipher-stanley pines-stanford pines-dipper-mabel-wendy-soos-schmebulok-gideon-mcgucket-dipper goes to taco bell-sheriff blubs-deputy durland-tad strange-andy taylor-william afton-michael afton-elizabeth afton-crying child-henry emily-charlotte emily-dave miller-jack kennedy-dee kennedy-peter kennedy-steven stevenson-aragorn-sam-frodo-merry-pippin-boromir-legolas-gimli-gandalf-faramir-denethor-sauron-elrond-thranduil-harry-hermione-ron-voldemort-pettigrew.-moony-padfoot-prongs-snape-edward-bella-alice!!-carlisle-charlie-cthulhu-greg heffley-pennywise-bendy-sammy-norman-jack-alice (susie)-allison-henry stien-joey drew-bruenor battlehammer-raskolnikov-heather-heather-heather-veronica-jd-kurt-ram-martha-kurt cobain-david bowie-freddie mercury-hozier-mitski-lemon demon-jack stauber-tally hall-hamilton-burr-jefferson-madison-washington-phillip-angelica-eliza-peggy-king george iii-king henry viii-ben franklin-catherine of aragon-anne boleyn-jane seymour-anne of cleves-katherine howard-catherine parr-dracula-𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂-evan hansen-conner murphey-john adams-raymond barron-fred randall-jane doe-ocean-noel-mischa-constance-ricky-karnak-vergil-alternate-thatcher davis-ruth-dave-cesar-mark-adam-sarah-jonah-evelyn-gabriel-trump-biden-sunny-basil-kel-aubrey-hero-mari-vanessa (the mean girl that kinda likes u)-tux the linux penguin-perry the platypus hybrid princess...dont fw me

[whinlatter]

Hello Elizabeth, I’ve loved all your metas so far, and you do a great job of pointing things out that we as readers may have overlooked. You honestly made me want to read the HP series again because I feel like I missed out on so much. Apologies if you’ve already done a meta on this before and I missed it, but how abused do you think Harry was by the Dursleys? We know the basics: malnutrition, neglect, and emotional abuse for the majority of his life, but I remember reading the book as a child and getting this uneasy feeling that he was being physically abused. If you read between the lines and pay attention to his interactions with the Dursleys in the beginning of each book, I think it's indirectly mentioned... but maybe I've been reading it wrong all these years? What is your take on this?

TW: generalised non-specific discussions of child abuse and neglect

Thank you so much for the question and for reading all my jumbled thoughts! Totally relate - I re-read the books for the first time in the better part of two decades last summer and was like, sorry all this stuff was there the whole time and I missed it? I learn so much for other writers' close readings revisiting these texts (@ashesandhackles's re-reads spring to mind, but there are many others) and love to be a part of these ongoing conversations.

On the Dursleys and child abuse... I haven't written anything on this before, and the short answer is: yes, I think it's clear that Harry experienced some level of physical abuse at the hands of the Dursleys, at the hands of both Vernon, Petunia, Marge and, to a lesser extent, Dudley.

That said, I do have some caveats. One is that I think fandom speculation over the extent of the physical abuse can sometimes risk overstating the canonical scale of the physical abuse (any abuse, including psychological abuse, is awful enough, and some fics claiming canon-compliancy can sometimes risk gratuitous depictions of really horrific abuse in problematic ways). Two, I think sometimes fanfic depictions of Harry at the Dursleys' can risk overstating how canonically Harry perceives his treatment at the Dursleys, in ways that risks predetermining how child victims of abuse ought to feel about their experiences rather than how they describe them themselves. Three, and the one that's particularly interesting to me as a historian, is how Harry's treatment at the Dursleys shines this fascinating light onto changing audience tastes and attitudes towards depictions of harm to children in mass-market children's and YA literature between the time of HP's initial publication and the present day.

I've done a longer little lunch-break discussion of some of this below the cut. Yes this quickly became a long-winded discussion of the character of the abused orphan/child in the publishing market for late twentieth century children and YA literature and Thatcher's Britain. I am sorry about that, and know that I apparently simply cannot be stopped.

It's undeniable that what happened to Harry at the Dursley's was child abuse and neglect, for all the reasons you rightly cite. Both Harry and the loving adult caregivers he finds in the Wizarding World recognise that he is abused and neglected at the hands of the Dursleys. This includes physical abuse, with examples readers rightly cite off the bat: Harry being held tightly around the throat by Vernon and later citing 'a need to duck' around his uncle (OotP), Petunia trying to hit twelve-year-old Harry with a frying pan (CoS), Marge hitting Harry with her walking stick (PoS), and repeated instances of the Dursleys withholding food and confining Harry to small physical spaces. I hope it goes without saying that these instances are plainly incidents of physical violence against children. Each is horrific on their own terms, and likely part of a pattern of repeated physical roughness and low-level violence towards a child (I say low-level only because the strangling incident takes place after Dudley appears to have been harmed in OotP, and Harry's response to Vernon holding him by the throat suggests this violent incident is particularly extreme even for Vernon).

It's also clear, though, that while Harry bitterly hates the Dursleys for all of the harm they have done to him, he does seem to see this physical abuse as part of a broader set of failings they committed as his caregivers, and doesn't single-out physical abuse as uniquely traumatising. Confinement, being shouted at, and failing to protect him from bullying by other children are all crimes the Dursleys commit against him that he clearly views as just as harmful as the physical abuse he endures at their hands. We don't know how Harry the character would come to think about his experiences with the Dursleys in adulthood, of course, and it's reasonable to speculate that he may come to acknowledge himself as a child abuse victim and have either suppressed memories of traumatic incidents he endured as a child. With that said, I personally feel a certain level of discomfort with fan speculation about further or escalated incidents of child endangerment against Harry at Privet Drive beyond what we see either in the text or is implied within patterns of the Dursleys' behaviour. What the Dursleys do to him in canon is bad enough as it is, and exaggerated depictions of the Dursleys' treatment can get dangerously close to implicitly suggesting child abuse has to be a certain level of physically egregious to be sympathetic to the reader that the canonical text doesn't achieve, which I think is intensely problematic.

One thing I will say, though, is that I think the example of the Dursleys' treatment of Harry is a fascinating case study in HP's reception history and the cultural acceptability of depicting and using child abuse as a plot device. The topic is such a good a litmus test for the gulf between how the series was read and consumed when first published and how it is increasingly thought about and revisited by audiences. Changing attitudes about Harry's experiences with the Dursleys reflect how HP as a piece of literature which was written, edited, published and marketed to a consumer audience with certain expectations about depictions of harm to children, but which now continues to be closely re-read/revisited through the films and consumed by a market audience with increasingly different comfort levels and expectations about child welfare.

Children's and YA literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century had certain certain norms and conventions. Often, this took the form of the orphan child as either the protagonist or as a key sympathetic hero. Lots of media used the abused child both as an immediately sympathetic character for audiences to empathise with, and also used the absence of things like family, safety and love as central motivators for these characters, which then sets up the plot of the media at hand to resolve. The literature that for most UK school-children became canonical between 1980 and 1997, so in Thatcher/John Major's Britain, often centred characters who were usually orphaned or bereaved and who experience child abuse, neglect or mistreatment, often depicted in a slapstick and almost pantomime-esque way. This includes predecessors to HP like Roald Dahl's Matilda (1988), Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom (1981) and Jacqueline Wilson's various books but especially Tracy Beaker (1991). This period also saw enduringly popular older works of literature experience a resurgence as older English-language TV or film adaptations made in the UK or Hollywood became even more commercially successful and entered 'classic' status - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Roald Dahl wrote the Child-Catcher into the 1968 film - he's not in the book!), Ken Loach's Kes (1968), Peter Pan (including Hook (1991), the Spielberg version), or mid-nineteenth century works of literature that became commercially successful popular musicals after 1950, like Oliver Twist or Cosette in Les Mis. Even in media where children appear in dysfunctional but fundamentally loving homes - Billy Elliot (2000) - or face physical violence at the hands of adult villains - Home Alone (1990) - we can see from both critical reception and popular audiences responses that the consuming publicly were on the whole less likely to be disturbed by either violence or the threat of violence against children than audiences, especially young audiences, three or four decades later, who typically find such depictions, even in their slapstick form, abhorrent.

In this period of writing (and particularly publishing and/or market media production beyond print fiction), there was far greater flippancy about depicting violence or the threat of violence against children as an empathy device for readers, especially young readers. I think this is for reasons that I think relate to changing ideas (and legislation) around children's agency, child welfare, endangerment, protection and the boundaries of the state and family life in late twentieth century Britain and elsewhere (a mammoth topic for another day). These were increasingly pressing political issues into the 1990s, especially the late Thatcherite/Major period into the Blair years. The violence that was depicted in literature during this transitional period almost always had a slightly farcical, or even slapstick or comic dynamic to it that I think is true also of the Dursleys around Harry in those early books - the frying pan being a classic example. We're supposed to think of the Dursleys as ridiculous, a parody of Thatcherite Home Counties surburban culture. While authorial intent is to show a character defined by the absence of familial love at the hands of clear villains, the Dursleys aren't intended to be read as vicious child abusers inflicting irreparable psychological and physical harm on a pre-teen child. They're supposed to be within this genre convention of cruel but ridiculous adults who behave badly and embarrass themselves and who the reader is supposed to immediately root against.

My point, really, is that we as readers can certainly revisit these books decades later having absorbed this greater popular literacy about child trauma responses and PTSD and see these characters differently, but we should keep in mind that this is a lot about the changing sets of ideas and expectations we have as a reading audience than it does about how the author and the text's editors intended these characters to be received. If we are reading the Dursleys' treatment of Harry and thinking - how is Harry remarkably fine after all of this? How could Dumbledore leave him with these people? - we're asking questions that HP as an artefact of literature fulfiling certain genre conventions was never set up to be able to answer. I just think is something that fandom discussions and fanfiction authors (particularly those drawn to canon-compliancy) need take into consideration when trying to reconcile their horror at the Dursleys' treatment of Harry and interest in how this abuse would shape him as a character, with an interest in remaining true to the canonical text.

(I absolutely don't mean to be overly relativist about this, and want to make clear I'm talking about depictions of children's abuse in literature. In reality, children who have experienced violence and harm at the hands of adult caregivers have always felt some level of pain and distress. My point here is less about the lived experience of abuse and neglect, and more about changing cultural norms, attitudes and tastes about fictional depictions about abuse and neglect.)

[thecrownnet]

Oscar-winners, acting legends and a very famous Doctor have all portrayed characters in The Crown Season 1 - 6 ♚

Queen Elizabeth II - Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton 

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Matt Smith, Tobias Menzies and Jonathan Pryce 

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon - Vanessa Kirby, Helena Bonham Carter and Lesley Manville 

Other key cast in The Crown:

Eileen Atkins as Queen Mary (season 1)

Victoria Hamilton (seasons 1–2), Marion Bailey (seasons 3–4), and Marcia Warren (seasons 5-6) as Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother

Ben Miles (season 1, featured season 2) and Timothy Dalton (season 5) as Group Captain Peter Townsend 

Greg Wise (seasons 1–2) and Charles Dance (season 3, featured season 4) as Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma

Jared Harris as King George VI (season 1, featured season 2)

John Lithgow as Winston Churchill (season 1, featured seasons 2–3)

Alex Jennings (season 1, featured season 2) and Derek Jacobi (featured season 3) as Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor

Anton Lesser as Harold Macmillan (season 2)

Matthew Goode (season 2) and Ben Daniels (season 3) as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon

Jason Watkins as Harold Wilson (season 3)

Erin Doherty (seasons 3–4) Claudia Harrison (seasons 5-6) as Princess Anne

Josh O'Connor (seasons 3–4) and Dominic West (seasons 5-6) as Charles, Prince of Wales 

Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher (season 4)

Emma Corrin (season 4) and Elizabeth Debicki (seasons 5-6) as Diana, Princess of Wales 

Emerald Fennell (season 4, featured season 3) and Olivia Williams (seasons 5-6) as Camilla Shand 

Stream The Crown Seasons 1-4 on Netflix.

The Crown Season 5 premieres Wednesday 9 November on Netflix.

- The Crown: Who’s played Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and key cast through the years?, BT .com Sept 27, 2022

[likeabxrdinflight]

I definitely miss when the crown was more political, but I guess they were too scared to touch the politics of the 90s and 2000s too much, given it's all still very recent. tony blair really could have been a much more prominent character given how much they highlighted figures like churchill and thatcher and even anthony eden in previous seasons. some of the bigger historical moments are handwaved away too, when JFK and the suez crisis and aberfan and even the fog from the 1950s got entire episodes. it's very odd to me that there wasn't a 9/11 or iraq episode that dealt with how the fallout of all that was handled for blair. honestly it could have been two episodes at least, and previous seasons would have done it. they gave the suez crisis like, three or four episodes. thatcher got several dedicated to her and the falklands and managed to balance that with the diana story just fine.

the past two seasons really became the diana show, however, and the entire thing suffered for it. the main subject, elizabeth herself, was relegated to a background character. imelda staunton just didn't get the material to work with that her predecessors did. it really felt like the show lost some of its teeth. and like, yes, elizabeth debicki did incredible as diana, but lord they dragged that story out far too long and ultimately I think the show suffered for it. they let the interpersonal drama between charles, diana, and camilla consume everything else and the show really lost something of itself for it. even diana herself gets kind of screwed over for this- her story becomes about her failed marriage and relationship drama, and not any of the other incredible things she did with her life.

all that said, this last batch of episodes were still a lot better than season five and six part one. it finally put the focus back on elizabeth and gave imelda something to do. the margaret episode was incredible. there was at least some return of the politics, albeit I still think they missed the mark with blair. but I think the show ends on an interesting note, one I think a lot of people felt at the time of the actual queen's death- that the show's over, and it's never going to be the same after her. whatever becomes of the real monarchy, it's not going to be the same. elizabeth held that shit together with sheer force of will and glue, and I have my doubts that it will still be intact at the end of my lifetime- I think peter morgan does, too, though he seems a bit sadder about it than I am.

also I am positive the last couple scenes, and possibly a good chunk of that last episode, were re-written and shot after the real elizabeth died. but what they did with that was...I could see some people finding it tacky, but I thought it was nice. so while I think the last two seasons were overall weaker, it mostly stuck the landing. good show, interesting reflection on the monarchy, had it's issues, but good, generally. made you think a bit.

and I will say, and I've said this before, that the show is overall a bit wishy-washy on its opinion of the monarchy. I think that's still true. but it very much is, and always was, about the way the crown kills the people who get too close to it. and this last season was no different- I've said before that season one was about the slow death of a young woman named elizabeth windsor, murdered by elizabeth regina.

season six outright states that, and in many ways, I think that was the thesis of the entire show. the crown kills the personhood of the one who wears it and harms everyone in its immediate vicinity. what that means, exactly, and whether there's a good purpose behind it, might be left up to the viewer to decide.

[xwaywardxsoulsx]

indie smut rp blog featuring a mix of canon and original characters interested in a/b/o, breeding, pregnancy, and other kinks. Mun is over 30, and all muses are 21+ . information under the cut. Dash only only, i dont write on discord or in IMS. Blog contains potentially triggering and t*boo plots, this is your only warning I can no longer answer gif smut memes. My state has been blocked because of the ID law.

Emily Mason - 25 - Sydney Sweeney

Luna Barlowe -24 - Kiernan Shipka

Billie Wolfe - 36 - Alexandra Daddario

Rose Thatcher - 24 - Hailee Steinfeld

Alexis 'Lexi' Dawson- 40 - Kate Mara

Samantha Taylor - 30 - Halston Sage

Brooke Gilmore 35 - Sophia Bush

Barbara Gordon - 28 - Emma Stone

Kara Zor El - 24 - Lili Reinhart/Melissa Benoist

Diana Prince - 35- Marie Avgeropoulos

Carol Danvers - 51 (looks in her 30s) - Brie Larson

Wanda Maximoff- Elizabeth Olsen - 31

Natasha Romanoff- 33 - Scarlett Johansson

Zeus - n/a- Rachel McAdams

Aphrodite- n/a- Margot Robbie

Hades - N/A- Jenna Ortega

Kinks and Rules under the cut

A/BO

Pregnancy

Breeding

Taboo (incest, etc)

corruption

Daddy/Mommy kink

bondage

im sure theres others but i cant think of them

I only write with female muses

all my muses have male genitalia

my muses are 18+ and I ask that your muses be the same. If I find out otherwise I'll block you.

i dont write on discord, if you dont write on tumblr (Dash only) then im not the person for you. Sorry

[justagalwhowrites]

Ooh she’s back!! ☺️ I hope you had a fun and relaxing vacay!

So thinking about any future characters you’d write for and work you have/haven't seen, what about Ezra? I was sincerely pleased by how much I liked Prospect. I don’t usually go for scifi but the lower budget look of the thing really appealed to me. I don’t even know if it was intentional, but I loved how all the ships/equipment looked kinda normal? Like mechanical in a way we’d understand and not just scifi deus ex machina. Plus Ezra is cute af. And I love Sophie Thatcher. I haven’t seen The Bubble, Kingsmen, or The Great Wall. I think they might put me off a bit but I love his clips.

Also, I would love to know your names for Doc & Bambi (and NIT if she has one). Reader inserts don’t really work on me so I actually like a look/name 😃

Hi Bestie!!!

I am, indeed, back!

My vacation was LOVELY. I got to see some of my oldest friends, experienced some very cool art installations, went wine tasting, ate great food. I just got to love on some of my favorite people and it was the best! I just wrote almost nothing at all. Like fuck all. Like 2,000 words. That's it. I'm lame.

I really want to write for Ezra! I just haven't had something come out and grab me yet as a story idea or a character thought, either? But I do fully intend to write for him. I'm a sucker for sci-fi. It's one of my first loves and exploring worlds outside our own is so much fun. That's probably why my first fic was Mando, the Star Wars universe has had me in a chokehold for like 27 years! Prospect is definitely on the list. I just need to think a bit harder!

As far as character names go, they're below the cut! Please know these might be true for me but I don't consider them canon. Their names are whatever you want them to be! But yeah, I know just about everything about my characters lol most of it doesn't end up in the story but I like knowing it, the names are just a part of that :)

Names :D Here are the character names and why they're called what they're called!

Doc - Rachel Elizabeth Evans. Rachel is also her grandmother's first name and Elizabeth is a family middle name. Evans is her mom's last name. Joel and Tommy frequently called her Rach before they really fell into the whole Kid thing but Joel tried to use her real, full first name around Sarah to make sure Sarah was respectful and used the name Rachel.

Bambi - Ophelia Marie Brooks. Bambi's mom DESPERATELY wanted a hyper feminine and refined sounding name for her only daughter, something that she felt would make her sound like a true southern belle. Of course, Bambi had other ideas. So yeah, she was getting announced at rodeos as Ophelia Brooks before getting yeeted off a horse lmfao Weirdly, Bambi was pretty cool with her name. She liked that it wasn't the same as anyone else's she was in school with because she didn't feel much connection to any of those people. It gave her some room to find her own identity because she didn't know another Ophelia. Richie called her Lili when he was little and couldn't say Ophelia and her pet name as a girl was Ladybug when she was really small (and forever for her mother) and that just became Bug when it became clear that there wasn't much ladylike about Bambi.

Beautiful - Chloe Renee Myers. Not too much of a story behind this name! Renee is a family middle name and Chloe was just the name that her mom liked when she was a teenager and pregnant. Myers is her dad's last name, something Beautiful is not thrilled about. She is very much looking forward to taking the name Miller! She's also kind of happy that she's going to keep the same initials because she bought herself a monogrammed necklace as a treat your self thing when she finished college and she's like "oh sweet, that's still going to be accurate!"

If you read the names, I'm dying to know if you think they fit the characters or think they're way off base or if you had something else in mind.

Thanks for reading!! Love you!!!!

[mermaidsirennikita]

i'm rewatching the crown s5 and god the charles propaganda is working over time. i didn't even realize how heavy handed it was at the time because i was too much in shock over how bad the season was but they really're pushing how modern and progressive he is! look at all the good work he has done! poor charles diana and the press are so mean to him :( the tampon gate episode literally ends with him breakdancing with some kids (???) with text saying how many people he has helped with his charity work. pray tell what brand of crack cocaine was peter morgan smoking?

I honestly have no idea, dude. Because if you were to ask me beforehand, I would've said:

Season 1--Great TV, if a little more conventional than other seasons; dominated by EXTREMELY good and character-setting performances across the board (I feel like Peter Townsend was the only semi-major player who didn't stand out, but in s2 it became very clear that Townsend being boring was The Point). Jared Harris wasn't even a true lead and he made me cry multiple times. Claire and Matt (and I say this as someone who generally doesn't care for Matt Smith) are superb. Lithgow? Knocked it out with a VERY well-known personality who's been played by other major actors. Vanessa Kirby? A definitive Margaret. Elizabeth gives Philip the ol' kneel and deliver. Amazing.

Season 2--Probably the best season of the show (even if the Kennedy episode was.... bad.... I feel like every one of the first four seasons has an episode that isn't great and is kind of totally out of step with the rest, and now I realize it was a harbinger of doom). Makes you root for a pair of objectively horrible people in an objectively miserable (if oddly loving...?) marriage. Matthew Goode shows up and does 60s excellence with Vanessa Kirby. No major standout PM performances on a Lithgow, but still, really good ones. (And I've come to realize ever since s5 and s6 dropped the ball--getting really good actors to play the PMs and seeing random glimpses of their lives was such a mainstay of the first four seasons, omg. HOW IS TONY BLAIR SO BORING???? WE KNOW THIS JACKASS.) Philip almost does a murder suicide with tiny Charles in that plane. It's GREAT.

Season 3--I wasn't as big a fan at first, but it's aged into a really solid season of TV. I think it took Olivia, who I think is one of the greatest actresses working right now so this isn't shade, a while to feel comfortable in the role. Tobias Menzies was immediately fab casting, though; I don't think I've ever seen a less than good performance from him, tbh. Helena Bonham-Carter isn't as good as Vanessa, but still entertaining and fun; and while Tony is not nearly as good in this season, he's barely there. BUT even if it's not the strongest season, you get Josh O'Connor and he is SO. AMAZINGLY. GOOD. He turns an awkward community theater performance by Charles into this intense monologue (was Charles that good an actor? No but who cares). He talks wistfully about how he'll only get a life after his mom like, dies in a helicopter crash or something. "mUMMY I HAVE A VOICE"/"NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR IT" hands down best Olivia line reading of the season if not her entire tenure on the show.

Season 4--Fabulous TV, dials up the soap opera drama, Emma Corrin is a perfect young Diana and Josh gets into his full bag as Charles. Olivia sets this tone between total unfeeling frost and a weird goofy humor that leads to the frankly hysterical "DO I have a favorite kid???" episode, where we don't know that it's Andrew but we kNOW. It's Andrew. The sense of doom builds up. Gillian Anderson devours as Margaret Thatcher. The ending with the cameras going off as we pull in on Emma Corrin's teary reflective eyes after Diana is lowkey??? Threatened???? By Philip???? Much more affecting than Diana's literal death in s6.

Yeah, man. I don't know. Peter has always very clearly been a royalist to me, but he seemed for a long time like a royalist more focused on Elizabeth and his fascination with and vast empathy for her. Charles... always got a sympathetic enough edit, sure, but in the sense that you got WHY he's such an emotionally deficient doorknob. Season 4 portrays him as outright emotionally abusive and? Tbh? Surprisingly predatory. That's something I think gets glossed over a lot. But Peter doesn't make Charles devoid of physical attraction to Diana, which I think a lot of takes on this story do. And he wasn't devoid of attraction to her. There were brief bright spots in their early marriage where Diana as much as said she couldn't keep him off her (and this was Charles so that was probs like thrice a week I dunno). There's been a lot of speculation that he and Diana DID sleep together before their wedding day; it wasn't this sterile thing it's often depicted as, at least not always.

And I think that the perceived sterility of the relationship has led some to overlook the fact that Diana got engaged to him before she was 20. She met him when she was underage and he was dating her sister. The Crown SHOWED that. Josh O'Connor PLAYED IT like Charles was checking out a 16 year old girl while he was all of 28 and about to go out with her sister within minutes. It's so deliberate? I don't know why anyone would ever be able to... not get it. So we go from that to "well yeah he had this awkward moment with his mistress, but everyone actually saw it as two people being in love" which just isn't historically accurate lmao. Charles and Camilla still get dogged out by that to this day. And look, I'm not judging what people are into--I more so judge the nature of the relationship in terms of how it pertained to, I don't know, his wife and kids, and this idea that people were NOT weirded out by it at the time lmao. Even people who aren't actively against Charles... the vast majority don't see him as this GREAT CHARISMATIC CHANGEMAKER lmao. Unless you're writing a biography of him in which he's feeding you sources.

I mean, I'll give credit where credit is due--he does seem genuinely into environmentalism, even if that's subsequently contradicted by his actions (though perhaps not as badly as is the case with Wills). He apparently dislikes Trump. Cool! But lol, this idea that Charles was really changing the world by like... doing charity work... that all royals do...................... Topped off by breakdancing......

It's SO cringe. I don't know if Peter got threats lmao. I don't know if he saw how much he made the audience hate the royals in s4 and went "oh no, that wasn't my intent" (and I will say--I do think that actors can affect things here; I don't get the sense from Josh's interviews that he is, ah, into Charles as a person, and maybe he went harder because of that) and tried to course correct...?

But he clearly made a huge change and it's such a bummer because the 90s are arguably some of the most interesting years for the Windsors and he just kind of flushed them down the drain. And he also got a perfect older Diana casting and wasted her.

[dear-indies]

hi cat and mouse!! could i get fc suggestions for a mom, dad, and siblings (of any gender) for a character with a sophie thatcher fc?

Parents:

Kristin Scott Thomas (1960)

Hugh Grant (1960)

Orla Brady (1961)

Christopher Meloni (1961)

Michael J. Fox (1961) - has Parkinson’s disease.

Terry Farrell (1963)

Christopher Eccleston (1964)

Marton Csokas (1966)

Melora Hardin (1967)

Daniel Craig (1968)

Naomi Watts (1968)

Jeri Ryan (1968)

Jason Bateman (1969)

Michael Sheen (1969)

Peter Dinklage (1969) - has achondroplasia.

Melissa McCarthy (1970)

Elizabeth Mitchell (1970)

Carla Gugino (1971)

Maxine Peake (1974) - is pro Palestine!

Sibling:

Sarah Dugdale (1995)

Maddie Hasson (1995)

Emma Corrin (1995) - is non-binary (they/them).

Mary Mouser (1996)

Colin Ford (1996)

Ruth Codd (1996) - is a below the knee amputee and uses a prosthetic leg.

Kathryn Newton (1997)

Felix Mallard (1998)

Alva Bratt (1998)

Christopher Briney (1998)

Ethel Cain (1998) - is a trans and bisexual woman - is pro Palestine!

Danielle Rose Russell (1999)

Morgan Davies (2001) - is a trans man (he/him) and pro Palestine!

I didn't know if you played her as a brunette or blonde so here are suggestions for both! Please let me know if you'd like more suggestions with a certain hair colour!

[icepixie]

20 questions for fic writers

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

158 (22 of these are fanvids)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

430,454

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Many. The top 5, per AO3, are Babylon 5, due South, Stargate SG-1, Farscape, and Northern Exposure. The most recent have been Strange New Worlds, China Beach, BBC Ghosts, Enterprise, and DS9. (Though to be fair, DS9 is an old fandom I started writing in again, and China Beach has been a mainstay since ~2014. Farscape...uhhh, oh, wow, I last published something for that in 2003.)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

I'm adjusting for the fact that the Agent Carter fics have by far the most kudos simply because it's the one large fandom I've written in. I'll count one of them and then go to the next-most-kudosed.

Necessary (Agent Carter; for once in her life, Peggy needs Jack for something)

Moves in the Field (The Cutting Edge; Yuletide fic where Doug and Kate visit Doug's brother and hometown)

Closing the Circuit (Enterprise; Baby Elizabeth lives and Trip and T'Pol spend their first night as parents)

Imperfect Recall (Strange New Worlds; Una and Chris recall his invitation to spend shore leave together 20 years ago very differently)

My Late Enchantments Still in Brilliant Colors Shine (Babylon 5; Susan Ivanova runs into a technomage)

5. Do you respond to comments?

98% of the time. Occasionally if it's a busy week they get away from me.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Either The Snow Maiden (Susan Ivanova childhood angst) or If Equal Affection Cannot Be (Marcus Cole, death and poetry) or Amo, Amas, I Love a Lass (more Marcus death and pining). Babylon 5 is the only fandom I've ever really gone angsty in.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Like...most of them? I'm not much for angst. I guess A Way to Walk on Water and Not Drown ended with the big theatrical happily ever after business...

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I feel like I got some sort of weird LJ comment once, but I barely remember it and it may have been more spam than anything.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Love me a good crossover. I don't write them often because doing them right requires a lot of thought, but they're very fun to do. I've written the most for due South, and the conceit of "Fraser and Thatcher come to New Burbage for Shakespeare-related reasons" has worked well for me. I also quite like the Wonderfalls/Fringe crossover I did back when Peter was missing...I felt like I had a cool idea I followed through on, and the canons meshed better than one might expect at first.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

I vaguely recall someone asking permission to translate something into Russian once.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

When I was 13 or so, with a RL friend, we wrote several hamfistedly shippy DS9 and Voyager fics together over the (landline) phone.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

AO3 says it's Fraser/Thatcher (due South) with Ivanova/Garibaldi (B5) a very close second, which seems about right. I'm also extremely fond of Maggie/Joel (NX) and McMurphy/Richard (China Beach).

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I'd love to finish the "Ivanova and Garibaldi try to honeymoon on Earth and get swept into defying a political plot against the president" fic I started years ago, but it always seems to require more plot than I want to deal with.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. I can't write it unless I can hear it in the character's voice in my head, and it seems to serve well for accurate characterization.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot. Plot plot plot plot plot. I just want to write characters vibing with each other, not have them do things!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've done it a couple times. Most of it was Russian, for the skating RPF, and for that I just googled a lot and apologized for any errors in the notes. I think it adds some flavor, and unless you're doing something really specific you're probably framing it so someone with no knowledge of the language can get the gist, so even if you've gotten it wrong it doesn't matter that much.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

It was either DS9 or Voyager. I would say I deleted all the evidence, but alas, usenet is forever.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

The Future an Affirmation (China Beach; the AU where McMurphy and Richard get married and we follow them for the next 25 years. Except backwards, because I very much enjoyed writing it like that. I feel like I effectively packed all my thoughts and feelings about McMurphy into that fic and did justice to what she would have done and been had these circumstances played out.)

I have a lot of honorable mentions, but maybe the most honorable is Out of the Ashes, a Northern Exposure fic where Maggie resorts to staying with Joel after her mother burns her house down. I got a fair number of "this reads just like an episode" comments, which I was quite proud of.

[starlightcleric]

Layla for the character aesthetic meme?

Layla Aldori, Wrath of the Righteous

Flame Dancer Bard, Mythic Demon

Playlist

"Layla" - Derek & The Dominos

"Maneater" - Daryl Hall & John Oates

"Psycho Killer" - Talking Heads

"Evil Woman" - Electric Light Orchestra

"Poison" - Alice Cooper

Moodboard

Steal Their Look

Quotes

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

"I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire." - William Shakespeare

“The Knight of Courage turns his back to you, Sigoso Vetalda,” he said, voice quaking… “Damn you to the Womb of Fire.” Sigoso smiled. “I am there,” he said, “and it is paradise.” - Samantha Shannon

“There were many beautiful vipers in those days and she was one of them." - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Aesthetic

Fresh bruises turning yellow | Red lipstick on wine glasses | The clack of stilleto heels on pavement | The taste of blood as you bite your lover's lip | Roaring flames of a gasoline fire

character aesthetics meme

[hallmarknostalgia]

The “Hearties” are still waiting to hear when they can expect When Calls the Heart Season 11 to hit Hallmark Channel, but in the meantime, we have a milestone to celebrate!

January 11 marks When Calls the Heart’s 10th anniversary, and it’s been a decade full of drama — both in the fictional Coal Valley and, occasionally, in real life.

In honor of the show’s 10th birthday, here are some fun facts about the Hallmark hit that you might not know…

It was a Hallmark movie before it was a Hallmark series.

Before producer Michael Landon Jr. developed the When Calls the Heart TV show, he turned the same Janette Oke story into a Hallmark movie. Also titled When Calls the Heart, that 2013 movie featured Maggie Grace, Jean Smart, and Stephen Amell. And Lori Loughlin plays Abigail in both versions.

The original plan was to film When Calls the Heart in Colorado.

In June 2013, producers announced plans to film the TV series version of When Calls the Heart in Telluride, Colorado, in a move that then-Governor John Hickenlooper said would create 200 jobs and an economic impact of $15 million, as the Denver Business Journal reported at the time.

Just weeks later, however, the production shifted to Vancouver, British Columbia, because it had outgrown Colorado’s $2.7-million incentive program, as the Journal noted.

The crew built the Coal Valley set in less than a month.

Eike Schroter/Crown Media

Production designer Brendan Harron told reporters that the When Calls the Heart crew built Coal Valley’s buildings — a schoolhouse, a Mountie outpost, a café, et cetera — in three and a half weeks, according to The Canadian Press. And the buildings are all fully furnished — and often tarnished to look aged.

Some props came from another cable TV drama.

Harron also said that some of the When Calls the Heart props — including a stagecoach — were recycled from Hell on Wheels, an AMC drama about the construction of the United States’ first transcontinental railroad.

Fans can visit the set and even meet the cast members.

The Hearties Family Reunion, which took place for the seventh time in September 2023, lets fans explore the Hope Valley set, talk with cast members, and meet fellow “Hearties” from all over the world.

The costumes aren’t meant to be historically accurate.

Hallmark Channel asked costume designer Barbara Gregusova to keep the costumes aesthetically similar to the wardrobe on the rest of its shows, and not necessarily accurate to When Calls the Heart’s time period.

And that works out well, money-wise. “We don’t really have a budget for me building costumes from 1910,” Gregusova told TV Insider in 2016. “So that’s why it’s easier to incorporate that modern feel, because I can go to a store and buy something.”

Daniel Lissing and Erin Krakow wrote their character’s wedding vows.

Ahead of Jack Thornton and Elizabeth Thatcher’s onscreen wedding, Lissing and Krakow talked about writing their characters’ wedding vows themselves, as Lissing told Entertainment Tonight in 2018.

“So we took that to the producers, and they were like, ‘Well, yeah, you guys know the characters better than anyone else does,’” the actor added. “I wrote Jack’s vows and she wrote Elizabeth’s, and there’s that connection there.”

Jack Wagner and Kristina Wagner were previously married — on screen and off.

Before playing ex-spouses Bill and Nora Avery on When Calls the Heart, the Wagners played General Hospital supercouple Frisco Jones and Felicia Cummings on General Hospital, and they were married in real life between 1993 and 2006.

“It was very frightening to work together again,” Jack said of working with Kristina on When Calls the Heart in a 2015 Associated Press interview. “We know each other from that one format, which is General Hospital, and we knew exactly what to do there. These are new characters. But we really worked through it and we have a great chemistry.”

[jesuis-melodrama]

The Sixteen Personalities of the Neurotics: A Myers-Briggs Analysis of My Favourite Miraculous Characters

I tend towards characters that are independent, self-capable, and highly skilled.

ADRIEN AGRESTE - THE PROTAGONIST | ENFJ-A

Adrien feels that he is called to serve a greater purpose in life. An inspiring optimist, he aims to readily take action and do what he feels is right. Imaginative, open-minded, and curious, Adrien values originality and delights in finding secret meanings and hidden possibilities. Rarely shying away from an opportunity to do the right thing, Adrien is a feeling individual, expressing significance on empathy, social harmony, and cooperation. Despite his sentimentalities, however, Adrien is a highly-organised and thorough person, prone to bouts of spontaneity, but a strong adherer to structure. Resistant to stress, Adrien tries not to worry too much about the little things and focus on achieving his goals. Adrien usually have a positive impact on the world and the people surrounding him. A notable weakness, however, is Adrien’s tendency to be overtly idealistic. Possessing a strong sense of justice and truth, it comes as a fundamental shock to Adrien should anyone 'violates’ these values. Adrien also has an unfortunate habit of being intense, whether in relationships or in improvement, Adrien may push others to take steps they’re not ready for, or weren’t even interesting in making in the first place.

Famous Protagonists include: Sean Connery, Maya Angelou. Daenerys Targaryen, Elizabeth Bennet, and Malala Yousafzai. 

LILA ROSSI - THE COMMANDER | ENTJ-A

Lila is a commander. A natural-born leader; in situations where order is required, Lila will always present herself as one, unless it benefits her to remain silent. Bold, imaginative, and strong-willed; Lila finds a solution, or she makes one. Characterised by her ruthless efficiency and logic, Lila prioritises her mind over her heart. While she can interpret emotion – hard to be a successful manipulator if she couldn’t – Lila does not necessarily understand it, and find overt displays of distress or zeal disconcerting and uncomfortable.

Lila experiences little doubt and chooses not to reminisce over past mistakes and regrets, which often causes her to be self-confident when striving to achieve goals. 

Famous Commanders include: Gordon Ramsay, Margaret Thatcher, Steve Jobs, Miranda Priestly, and Milady de Winter.

FÉLIX GRAHAM DE VANILY - THE LOGISTICIAN | ISTJ-A

Félix is practical and fact-minded to a t. Reliable and conscientious, it’ll be difficult for Félix to fail a task or be taken off-guard. As a self-confident individual, Félix prides himself on his integrity and commitment. Whilst not necessarily misanthropic, Félix strongly prefers spending time on his own, or with a few intimate friends and family, rather than with a crowd of strangers. Naturally drawn to calmer environments, Félix prefers quality over quantity in social interactions. With strong observation skills, Félix is hyper-aware of events around him at all time, even the smallest mishap is unlikely to escape his judgement and notice. Félix finds no comfort in chaos, no enjoyment in lawlessness. To him, effectiveness is more darling than social harmony, he values structure and clarity over any spontaneity. 

Famous Logisticians include: Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, George Washington, Hermione Granger, and Mr Darcy. 

[derekjarmanlifework]

Jarman's early life and career

Derek Jarman, born on January 31, 1942, navigated his formative years during what he later described as a 'grey decade' in the 1950s. The dullness of his surroundings, such as the monotony of his school uniform and the lacklustre broadcast television of the time, shaped his early perceptions of normative British culture, and contributed to his career as an artist. In an attempt to avoid the dreary environment provoked by adherence to English traditions, Jarman spent a lot of time in art studios, where he found a profound love of art.

In an interview, Jarman mentioned that he knew he was queer as a young boy. The criminalization of homosexuality made it very challenging for him to be open about his sexual orientation during his adolescence and young adulthood. Homosexual acts were legalized in Britain in 1967, when Jarman was 25. This marked a significant milestone in gay liberation, however, this progress was made complicated by the subsequent era of Thatcherism (1979-1989).

Jarman was starkly and openly opposed to Margaret Thatcher's conservative government, and he considered her his enemy. Many of Jarman's film's portray Thatcher as a monstrous figure, and much of his art was a rebellion against the heteronormativity and homophobia emblematic of the Thatcher government.

Jarman's bold stance against Thatcherism persisted throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, and he found satisfaction in witnessing her fall from power in 1989. His life and art were inextricably linked to the sociopolitical landscape, making him a trailblazer in the fight for queer visibility and rights in a conservative era.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1978: Jubilee

Derek Jarman embarked on the creation of his avant-garde cinematic venture, Jubilee, amidst the tumultuous backdrop of London during the spring to summer of 1977. This period, marked by Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee and the controversial release of the Sex Pistols' single "God Save the Queen," inadvertently positioned Jubilee as the inaugural British punk feature film. The film unfolds as a quasi-documentary, blurring the lines between reality and invention, responding creatively and critically to the burgeoning punk scene in 1970s London. Jarman's distinctive approach, characterized by a script resembling a dense scrapbook and casting drawn from his social circles, aligns with his broader artistic methodology.

Structured as a collage, Jarman described Jubilee as "parochial, too particular, juvenilia, and at times silly." The film's unconventional nature contributed to mixed reviews upon its February 1978 release. Figures like Adam Ant expressed initial embarrassment, and Siouxsie Sioux dismissed it as 'hippy trash'. Vivienne Westwood, a punk icon, went further by openly criticizing the film on a T-shirt, denouncing it as the "most boring and disgusting film" she had ever seen. While accusations swirled that Jordan's character, 'Amyl Nitrate,' was a satirical jab at Westwood, the critique resonated on the theme of self-indulgence in Jarman's work.

Jubilee provocatively features a distant and desolate Queen Elizabeth II, left for dead on a derelict site, an object of fleeting curiosity for the time-traveling Queen Elizabeth I. This irreverent treatment aligns with Jarman's disdain for the modern British royal family. The film's audacious portrayal of the 'New Elizabethan' age prompts reflection on Jarman's motivations to desecrate the reigning monarch. A plausible explanation lies in the film's engagement with the 1950s celebration of the New Elizabethan age, intertwined with a resurgence of social conservatism and sexual repression. The official 'Moral Rearmament' campaign in 1950s Britain, framed as a post-World War II moral cleanup, provides a backdrop for Jarman's subversive exploration of sexual morality and family values. In Jubilee, pretentiousness becomes a deliberate choice, prompting viewers to confront societal norms and Jarman's challenging, avant-garde vision.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1979: The Tempest

Jarman's 1979 adaptation of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' serves as a unique exploration of the classic Renaissance revenge play. Created before the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the film not only anticipates but also reflects Jarman's distinct political and activist viewpoints that he continued to convey through his art, even after his diagnosis. Diverging from mainstream media norms, Jarman's low-budget approach and traditional use of "masters, mid-shots, and close-ups" distinguish his adaptation.

This rendition of 'The Tempest' showcases Jarman's bold choices, including the introduction of a same-sex relationship between Prospero and Ariel, a thematic decision that resonates with his intended audience — members of the British counterculture, particularly punk and queer communities. Departing from the traditional Shakespearean adaptations of its time, Jarman's manipulation of the original script involved rearranging and omitting sections, creating a distinctive cinematic experience.

Critics have praised the film as an "outrageously invigorating breath of fresh air" in stark contrast to the "stale, safe atmosphere" of the BBC Shakespeare productions. Jarman's fearless deviation from societal norms, evident in his reshaping of this classic piece of British literature, becomes a potent political statement, cementing his role as a boundary-pushing artist unafraid of challenging conventions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1984: GBH Series 

In 1984, Derek Jarman's installation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London marked the apex of his fascination with apocalyptic themes. By revisiting and reshaping Christian notions of apocalypse, he aimed to challenge the repressive sexual climate in British culture. Jarman, known for critically engaging with contemporary threats like the AIDS epidemic, nuclear weapons, and environmental devastation, consistently viewed these issues through an apocalyptic prism. Jarman never specified what the acronym GBH stood for, however he did state that it means “whatever you want it to: grievous bodily harm, great British horror, gargantuan bloody H-bomb.”.

The GBH series comprises six monumental works. Displayed in a contemplative space within the ICA, these towering pieces, reaching almost three metres in height, featured a map of Britain painted in acrylic. Swirls of charcoal, gold, and fiery red pigment enveloped the map, creating a visually striking effect. Executed on a hand-laminated base constructed from linen layered with torn newspaper saturated in glue, the dense and undulating surface added complexity, obscuring the aerial view of Britain. The visual elements evoked imagery of smoke, flames, and burning, presenting viewers with a visceral vision of apocalypse. Circles inscribed over each map, reminiscent of wartime bombing sights, further contributed to the overall impression.

Jarman's inspiration for the series arose from his observation of Britain's shape in an atlas, noting its resemblance to an H-bomb explosion, reinforcing the apocalyptic interpretation of the artwork. By showcasing these artworks, he highlights a specific juncture in Northern Ireland and the political history of the UK, emphasizing the parallels between the political struggles of that time and the present.

[justforbooks]

Many politicians and pundits abandoned socialism and the Labour party in the 1970s, but there were few rightward shifts of allegiance more dramatic than that of Paul Johnson, the journalist and author, who has died aged 94. As a young man, Johnson stood on the left of the Labour party, made Aneurin Bevan the first object of his hero-worship, hymned the French rebels of 1968, and wrote that Tories were “atrophied Englishmen … on occasions, endearing – but liable to turn very nasty at short notice”.

Later he became an ardent supporter of Margaret Thatcher, and could sometimes turn nasty himself. A remarkably fluent and prolific writer, Johnson showed his vituperative gifts on the left before putting them at the highly paid service of Tory tabloids. In calmer mode, he was a reflective, elegiac and often moving writer about art, architecture and the English landscape.

The first of his popular histories was The Offshore Islanders (1972), a history of English people starting from the Roman occupation. It was followed at the rate of one a year by The Highland Jaunt, a journey in the footsteps of Johnson and Boswell written with George Gale, Elizabeth I, Pope John XXIII, and A History of Christianity (1976), a bestseller in several languages.

In 1975, he marked his dramatic break with the left and Labour by writing for the New Statesman a denunciation of a party at the mercy of the “know-nothing left” and the “fascist” anti-intellectualism of the unions, a theme on which he would expatiate with his usual eloquence and intemperance in Enemies of Society (1977). Like other defectors, he said he was dismayed by the power of the unions, and claimed, with characteristic hyperbole, that Labour was espousing a “corporatist” policy close to fascism. Johnson was soon writing as violently against Labour as he once had in its interest, and before long, the devotion he had once shown toward Bevan and then Harold Wilson had been transferred to Thatcher.

He attached himself to her as a mentor, saying later that she was “very ignorant in many ways” when she became prime minister, and needed to be taught, presumably by him. In 1980, he spent a year at the American Enterprise Institute, the rightwing thinktank in Washington, and he increasingly became a hero to the American right. This was sealed in 1983 by his book Modern Times, a fiercely “anti-relativist” or anti-progressive history of the 20th century.

Back home, Johnson wrote a weekly column for the Spectator, where he vented his spleen on the media and later on whichever subject took his fancy. He had a tendency to put his trust in princes who would eventually disappoint him, showering praise on Rupert Murdoch for years but later attacking his papers. On good weeks, Johnson’s Spectator columns were among the best things he wrote. Though he lacked the character of a real scholar, he was clever and widely read, with an old-fashioned well-stocked mind, so that he could turn out a polished column on almost any subject full of apt examples and pithy phrases.

That was to a lesser extent true of his far more lucrative “why-oh-whys” in the Daily Mail, attacking everything and everyone on the left. It was these fulminations that prompted Michael Foot’s jibe that, while every movement had its Judas, this was the first time the 30 pieces of silver had been turned into a weekly income. Tabloid editors who treated him with such reverence would have been dismayed by his private contempt for their papers. He once described from experience and with feeling the ordeal of the popular journalist, “writing to order, against a deadline, on a subject not of his choosing, for readers he does not respect and for an editor who is both demanding and gruesomely uncivilised”.

Johnson often wrote several thousand words a day. He was scornful of carping scholars who discounted his books, though these were sometimes slapdash. Intellectuals (1988) and Enemies of Society were diffuse tirades against half of the eminent thinkers of the Enlightenment and its inheritance, written with prurient personal abuse.

Some of Johnson’s “big books” were well written and readable, but uncritical in approach. After the History of Christianity, and what one critic called “Paul Johnson’s sycophantic” History of the Jews (1987), a colleague said that “Paul will now write a book telling the Americans how wonderful they are”, and he duly did. A History of the American People (1997) was “the most malignantly error-ridden” book of its kind, wrote Robert Sam Anson in the Guardian, “to appear since the politburo went out of business”, and it also achieved the unusual distinction of being criticised from a liberal perspective by Conrad Black.

He had a strong – if idiosyncratic – love of art; a collection of his Spectator columns was published as To Hell With Picasso! (1996). A keen painter as well as collector of watercolours, he wrote the excellent National Trust Book of English Castles (1978) and British Cathedrals (1980).

Born in Manchester, the son of Anne and William Johnson, Paul grew up in Tunstall, one of the potteries towns around Stoke-on-Trent; his father was principal of an art school in Burslem. He described his early upbringing In the Vanished Landscape: A 1930s Childhood in the Potteries (2004).

The family were devoutly Roman Catholic, and Paul won a scholarship to Stonyhurst, the Jesuit public school in Clitheroe. From there he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where AJP Taylor was one of his tutors, and his friends included the gambler John Aspinall and the eventual Labour cabinet minister Tony Crosland. Having taken a second in history (1949), he was called up and commissioned into the Education Corps, serving in Gibraltar, and, unusually for a national service officer, becoming a captain.

After demob, his first job was at the Paris magazine Réalités (1952-55). Then he joined the staff of the New Statesman, his home for the next 15 years. Johnson worked for Kingsley Martin, the very long-serving editor, and for his successor John Freeman, but he said that the man who taught him his trade was Aylmer Vallance, the assistant editor.

In the late 1950s Johnson combined magazine writing with television reporting, and then instant history. His first book, The Suez War (1957), was a denunciation of the previous year’s military adventure. For a time, he also tried his hand at fiction, with a couple of heavy-handed comic novels: Left of Centre (1960) and Merrie England (1964). Johnson chose wisely not to pursue fiction, although his enemies later liked to quote a lurid spanking scene from his brief oeuvre.

Despite that, he wrote a memorable onslaught on the James Bond books entitled Sex, Snobbery and Sadism (1958) in the New Statesman. In Johnson’s view, Dr No was “without doubt, the nastiest book I have ever read”, and he derided the Bond novels for their combination of “schoolboy sex fantasies” with suburban “snob-cravings”. This polemic caused Ian Fleming much distress.

In 1965 Johnson wrote another tirade, against pop music, “this apotheosis of inanity” whose fans were “the dull, the idle, the failures”, giving a hint of his later sea change. For all the years he would spend in popular journalism, Johnson was never a man of the people. Whether from left or right, he disliked the masses, their habits and their culture.

However, he was not quite the snob his detractors suggested: Johnson did enjoy the beau monde, but then he also relished the louche life of El Vino’s or of Muriel’s, the Colony Room drinking club in Soho. His first set of friends in London had been a group of rackety bohemian journalists, including Gale, Henry Fairlie, Colin Welch and Peregrine Worsthorne.

In 1965 Johnson was appointed editor of the New Statesman, despite the opposition of Leonard Woolf, a veteran board member. An old-fashioned sceptic, Woolf did not think a Catholic should have the job of editing a radical paper, even though Johnson was still a passable radical, denouncing the public schools and the House of Lords.

In many ways, Johnson proved a first-class editor. Even writers such as Alan Watkins and Neal Ascherson, disdainful of his later political turn, spoke admiringly of his skills at handling copy and encouraging talent. In Watkins’ words, he was “affable and tolerant as an editor”, and he had the supreme quality of loyalty to his staff, whom he always stood by without recrimination when there was trouble from bullying politicians or libel lawyers. Under Johnson, the New Statesman reached its highest circulation of 94,000, an astonishing figure in today’s journalistic climate.

While the kind of managerial socialism the NS espoused was itself discredited by the failures of the first Wilson government of 1964-70, Johnson nevertheless remained a loyal supporter of that government until its end. When Barbara Castle introduced her contentious plans for reforming industrial relations in 1968, he told a puzzled Statesman editorial conference that “Harold, Barbara and I are going to see this through”.

But he found the editor’s job exhausting. Behind his choleric appearance (like an explosion in a pubic-hair factory, in Jonathan Miller’s phrase), Johnson was highly strung, impulsive and prickly. He once told the African American writer James Baldwin that only someone like himself who was Catholic, redheaded and left-handed knew what prejudice meant. Drinking was one recourse, but that only served to increase Johnson’s bellicosity.

In 1970, he left the Statesman, and never held a salaried job again. He signed off with a collection of pieces from the magazine, Statesmen and Nations (1971).

In his later years, Johnson’s reputation was possibly higher outside his own country than within. He became celebrated in Latin America, like Eric Hobsbawm, ironically enough, with whom he could sometimes be seen conversing at literary parties. But his fame was greater still in the US. A large anthology of his writing was published with a glowing preface by William Buckley; Richard Nixon (whom Johnson always defended) gave Johnson’s books as Christmas presents; and the vice-president Dan Quayle extolled Modern Times as “one of the best historical books about history I have read”.

This ceaseless literary productivity continued with books as diverse as Wake Up Britain (1994), The Quest for God (1996), Napoleon (2002), Washington (2003) and Churchill (2009), and Heroes: From Alexander the Great to Mae West (2008). Later biographies ranged from Darwin (2010) via Stalin, Socrates and Mozart to Eisenhower (2014).

With all his gifts of intelligence and prodigious output, and his personal geniality and hospitality when in the mood, there could be something slightly unbalanced about Johnson’s verbal violence, and he suffered more than most journalists from a kind of cognitive dissonance. He angrily abused any politician who had fallen from sexual grace and advised his friend Diana, Princess of Wales, “Don’t commit adultery”, but brushed off untoward stories about himself by saying: “We are all sinners. Well, I am. That’s why I go to church every day.”

One of the last objects of Johnson’s hero worship was Tony Blair, who returned the admiration, writing, “Dear Paul, You’re quite simply one of the most remarkable people in our country.” In its way that was true enough. Whatever else was said of him, Johnson was a force to be reckoned with, and a true English eccentric.

In 1957 he married Marigold Hunt. She survives him, along with their three sons, Daniel, Luke and Cosmo, and daughter, Sophie.

🔔 Paul Bede Johnson, journalist and historian, born 2 November 1928; died 12 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[jimothystu]

@lam-ila tagged me to post 4 characters to describe me!! Aaaand then I forgot about it for like a week jkdnfkjdns

In order:

Elizabeth Thatcher from When Calls the Heart

Ezri Dax from Star Trek DS9

Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager

Anna Shirley from Anne of Green Gables

Tagging @make-me-imagine @katetheworm @wonderlandsandi @introvertedperson16 and anyone who wants to do this!