#gertrude o’hara

[mckittenpants]

Personal faves are 4 and 6. 😌

Rivals + Tumblr Text Posts (01/?)

[wheres-mylove]

died in your arms | declan o'hara x fem!reader

Summary: It must have been something Declan said. Or done. Maybe both. You'll be dying inside, but at least in his arms.

Word count: 1.3k

Disclaimer: English isn't my first language!

Falling for your boss was a very, very dangerous thing.

Especially when he was older. Married. With a family.

Especially when he had those sad, beautiful eyes.

You could lie to yourself, pretend his gaze lingered on you in a way that was different. Special. Not like you were some naïve girl who’d drop everything for him.

You would, of course.

It was foolish. But foolishness had a way of compelling you. That’s how you found yourself standing outside his house late at night, the cold seeping into your bones. The sound of your restless shifting on the wooden steps could be heard from a mile away.

Taggie’s voice had been trembling when she called. “Can you come? Please?” she’d said, words rushed, and just like that, you were here.

You raised your hand to knock again when the door creaked open. The faint glow of a lamp spilled out, and your chest tightened.

The day had already been chaotic. Declan had swept through the office like a storm. He’d tossed a curt, “I’m taking leave. You should too,” over his shoulder as he walked out. Before you could respond, Tony had strutted in, telling you that Mr. O’Hara’s throwing one of his tantrums again.

He’ll cool off eventually.

“I’m worried about him,” Taggie sighed when she let you in, her words tumbling over each other. “And Mom…” She hesitated, eyes darting away as if she could evade her own thoughts. “Mom doesn’t care.”

“Hey, Tag,” you said gently, wrapping her in a hug she didn’t ask for but desperately needed. “How bad is it?”

“He locked himself in the study to watch that stupid interview with James...” 

You crouched to scratch behind Gertrude’s ears. 

“Interesting form of punishment,” you’d tried to joke, but the attempt fell flat against the worry etched into her face.

Taggie’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I’m scared this time. Something’s wrong.”

Something was always wrong. Maud cheated. Maud left. Maud returned. Declan picked up the pieces, only to watch her break him again. It was a cycle you’d seen too many times, and yet here you were, stepping into its center.

“It’ll be fine,” you lied, the words tasting fake. “I’ll try to fix it.”

“He’ll listen to you,” Taggie said, her voice almost inaudible. “You’re the only one he listens to.”

And now, as you stood in the threshold of the room, that burden of responsibility weighed heavy on your chest. The study was suffocating. Heavy curtains cloaked the windows, and the faint scent of whiskey hung in the air. Declan lay sprawled on the worn leather couch, his shirt half-unbuttoned. 

The flicker of the television bathed his face in pale light. James Vereker’s smug expression visible on the screen, Thatcher’s practiced responses echoing faintly. That was before you came closer and turned it off.

Declan’s bleary eyes slowly turned toward you, the weight of his gaze like a physical touch. He blinked once, twice, as though trying to place you in the haze of his mind.

“Turn it back on,” he rasped, his voice a whisper that scraped against the stillness.

“No chance,” you replied, moving to pull a chair closer to him. “What are you doing to yourself? I wouldn’t let my worst enemy watch that shit, let alone you. Enjoying the torture?”

“Torturing myself has always been my specialty,” he muttered. A bitter smile graced his lips, but his eyes remained dark. “I’m an expert, I’m-”

“You’re drunk,” you observed, your voice firm but soft.

He lifted his glass, swirling the amber liquid with exaggerated care. “And?” he asked, his tone teetering between defiance and despair. “Will you take this from me too, love?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” you said, lips twitching.

He laughed, short and hollow, shaking his head. It was the laugh of a man who’d stopped expecting anything good.

“Why are you here?” he asked, voice low, almost a whisper.

“Taggie called me,” you said simply. “She’s worried about you. And so am I. This interview meant so much to you. And when you left, I could see that...” You hesitated, the words heavy in your throat. “Declan, are you alright?”

His only response was to push himself to his feet. His movements were unsteady, restless, as though he couldn’t bear the weight of standing still. He paced the room with the agitation of a caged animal, his fingers running through his hair, tugging at the strands as if trying to wake himself.

“Leave,” he said finally, his back to you. His voice cracked, fragile. “Please. Just leave. This is torture. Not the interview. You.”

Your breath caught in your throat, but you stayed seated, your gaze steady. “I’ll leave when I know you’re okay,” you said gently. “Right now, you’re just rambling.”

He turned to you then, his expression unreadable, his eyes clouded with something that might have been pain or might have been fear. “Do you want to hear something funny?” he asked, his voice hollow, devoid of humor. “Tony blackmailed me with photos of Maud. You know the kind. Documenting the affair.”

Your throat went dry. You had no idea.

“My hands are tied because of my wife’s betrayal. And oh, how beautifully it’s been photographed,” he laughed bitterly, the sound cutting through the room like a shard of glass. He took another sip of whiskey, the amber liquid trembling slightly in the glass.

“I’m so sorry, I–”

“Of course you’re sorry. With your fucking compassion and damned understanding,” Declan said, his words tumbling out in one breath, raw and jagged. Then, as if the weight of everything became too much, he sank to his knees by the chair where you sat, his presence overwhelming in the confined space. “Maybe that’s why I’ve sinned in my thoughts. Because you’re kind to me.”

Your head was spinning, the walls of the room seeming to close in around you. You looked down at him, the tears that welled in your eyes blurring the edges of his face.

“Declan–” you whispered, your voice unsteady, the name barely making it past your lips.

“Do you think if someone took a photo of me when I look at you,” he began, his voice low and shaking, “they’d have proof of an affair? Because I have so, so many thoughts. And I think you can see them. If you look close enough.”

His fingers brushed your jaw, a touch so soft it felt like it might shatter you. You couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Your heart raced, the beat of it a deafening drum in your chest.

“You won’t remember this tomorrow,” you whispered, barely able to get the words out. “You’re drunk. You’re married.”

“And you’re good to me. Even though you’re not mine, I feel like I have you, like you’re with me, like you’re for me.”

Then he kissed you. His lips were warm and tasted of whiskey, salt, and something achingly desperate. The kiss was messy, filled with everything he couldn’t say.

And yet you couldn’t tell if he truly meant it. In the way you wanted him to mean it.

That’s why you pushed him away.

“We can’t. Maud–”

“Maud doesn’t give a shit. She has been unfaithful, love. From the very beginning.” His voice cracked, the admission heavy in the air between you.

“So you want to make it even?” you asked, the words sharp despite the tears sliding down your cheeks.

He looked like you’d struck him, his eyes wide, the pain in them unmistakable.

“I don’t want to be some twisted sense of comfort and justice to you, Declan,” you said, standing quickly, the chair scraping against the floor. The movement felt like the only way to keep from breaking entirely. “This means more to me than it does to you. It’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, rising unsteadily to his feet. His face was pale, his voice thick with emotion. “My sweet girl, I’m so, so sorry.”

When his hand reached up to wipe the tears from your face, you froze. His touch was tender, almost reverent, and it felt like it might undo you entirely.

At that moment, you knew.

You wouldn’t be able to say no to him, no matter what you were to him.

Consolation, revenge, or love.

It didn’t matter, as long as you were something to Declan O’Hara.

[honeylullaby]

in dire need of taggie’s bsf!reader x patrick THE ABSOLUTE ANGST PLS

omg YES PLS 🤩🤩🫶🏽

“You have so much celestial light.”

(Rivals) Patrick O’Hara x Reader

Suggestion by this sweet anon 🫶🏽

18+ FANFIC / Implied smut & GORGEOUS Patrick 🥰 Reader character aged at 21. Hope you enjoy! 🩷 (Tumblr give us Patrick gifs NOW)

The bluebell woods leading the pathway to The Priory were in full bloom under the gleaming summer sunlight — creating the most magnificent artwork of indigo petals across the dew-topped fields. Taggie O’Hara was sprinting frantically after Gertrude, who had taken a rather unwelcome liking to a passing fox. Duchess, your much more affable border collie, stayed put by your feet, although the temptation to bound after Gertrude was increasing. “Taggie! Don’t run, it just makes her worse.” You called after your copper-haired friend, keeling over in a thunderous fit of laughter. Unable to resist temptation any longer, Duchess bolted off to your right but you, entirely unfazed, allowed her to.

“Hello, beautiful.” A buttery soft voice spoke beside you. Glancing upwards, the breath caught in your throat. A statuesque man — chiselled jawline, long ringlets of chocolate brown curls and rippling biceps that bulged from his tight shirt. “Duchess, here girl.” You called out, but she was lay on her back, excitedly squirming as the man knelt beside her and stroked her chest. In the distance, Taggie was some yards ahead, her willowy limbs unable to keep up with the pace of her sprint. “It’s terribly uncouth to ignore somebody’s compliment.” He spoke again, jokingly. Blushing furiously, your look of bewilderment was seemingly diminutive in comparison to his. His emerald green gaze couldn’t remove its hold from you, and his jaw was agape — he was transfixed.

“Patrick O’Hara, your future husband.” He introduced himself, rising to his feet and advancing towards you. Taking your hand, he blessed it with a gentle kiss. Your already flustered cheeks were now glowing the most mortifying magenta. “Patrick? You’re Taggie’s…” You began, but with a self-righteous smile, he finished your sentence. “Brother, yes. I imagine she’s told you about me, as I’ve been told many a story about you. Thank you for looking after her.” Patrick’s voice was charmingly solemn now, and it made your heart flutter like the frantic wings of a bumblebee inside your chest.

Attaching Duchess back onto her lead, you both began to follow in the direction of Taggie, although she was so far in the distance by now that her copper hair appeared as a small amber beacon leading the way, something you and Patrick both shared a delightful giggle over. “Do you have a girlfriend at university then?” You questioned, as nonchalantly as you could muster. “No. The girls at Trinity don’t have enough celestial light. When you find the one, the light just blinds you intensely. It’s very important.” Patrick informs you, taking a hold of Duchess’ lead. “Do I have celestial light?” You continued to probe, stopping dead in your tracks and batting your wispy eyelashes towards him. “Oh darling, you have so much celestial light.” Patrick beamed in response, turning on his heels and leading you down to the river bank.

The tranquil rushing of the river instantaneously steadied your heartbeat. Setting up camp on two large, jagged rocks, Patrick released Duchess from her roped restraint and cackled as she bounded across the river bank, most certainly in search of Gertrude. “What has Taggie told you about me then?” You inquired, your delicate voice sounding otherworldly serene against the babbling brook. “She’s told me that you’re an angel. I always thought that was just an expression until now. But darling, you are heavenly.” Patrick whispered the honeyed words, and enchanted shivers reverberated throughout your body. “Oh, Patrick. Don’t be silly.” You muttered, inching closer towards him.

Brushing a lock of leather black hair away from your eyes, Patrick took a moment to inspect you further — pin straight hair that framed your soft jawline perfectly, a buttoned nose & cerulean eyes that twinkled so majestically that they appeared almost lilac. “Here you are.” Taggie panted breathlessly, much louder than that of the two exhausted dogs sat by her feet. “Gertrude followed the fox to its den, and then went sprinting off with Duchess.” She puffed, slipping down beside you and resting her rouged cheek on your shoulder. “Tired, Tag?” Patrick smiled — but there was a disheartened tonality in his voice. “Exhausted! And I’ve been looking for you two for ages.” She sighed as you patted the top of her head softly.

“Anyway. Umm, I’ll head back to The Priory. I’m sure Mum will want to see me. I’ll see you later.” Patrick sighed, and jumped to his feet. “Oh Patrick, wait…” You exclaimed, but you faltered sorrowfully as he had already begun to trudge across the damp leaves, head hanging.

“I waited for a girl like you to come and save my life…” - Out of My League, Fitz & The Tantrums.

[baenakinskywalker]

hungry like the wolf

chapter two: i'll be upon you by the moonlight side

She’s been tossing and turning for over an hour if the clock on the nightstand isn’t lying. Taggie thought with Gertrude by her side, this might not happen again, but her luck has run out. With a huff, she flops her limbs out in all directions. Gertrude snuffles. The clock ticks. It’s not that the bed is uncomfortable. Or that she’s not tired. It’s just — It’s too dark. She flicks the lamp on, but — too bright.  Taggie weighs her options with her eyes screwed shut. She can keep lying here, get no sleep, and be completely dead on her feet when she needs to focus tomorrow. She can count sheep. She can sneak out of Penscombe, creep through the Bluebell Wood, sleep in her bed at the Priory, and come back before Rupert knows she’s missing.  Or, she can go down the hall.

rating: E

words: 3,343

a/n: surprise! couldn't keep this to myself any longer. chapter 3 will be a little longer of a wait, but i promise it will be worth it. again, huge thanks to @berd-nerd, @popjunkie42, and the @rutagdiscord for the encouragement!

read under the cut or on ao3!

Taggie O’Hara hasn’t been to Penscombe before. Not really, not if you don’t count that disastrous meeting on the tennis court. Or if you don’t count the times she’s been on the grounds for Venturer meetings — few and far between, since the Priory is designated HQ. 

So, she’s never been to Penscombe like this. As a guest. And an employee, technically. 

It’s a massive, stunning estate. She’s barely in the door, and Taggie already can’t believe that someone could inherit something like this. The antique furniture in rich mahogany and oak, the portraits from the esteemed Campbell-Black lineage, all of it. It’s such a big home for just one man, which is probably why there’s been a pack of decently behaved dogs sniffing at their heels since they arrived. 

Rupert carries Gertrude so his pups don’t get any bad ideas — good behavior only means so much when you’re a dog, after all. And so Taggie walks behind the two of them, duffle bag on her shoulder, careful not to knock into anything that costs more than her meager catering income. Which is, well, everything they pass on the way to the kitchen. 

And — oh. The kitchen. Wall-to-wall countertops in a gorgeous dark wood, with polished brass hardware. The spices she could fill those drawers with: marjoram, anise, fennel, cardamom — the list goes on and on. And space for all of her pots and pans, even for a full set of the stainless steel ones that Bas has recommended on more than one occasion at Bar Sinister. She could even find room for those gorgeous Le Creuset pieces she used to stare at in shop windows back in London.

Taggie imagines herself washing up after dinner, staring out across the serene grounds through the massive windows above the sink. They reach all the way to the top of the high ceiling, making the entire kitchen feel open and airy. All helped, of course, by the bright tiled floors, cream walls, and light stonework. It would be easy to watch the dogs running wild during the summer, or to watch the stars blinking in the night sky on a dark winter evening. With Rupert beside her, doing the drying.

For a moment, she lets herself wonder what Cameron thinks of this kitchen. Has she made more than a cup of coffee here? Not worth worrying over, not when Cameoron hasn’t even been in the country for a month or so. Still, Taggie has a laundry list of questions that she’d like answered this week, if only she can muster the courage to ask them. 

Beaver licks at her ankle, and that’s when she spies a line of dog bowls beside a round dining table, situated in front of a bow window. 

“Do you feed them buffet style?”

Rupert turns, still cradling Gertrude, who has settled into the crook of his arm like she was born there. “Are you insulting the way I feed my dogs? You’ve been here all of two minutes.”

“I’m sorry.” She sticks out her lower lip. “It’s just a lot of bowls in a row, that’s all. D’you ever trip over them in the middle of the night?”

“No, actually,” he says. “But you’re one to talk — what in God’s name are you feeding this one? She’s a boulder.” He feigns a struggle to lift Gertrude so he can press a kiss to her fuzzy head. Not unlike the kiss Taggie received back in the Priory, she notes. 

“It’s not polite to talk about a woman’s weight.” Gertrude yelps in agreement, or at the five dogs staring up at her from the floor. “You’re going to have to introduce them sometime,” Taggie adds, setting her bag on the counter. She almost feels bad hefting such an old thing onto the polished stone. But Rupert doesn’t bat an eye. 

“I know,” he starts. “What if they corrupt her terribly?”

Taggie smiles. “I think you’re forgetting that your first impression of her was brute.”

“A smart woman once told me that people can change,” Rupert replies. He’s always doing that — calling her smart, or clever, or bright. At first, it was shocking. Not a single person has described her that way before. Not Daddy, any of her teachers, either sibling, and especially not Mummy. It’s always: Taggie is such a good cook! Taggie is beautiful, like her mother! Taggie’s great with animals! Nobody runs the house like Taggie! 

Smart still sends a blush creeping across her cheeks and nose. But slowly, she’s getting used to it. Preferring it, even, to pretty, talented, reliable. Coming from Rupert, though, she takes them all happily. He’s not stingy with his praise.

“Shall I get you something to eat?” he asks once Gertrude is safely on the ground and sniffing each of the new dogs like she’s being paid to. “Contrary to popular belief, I can cook.”

Taggie’s eyes track the dogs as they scamper away, Gertrude at the helm. She’s already running them like the Royal Navy. “What exactly is on the menu, chef?” she asks.

“Well, madame,” Rupert starts, “the plat du jour is a real treat: my famous cheese toastie.”

Taggie can’t fight the laughter that spills from her mouth. Her cheeks already hurt, and it’s barely been ten minutes with him. Will she be able to move her face at all come Sunday? “I can whip something up for us, if you’d like,” Taggie offers when she’s sufficiently recovered. 

“And deprive you of what one Scorpion reporter deemed perfectly edible? Not a chance.” He walks behind the large island to where a bread box sits on the counter by the window. When he lifts the lid, there’s a perfect sourdough loaf inside. Definitely not baked by the Minister for Sport. “Don’t worry, darling.” He slices through the bread with an elegant knife. “You’ll have plenty of time to get to know the kitchen after tonight.”

And she’ll need it. This is a far cry from the job at Green Lawns, and there’s little room for error. At least Rupert won’t make her dress like a French maid — probably. 

“Let me help?” Taggie asks, already rolling her sleeves up. 

“Agatha, I know how to work the hob,” Rupert says. He pins her with a look that makes something in the pit of her stomach flip. People so rarely call her Agatha. She squeezes her knees together on instinct. Then, like he notices her fidgeting, he adds, “If you want to hunt for something to zhuzh with, that’s fine. But I’m cooking.”

He hasn’t even started heating up the pan, but Taggie feels flushed. The fridge is a welcome reprieve, and she finds it well-stocked with everything an MP could want. There’s blocks of cheeses, domestic and imported; fresh red tomatoes that have her longing to take a bite; fish, beef, chicken, and pork, all wrapped in butcher paper and labeled with neat handwriting; and plenty of milk and salted butter. Behind a large head of lettuce, she spots it: A jar of fig jam. 

The wheels turn, and Taggie opens a few cupboards until she finds the next ingredient she’s looking for: honey. “What cheese have you picked?” she asks, tucking a curl behind her ear. It should be salty to counter these two sweet additions. 

“A white cheddar. Sharp,” Rupert says. “Found what you need?” Taggie nods and hands over her spoils. “A little jam on one slice of bread, then a drizzle of honey over the cheese.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Rupert does just as she says, buttering four slices of sourdough, spreading the fig jam on two, and layering cheese and honey over the others. He assembles the sandwiches quickly, and his work is a little sloppy, if Taggie’s being honest. But the smell when they sizzle in the pan — scrumptious. 

It doesn’t take long for the cheese to melt and each sandwich to be flipped. Rupert plates them, then sets both on the round table situated by the window. From a tall cabinet along the opposite wall, he plucks two wine glasses and a bottle of Merlot. When their glasses are filled, he says with a flourish, “Dinner is served, my lady.”

Rupert pulls her chair out, then clinks glasses with her. “Cheers,” Taggie says. 

The first bite is divine. 

“Oh, Beattie Johnson is really missing out.” 

—

Once dinner is finished, the wine bottle drained, and the dishes taken care of — which Taggie is not, under any circumstances, allowed to help with — Rupert shows her upstairs to her bedroom for the week. It’s a blush pink color, with English country landscapes and horses covering the walls. When he flicks on the light, she wonders if this could have been Tabitha’s room. 

They don’t talk about his children. She only knows their names from that ill-fated meeting with Helen and talking to Lizzie over tea at the Priory. That’s also how she knows their ages: Tabitha, 8, and Marcus, 6. Products of a contentious marriage with an even more contentious divorce. 

So Taggie bites her tongue, holding back the questions on her mind. “Thank you,” she says instead. Gertrude, retrieved from her new friends after dinner, immediately hops up onto the bed. “For the room, and the op-op—opportunity,” 

“Tag,” Rupert starts, leaning against the doorframe, “it’s a shame that you haven’t been over before. From now on, you’re always welcome at Penscombe, even if I’m not here. And you’re the only one I trust in the kitchen with Maggie in the dining room.”

Taggie sits beside Gertrude and runs a hand up and down her back. “It still means a lot,” she says. All of it does. The cooking, the washing up, the belief that she can handle something like this. Mummy and Daddy thrust a lot onto her, but not because they think she can do it — simply because they know that nobody else will. She’s defied plenty of their expectations, but it’s easy because those expectations are nonexistent. 

“Of course, angel.” Rupert comes toward the both of them on the bed, and for a moment, Taggie thinks he’s going to kiss her. 

He didn’t kiss her last time. He kissed her back, but Taggie was the one to start it, and she’s acutely aware of that fact. Every time she replays the kiss in the Priory — frequently — she changes one detail so Rupert is the one to make that move. In her mind, Rupert leans first, comes forward so that his mouth is on hers and she’s the one answering. 

His hands, large and warm on her hips. His teeth, sharp on her bottom lip. His tongue, cautious at first and then so persistent that she could have melted right there. God, and the way he looked down at her when, finally, they pulled away. Like something precious. Like an undoing. 

That night, after the party had ended and everyone went their separate ways, after Rupert reluctantly left to go check on the dogs (and after Cameron called him from Corinium), Taggie thought about that look, that kiss, with her fingers between her legs. But the shuddering orgasm — and all the ones since — haven’t been enough to rewrite history. 

She wants him to kiss her so badly it hurts. 

This time, it’s Gertrude. Rupert bends to kiss her nose, and Taggie lets out a nervous laugh. 

“That’s a good girl,” Rupert says, giving Gertrude a scratch behind the ears. “Goodnight, ladies. If you need anything, I’ll be right down the hall.”

“G’night,” Taggie breathes. The room feels too small, even though it’s fit for a queen. Or princess. 

When the door shuts behind him, Taggie flings an arm over her face and groans. 

—

She’s been tossing and turning for over an hour if the clock on the nightstand isn’t lying. Taggie thought with Gertrude by her side, this might not happen again, but her luck has run out. With a huff, she flops her limbs out in all directions. Gertrude snuffles.

The clock ticks.

It’s not that the bed is uncomfortable. Or that she’s not tired. It’s just —

It’s too dark. She flicks the lamp on, but — too bright. 

Taggie weighs her options with her eyes screwed shut. She can keep lying here, get no sleep, and be completely dead on her feet when she needs to focus tomorrow. She can count sheep. She can sneak out of Penscombe, creep through the Bluebell Wood, sleep in her bed at the Priory, and come back before Rupert knows she’s missing. 

Or, she can go down the hall.

“Gertrude,” Taggie whispers. “What do I do?

Gertrude sneezes. 

“Fine.”

Taggie swings her legs off the bed, gathering her courage and her robe. Penscombe is eerily quiet at night — she can’t even hear the dogs, which could mean they’re either extraordinarily good sleepers, or that they have accommodations downstairs. She pads down the cavernous hallway, socks slipping between the Turkish runners laid across the hardwood. Rupert’s room is just a few doors away. 

God, this is embarrassing. 

In front of his door, she has two options: knock, or just open the door. Both seem terrible. 

She knocks.

Beaver barks, Gertrude barks behind her, and suddenly Taggie’s worried that the whole estate is going to wake up. But a lamp clicks on and light pours from under the door. “Taggie?” Rupert calls. “What’s the matter?”

Shame flames from the crown of her head all the way down to her socks, but she turns the doorknob slowly. “Hi,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry about this.”

Rupert sits on the side of the bed, Beaver on the floor in front of him. He’s shirtless, and from her vantage point in the doorway, she spies dark pyjama bottoms slung low around his hips. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, but — God. That day on the tennis court seems so far away. He was a completely different person to her then; a total stranger. Rude, terrible, even. So while she’s familiar with the shape of him, she’s managed to compartmentalize naked, mean Rupert away from clothed, kind Rupert.

Except they’re really the same man, and the markings of sleep have made him even more attractive somehow. 

“No, s’just…” She takes a deep breath. In her mind, she sees this same scene play out with a dark-haired little girl. She follows Taggie’s steps from the pink bedroom to here, knocks the same way, and finds the same man in this room. Only Helen is in the bed next to him — and in her American accent, she asks, “Did you have a nightmare?” 

In the present, Taggie stammers, “C-can I come in?”

“Please,” he says. “Are you feeling sick? I didn’t think my cooking was that bad, but you never really know.” 

Gertrude takes her opportunity to find Beaver and curl up beside him like they’re an old married couple. “Dinner was great. I just…” she trails.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

“No!” she answers quickly. “No, I…I wasn’t asleep at all.”

Rupert squints at the clock on the nightstand. “Christ, it’s nearly one in the morning.” He pats the mattress beside him. “Come here.” 

He’s going to think she’s a child. But she’s drawn to him anyway, so she sits beside him and fiddles with the sash across her waist. 

“Darling,” Rupert starts softly. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t fix it.”

Her face goes deep red. “There’s nothing for you to fix, really.” Rupert squeezes her knee, and while she’s sure it’s meant to be comforting, it’s anything but. He makes her head swim.

“But,” Rupert encourages, “there’s clearly something wrong, or you’d be dreaming about grocery lists by now.”

Taggie gulps. His large hand is still on her knee, and it’s all she can focus on. “I’m…I’m a-a—afraid—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Rupert’s hand is gone, his eyes wide. 

“No! Not of you — God, Rupert, honestly.” This would be funny if it weren’t so mortifying. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Can you please put me out of my misery, then?” He breathes deep. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get back to sleep sometime before the sun rises.” He bumps her shoulder with his own, adding, “Be a good girl and tell me?”

Oh. It should be illegal to be this embarrassed and turned on at the same time. The two emotions roll together in her gut, and she almost does feel sick. Taggie closes her eyes, squeezes her lips together, and finally says, “I’m afraid of the dark.”

Rupert nods, and it strikes her as so fatherly that she has to push the thought away immediately. Thankfully, he adds, “That’s it, is it? This estate has plenty of lamps if you need them. I’m sure I could wrangle a few more for your room.” 

Taggie shoots him a glare. “It’s just the first night in a new place” she adds. “And I thought that having Gertrude with me would be enough, that I’d be fine, but…I just can’t sleep.” She pauses, knowing there’s one critical piece missing. “Alone.”

Alone. It’s like the word itself punches Rupert in the gut. He looks at her like he can’t quite tell if this is all a dream. “So you need…me,” he says slowly.

“Look,” Taggie starts, skin burning, “I can take the floor. Really, it’s just — I’m so sorry.” She can’t bear to address what he actually said.

“Absolutely not.” Rupert stands, and the sight of his long, lean body at full height is nearly too much to take in. He turns down the other side of the bed and fluffs the extra pillow. “We’ll share. It’s fine.” His voice is nearly back to normal.

“It’s fine?”

Rupert’s whole face softens. “Of course. I’m the reason you’re here, so I’m not about to banish you to the floor like one of the dogs.” He gives Beaver a pointed look. “Though he sometimes winds up beside me, so it may be a tight squeeze.”

Something lifts from her chest. Taggie takes a full, deep breath and stands. “Thank you.”

“Stop thanking me. You know you’re welcome anywhere at Penscombe, at any time.”

Including his bedroom, Taggie thinks dimly. Her mouth goes dry at the thought. 

She comes around the bed — large enough for two people and a few dogs — and shrugs off her robe. Of course she’s wearing the red nightie, the one Rupert saw on Patrick’s birthday. If she notices his eyes widening, she tries not to react. 

“I know you said not to thank you,” Taggie says, getting into bed, “but I will anyway.” Feeling suddenly bold, she leans across the expanse of the bed to where Rupert lies against the headboard and presses a kiss to his cheek. His skin is warm and rough under her lips, and she thinks about her hands there instead, dragging his face down to hers. 

Rupert hums softly. “Goodnight, angel.”

He turns off the lamp, and Taggie is asleep in minutes.

—

It’s still dark when her eyes open again. 

Hot. That’s all Taggie registers as she struggles to make sense of where she is. The side of her face is pressed into a pillow, and all she sees across from her is a mop of hair and the shadow of dark lashes across cheekbones. 

But she feels so — hot, burning all over. Low in her belly, especially. Even lower, it aches. Taggie rolls her hips to relieve some of the deep arousal building between her thighs. Where is she again? 

She rolls her hips again, and — oh. She catches on something solid. It’s a spark like she never feels alone, burning bright and egging her on. Just keep moving, just like that, and then —

The solid thing shifts, and a few things start to make sense.

Taggie realizes with no shortage of mortification that not only is she in Rupert Campbell-Black’s bed but she’s also grinding her cunt against his thigh. 

And as she moves to extricate herself from this precarious situation, a deep voice makes her toes curl. 

“Where do you think you’re going, Agatha?”

[turneradora]

Here is a BTS pic from the photoshoot made for an article in the Harper’s Bazaar magazine, published in September this year.

A wonderful « Rivals » ensemble !!👠👠👠

New BTS pic, coming from the photoshoot made for the Harper’s Bazaar magazine, last September.

The O’Hara family, with their dog Gertrude.

Just their eldest son Patrick is missing.

[angellissy]

Take my breath away

Rupert Campbell Black x Taggie O'Hara

I binged Rivals and developed an obsession, so here is my poor attempt of portraying these lovestruck idiots. Set sometime after episode 9 but with no real mention of what happens in the last episode. I hope you enjoy!

Her hands were soaked in the soapy water where she had been washing plate after plate for what seemed like hours. Whenever she thought she was finally done making the food, cleaning the tables, or washing the dishes, her mother always had a new task waiting for her. Taggie was fucking exhausted. Her mother didn’t really care, she did not even seem to notice that she was driving her daughter into complete and utter exhaustion. This was not new to Taggie, this had been her life for as long as she could remember. Sometimes she imagined herself telling her mother to bugger off and do something by herself for once, but then the weight of guilt came crashing down and Taggie forgot every notion of ever standing up to her mother. 

She wiped a soapy hand across her brow and let out a heavy sigh, the same exact one that Gertrude used to let out when she plopped down in the hallway after a long stroll in the woods. Another sigh, a softer one, escaped her now as she thought of her companion. The one gift from her parents that had felt like a gift for her. Taggie had been twelve and struggling in school, her dyslexia making her lag behind her classmates who teased her relentlessly for it. “Tag-tag taggie” they used to call her, playing on the fact that she choked on her words and involuntarily had to repeat them. She barely uttered a word when she got home, terrified that she would get the same teasing treatment there. Her dad had been the one to notice the way she had started curling into herself and how her breath caught in her throat whenever he asked about her day at school. His parents had hoped that caring for a dog might make her more confident and sure of her abilities, but most of all Gertie had become her most trusted companion. 

She thought of her now, the scruffy dog currently sat outside in the dark, forbidden by Maude to be in the house when they had guests. Taggie made a mental note to give Gertie those lamb treats she adores, she deserved it after an evening all alone in the dark. Though perhaps Gertrude had drawn the longest straw, a night alone and away from the maddening crowd her mother called friends sounded like an absolute delight. 

Her thoughts were interrupted when her father came barging into the kitchen, slamming a box of Venturer posters on the countertop. 

“Hard at work eh?” Her father asked teasingly as he nodded at her frozen frame. Taggie looked down and realized that her wandering thoughts had given her the inability to do two things at once. 

She started “Oh I was just.-” but before she could even get the words out he interrupted her “Look we just got this new shipment of Venturer posters and I thought that you could head out tomorrow and hand them out at the town fair?” 

She was not sure if she had nodded or not, but her father beamed and clapped down on her shoulder “I knew you’d always be up to help!”

Her lips turned into a small but tired smile at that, for how could she say no now? It was not like she had anything else to do. However she never really got to figure out what else she could do when her parents were always finding tasks for her. She didn’t mind helping out, she just wished they would actually ask. 

She looked down at the pile of still dirty dishes in the sink,  let out another heavy sigh, and was just to start again when another presence entered the kitchen. Her back was turned but she knew without looking who it was. His energy was so palpable to her, it always felt as if it tugged at her, urging her closer to him. Despite not seeing him, Taggie O’Hara would know Rupert Campbell Black in any room. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to turn around, their last meeting in this kitchen had ended with his lips on hers. It wasn’t that it had been bad, quite the opposite actually. She hadn’t known before that a kiss could be like that, passionate and sweet. He had savored it, seeming unable to tear himself away, and when he did his chest had heaved and they had been so close she could feel the way his heart beat. His hands had been tangled into her hair and hers had been under his suit jacket, itching to touch his skin. They stood like that for a while, seemingly in a trance, and only backed away from each other when Maude’s shrill laugh sounded from not too far away. The last thing Taggie wanted was for her mother to find her and Rupert, she had a knack for turning a nice thing ugly and Taggie desperately wanted for this to be a nice thing. 

Rupert cleared his voice and she turned around, feeling how her cheeks turned rosy just by the sight of him leaning against the door frame. 

“Hello” She said a little uncertainly wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. His lips curved upwards as he returned her greeting. His smile fell a little when he took in the dark circles under her eyes and how she kept blinking rapidly as if forcing herself to stay awake. “You alright there darling?” He took a few steps closer and she backed into the kitchen sink, feeling it slowly making an indent in her lower back. “Y-yes all good” He raised an eyebrow at her but did not question her, knowing that it was quite impossible to get her to admit defeat. 

“Well I was coming to ask you a question, I was wondering if you possibly would join me going to the city on Saturday? I am there for official MP business-” He winked at her and then continued “but thought that perhaps we could take the opportunity to promote Venturer.” 

“I’d love to!” She said, barely letting him finish which made his cheeks twitch ever so slightly. Her pinks turned a darker shade of red as she reconsidered her quick reply and she quickly looked down at her forest green socks to avoid the intensity of his stare.

“Splendid darling! Now let’s get you to bed, shall we?” Taggie looked at him in surprise, opened her mouth to say something then closed it and instead gestured to the dishes. “You don’t need to do everything today, come with me.” It was probably a mix of her tiredness and the slightly authoritative tone in his voice that made her follow him upstairs to her bedroom. With his back turned against her she quickly changed into her red nightdress, she hoped, perhaps a bit devilishly, that it would remind him of their first dance. She cleared her throat and he turned around, at the sight of her he smiled so brightly that she found her smiling with him. 

“Lady in red” He said so softly that she almost missed it. With two long strides, he was in front of her and his hands snaked around her waist. She shivered and felt goosebumps follow his hands. She looked up at him and let her hands travel up from his arms to his face. She gently touched his cheek and he drew a long ragged breath. “I promised myself I wouldn’t find myself with you like this again” 

“I thought you were smart enough not to make pointless promises,” She said a small smile on her lips. “You’re too good for me Tags” Though as he said it she felt his fingers curl against the fabric of her dress, pulling her a little closer. “You’ve changed” She whispered, because it was true. “Not enough” he murmured as he dipped his forehead against hers. She could feel his warm breath against her skin and she swallowed. The nearness of him was driving her mad. She could feel his thumb making circles on the fabric-clad skin of her waist and her hands found themselves traveling down to his neck, she could feel his pulse beneath her fingers. His eyes moved from her eyes to her lips and he let out a soft sigh. “It is enough for me,” She said before pulling him closer by his neck and softly pressing her lips against his. His body tensed for the shortest of moments before he relaxed into her, purely giving in. She savored the taste of him and the small sound he made in the back of his throat when she pressed herself closer. 

She was not sure how much time had passed when he pulled away, eyes glassy and lips swollen. He gave her a small smile as he nodded towards her bed and her eyes widened the tiniest bit, did he mean for them to..? 

A small laugh escaped his throat and he shook his head at her “Gods you will be the death of me, I meant that it was time for you to get some rest” To riled up to say anything Taggie simply nodded and crept under the covers, still looking at him from beneath her lashes. He too was still looking at her, seeming unable to pull his gaze away. He sat down on the edge of her bed and his hand came up to brush away the strand of auburn hair that had fallen in front of her face. 

“You really should be resting more you know” He did not seem quite himself as he uttered the words, gone was the charm and confidence replaced by a tone of concern. Taggie gave him a tired smile and said with a hint of bitterness in her tone “You should tell my parents that.” He nodded as if considering it and the mere thought of him even considering talking to her parents because he cared about her made Taggie’s heart constrict in a way she had never experienced before. She was almost sure she was going to cry. Who was this man who kissed her as if she was the air he breathed, asked her for help when everyone else just took it for granted and, who seemed to genuinely care about her well being? “I am just kidding, I wouldn’t wish for anyone to try telling my mother that she might consider treating me differently, she can be quite vicious you know.” Taggie forced a smile as she said it, but it felt slightly unnatural. He leaned down and brushed a kiss against her temple. “I’d do anything for you. angel” His tone was so serious that she felt completely overwhelmed with emotions. Then all of a sudden his warm presence was removed and he walked away “I’ll pick you up on Saturday.” She did not have time to reply before he was out of her room. She listened to the sounds of his shoes on the gravel outside her window and only closed her eyes when she heard the roaring of his engine driving away. 

Taggie slept more soundly than she had done in ages.

[luthien-under-bough]

to love the pilgrim soul in you (1820 words) by luthien_under_bough

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Rivals (TV 2024) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Declan O'Hara/Maud O'Hara Characters: Declan O'Hara, Maud O'Hara Additional Tags: Introspection, Light Angst, Declan O'Hara is obsessed with his wife, that's it that's the fic

Summary:

As she transitions to the interlude, the sun disappears behind a cloud. The room darkens, shrouded in gray. Yet Maud holds on to the light. She is the light. To Declan, she is the sun.

Read below the cut, or on ao3!

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face

—from "When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats

Declan O’Hara is only reminded to blink — to breathe — when the cigarette in his mouth burns down to a stub, and singes his lip.

He curses under his breath and flicks it away. He blinks, rubbing his eyes, the sudden movement disrupts the heavy wreath of smoke that had accumulated around him. It is then he marks the passage of time by the dozen or so crumpled cigarette butts in the ashtray.

Yet again, he had become so absorbed in his work that an entire afternoon slipped by unnoticed. There is always more to do, another thread to follow, another lead to chase, that it feels second nature for Declan to turn inward, drawing deeper and deeper into the pits of his own mind such that the rest of the world ceases to exist.

Declan flexes his right hand and presses his opposite thumb into his palm, rubbing out the cramped ache from too long — hours, probably — clutching his pencil fiercely as he scribbled out page after page of notes. His neck pops and cracks as he unfurls his spine, shaking out the bunched muscles Piles of yellowing newspapers surround him like autumn leaves. He shifts, sending them fluttering off the arms of his chair.

The drawing room is a right mess. Declan scratches his jaw as he takes it in. There are still unpacked boxes everywhere. Stacks of books and papers. Sweaters draped over the backs of furniture. He chuffs softly at how lived-in the Priory already looks, all their clutter dragged along from London finding new opportunity to sprawl.

At some point the heavy velvet curtains had been thrown open, admitting a glut of warm afternoon sunshine. It spills into the room, shining on the piano like a stage light. Declan cannot recall if the piano — an old Steinway grand that came with the house — had been positioned thusly when they arrived; or, if it now sits perfectly aligned with the setting sun to cast an angelic, golden hue on its player through deliberate reorganization..

Declan smiles fondly, his eyes going soft. It would be just like Maud to rearrange the room in such a manner, His incomparable wife, ever the performer. It is her way to place herself in the center of everything. Truly, she need not expend much effort; her gravity is as inevitable as the earth’s own. As Declan watches her now he feels its pull.

Maud is seated at the piano, bathed in the late-afternoon light, her fair skin luminous with it, her hair bright, as if burning with threads of fire. Her head is tilted to the side, exposing the elegant line of her neck. Her eyes are shut in concentration as she plucks at the keys. Motes of dust dance in the sun beams, swirling around her, drawn to her, as everyone is.

The sporadic, idle notes had been an unassuming backdrop to his work, so seamlessly integrated with the other ambient noise — birds and insects chittering outside, Taggie clattering about in the kitchen, Gertrude gnawing on knot of rope — Declan scarcely noticed. But the scattered ditties now coalesce into something more well-formed, something recognizable. The opening notes of Chopin’s Raindrop prelude trickle into the air, and Maud turns her head, catching more of the light, turning her face toward the heavens as she gathers tempo.

Christ, she’s a vision.

All of Declan’s breath leaves him in a contented sigh, sinking him deeper into his armchair. He briefly closes his own eyes only to picture her clever fingers gliding across the keys. But he cannot keep his gaze from her for long. From the moment he saw her, treading the boards in Dublin, holding an entire theater in rapt attention, it has been this way. He was happily lost from the first, wholly consumed, his soul set ablaze as if touched by the hand of god. Maud is a creature possessed of a rare, true beauty, one that hearkens back to an age of poetry and song. A muse, with a face that inspires men to greatness and foolishness in equal measure.

On occasion, people have remarked how difficult it must be, to love a woman like that. A woman who commands such attention, one he must share with the world. To Declan, loving her is the same as breathing. It requires no effort on his part. He does not know any way to live but to love her. It is simply her nature to be adored, and he cannot fault her for her nature.

Besides, while she may spare other men a glance, or allow them a touch — only he can boast of sharing her heart, and soul.

Declan props his elbow on the arm of the chair, resting his chin in his hand. The room, the house, the world itself drops away again. Instead of disappearing into his own thoughts, there now only exists the two of them: the star, and her perennial audience — the space between them the stage on which they meet.

As she transitions to the interlude, the sun disappears behind a cloud. The room darkens, shrouded in gray. Yet Maud holds on to the light. She is the light.

To Declan, she is the sun.

She hunches slightly, flexing to impress more weight onto the insistent notes of the interlude, which crash like heavy rain, changing the very energy of the room. The slanting gray light casts shadows across Maud’s face, revealing the intricate patterns of her skin. The fine creases around her mouth, moulded by countless bouts of breathless laughter. The radiant lines around her eyes that deepen so beautifully in the fullness of her smile. The parallel lines in the center of her brow, now furrowed in concentration, but more often present when she scowls prettily in his direction.

It stirs a deep affection, and pride, in Declan to think such lines were partly etched by his hand, for ever having made her laugh, for ever having coaxed from her a smile. Nothing has ever made him feel like such an artist. He is one of the great masters, on par with Michelangelo himself, for having carved such exquisite lines. For having been granted leave to brush the cheek of Helen of Troy, of Aphrodite herself.

And he aches to tell her how beautiful they make her. How alive. How privileged he is to behold the wonders of her changing face, to be gifted the chance at discovery, to delight in some new beauty as each year passes. That poetic urge roars in his chest, beating against his ribs, howling and yearning to be unleashed.

But Maud… no, she will latch onto only the insult — which is no insult at all, in truth — merely an admission of reality, but one she goes to great lengths to avoid. She will miss the sentiment, hear only mention of lines and spend hours poring over every perceived flaw in the mirror. She might even blame him for ever daring to make her laugh, or smile. Because for all Maud’s hard edges she is a fragile thing, an eggshell ego that must be handled with great care.

Declan frowns. Has time not written its passage on his face as well? Is that not the fate of all living things? Youth has many splendors, indeed — but so too does age. She was beautiful then, in the flush of her youth. But she is beautiful still. Even more so, in his estimation. Every line, every wrinkle, is proof of their shared years. Each one makes up a part of the map of their lives. Every one earned. Every one cherished. How could such a thing ever be anything but beautiful?

She will not believe him if he says he looks forward to growing old with her. To marking the passage of years in their deepening smile lines. Even when she is stooped and gray, her beauty will be undimmed in his eyes. It will be changed, but it will never be lessened. By god, he will spend every breath until his last extolling her virtue, heaping praise unto her until she is finally convinced that nothing could have ever dampened his desire for her.

There is a sweet ache in his chest knowing that at the end of their lives, he will finally be able to say: see, darling? I never stopped wanting you.

But there is nothing to be said now, he knows. Nothing to be done, but to continue to love her. So Declan says nothing. He simply watches, and admires. It comes so naturally, after all.

Soon the clouds break, and the tempestuous interlude gives way to a repetition of the pleasant opening notes. Golden light shines on her again, washing away all of those beloved lines. Maud’s shoulders relax, and her face softens. Her hands slow, drawing out the final notes of the prelude with delicate precision.

She takes a final, deep breath before opening her eyes.

She knows just where to look. Declan’s heart clenches as those eyes pierce his soul once again, in all these years never having lost their keen edge. He sees the smile tug at the corners of her mouth, the way her eyes flare, briefly, new life breathed into a guttering flame, before they narrow in suspicion. Maud is always performing, but there are moments like this, in which she is seized by a paroxysmal fear at having been seen.

“What?” she snaps, her voice the harsh caress of a whip.

Declan cannot help but grin. As if she did not want to catch him staring. It is just part of the game, part of what is required to love this wonderful, maddening woman.

“Nothin’, sweetheart,” he says softly. “Nothin’ at all.”

She holds his gaze a moment longer. Her mouth quirks at the corner before she gathers her brow into an artful scowl, and returns to the keys. She straightens her back, settles her hands into place, and immerses herself in one of Chopin’s nocturnes.

Declan shifts, leaning forward in his chair, and reaches for his notes. He lights a fresh cigarette, and turns to a blank page in his notebook. Tapping his pencil on the page, and exhaling a puff of smoke, he glances at the papers scattered about, trying to catch the stray thread where his thoughts left off. But it’s no use, now. He sighs, and his fingers move almost of their own accord, scrawling a few well-loved lines, ones that have been stitched into his heart since the moment he laid eyes on her:

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

[titleleaf]

As Zanuck Sr. repeatedly told his son, had Valley of the Dolls been a product of the Hollywood studio system at its apex, in less than a week he would have assigned it to a contract director, one or more of the studio’s stable of thirty-plus top screenwriters, an available cameraman, production and costume designer, a composer, and a cast selected from 20th’s contract talent roster. It isn’t hard to imagine a forties-era Valley of the Dolls. On tap at the studio were any number of great beauties and “types,” some of them quite talented. And if those weren’t quite right, Zanuck might have arranged to borrow talent from other studios. There was Gene Tierney, Linda Darnell, or Jeanne Crain to play the reserved New Englander Anne Welles. Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, or Lana Turner might have played the luckless showgirl Jennifer North. The young Bette Davis, Susan Hayward, or Ida Lupino would have fit as brilliantly talented, tormented Neely O’Hara. Tyrone Power/Gregory Peck/Cornel Wilde could have slipped easily into the role of suave, slippery Lyon Burke, alongside Dana Andrews as press agent Mel, Vincent Price as Charles Revson–inspired cosmetics empire maven Kevin Gillmore, and Clifton Webb as fashion designer Ted Casablanca. For good measure, Zanuck could have thrown in Gertrude Lawrence as fading Broadway virago Helen Lawson, Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Vic Damone as Tony Polar, and Geraldine Fitzgerald as Miriam, sister of the sexy, childlike crooner. Or had Zanuck made the movie later in his career, he could have helped himself to the talents of, respectively, Hope Lange, Diane Varsi, or Shirley Jones as Anne, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Collins, or Debra Paget as Jennifer, Joanne Woodward as Neely, Richard Burton or Stephen Boyd as Lyon, Roddy McDowall as Ted Casablanca, Claudette Colbert or Mary Martin as Helen, Elvis Presley as Tony with Angela Lansbury as Miriam. But in 1966, the days of the studio system and exclusive contracts were on life support. With the long shadow of Darryl F. Zanuck looming over Valley of the Dolls, it would take Richard D. Zanuck, producer David Weisbart, and director Mark Robson long, torturous months and many reversals before the casting—let alone the entire production—finally pulled together. And, from his Paris headquarters, Zanuck Sr. thought that was laughable—when he didn’t find it infuriating.

-- Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time, Stephen Rebello

Rebello's bonkers fancasts here have captivated me.

[bildungsromanx]

There’s so many poems I enjoyed last year (2023) here they are in a list in no particular order:

Morning Love Poem // Tara Skurtu

À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein” // Frank O’Hara

For Once, Then, Something // Robert Frost

Animal Languages // Chase Twichell

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee // N.Scott Momaday

This untitled Ava Wolf poem

Clear Morning // Louise Glück

Defining the Problem // Wendy Cope

After the Movie // Marie Howe

Search History Sad // Caylin Capra-Thom

February & my love is in another state //José Olivarez

P.S. there were plenty of other things I found to be poetic that aren’t traditional modes of poetry. For instance the interview with James Baldwin and Giovanni, paintings, this YouTube video on Odilon Redon, found objects, infographics, etc.

I can’t leave these out. Quotes. Honorable mention for the Jeremy Radin one.

[chispas-and-broken-bindings]

hello! Love like ghosts and the world ender?

Thanks @thistle-and-thorn!

Love Like Ghosts 💕 — Rank your top three favorite quotes about love.

There are so many! Here are a few that immediately came to mind: "When I am feeling depressed and anxious sullen all you have to do is take your clothes off and all is wiped away revealing life’s tenderness that we are flesh and breathe and are near us as you are really as you are I become as I really am alive" — “À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein" by Frank O’Hara

I'm most overwhelmed with love for my husband when I wake up in the middle of the night and his back or chest are pressed against me and I can hear him breathing and feel his skin on mine, and this quote reminds me of that very simple but transcendent feeling.

You took my dreams from me When I first found you I kept them with me babe I put them with my own Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you — "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues

This is a sad song about a broken relationship, but I love these lines. There is something so tender and true about them.

"Let me stay here," he said. "There was soap." — Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

The World Ender 💀 — Describe your “coming back from the dead to take vengeance on your enemies” outfit.

I'm like...not a very vengeful person. This is very boring of me, I know, but I can't think of who I'd even bother to come back and take vengeance on. Do I really have no enemies? (My nemesis well is even drying out which is very disappointing). Clearly I need to get my head in the game and get some "opps" as my niece calls them.

So, taking into account I don't have a specific enemy in mind, here is my all-purpose "vengeance" outfit, as modeled by Rachel Weisz:

Hot and utilitarian, no?

What about you?

[seaoflove]

hello !!! do u know any poems that are abt not giving up and finding strength in urself etc? kinda like intructions on not giving up by ada limon! it can be book recs too ! boooks that just keep u going when things are hard?

poems.

“a litany for survival” by audre lord (i believe ive read that ada limón had this poem printed on her wall to look at every day during a difficult time in her life.... i have too)

“the peace of wild things” by wendell berry

“wild geese” by mary oliver (you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves)

“from blossoms” li-young lee

“the trees” by philip larkin

“á la recherche d’ gertrude stein” by frank o’hara (all is wiped away revealing lifes tenderness)

“this morning” by lucille clifton (i survive survive survive)

"have you ever tried to enter the long black branches" by mary oliver (listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?)

“i am not ready to die yet” by aracelis girmay

etc.

if you want something philosophical: the myth of sisyphus by albert camus

if you want something fictionalized and slowburning: his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman

if you want to read those whose words will never fail me: letters of vincent van gogh, letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke

[duckbeater]

Journal Entry / Those Who Stay

A previous version of this post included the title supplements “(The Butcher of Loneliness, pt. 2; [Courtship, pt. 5]),” which made the top aggressively ugly and also abstruse. None the less, one should consider this entry as the fifth in a much-dislocated series. —The Editors

—

A stranger messaged me the other day, congratulating me on my Anne Carson tour. It seems I’d avoided her for two decades and then this last month [November] I read most of her work and posted about it, indiscriminately, nearly every night, on my IG story. Obv the accolades piled in, unstoppable. Indeed, I read most of her books in the span of two weeks—whatever I could find at the booksellers or online or through resellers, eager for her matter-of-fact eloquence on Greek historians, Proust’s long “fairy tale,” and then the remarks on Woolf (and why? I’ve barely read thru Swann’s Way). I was walking nearly 12 miles a day like the city varmint they track on TikToks. These were long walks to wear me down and they filled my heels with a bolting pain that pulsed, even in bed, even after taking many ibuprofen. I became lean like varmint, too. Running was an absolute nightmare but I ran anyway and obv you know this. 

What did I imagine Carson wrote versus what does she actually write? | thought she occupied herself with academic exercises—frosty, formal reports from the edge of translation, with some personal assaying inside. Crone’s notes; old lady vibes; sententious from her years collecting the high-finance prizes. (Thus I am both stupid and sexist.) I liked Autobiography of Red in grad school but couldn't follow the plot. [Falling out of the plot is a great fear of mine.] Her compendium of chapbooks, Float, has flashes of Frank O’Hara’s chatty list poems (“Eras of Yves Klein” and “How to Like ‘If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso’ By Gertrude Stein”), and a very funny aside on style in “Merry Christmas from Hegel”: “You will forgive me if you are someone who knows a lot about Hegel or understands it, I do not and will paraphrase badly, but I understood him to be saying he was fed up with popular criticism of his terrible prose.” Ancient playwrights made themselves known as ghostships do by creaking thru fog. These encounters were diverting but not fastening, perhaps because they were, let’s be frank, scraps, one-offs, anecdotes, whose audience could be best described as friends and family. What was her deal with the Brontës? The difficulty with pronouns? I wasn’t family yet. I hadn’t read enough. I was a younger man. My circumstances changed. I was presumed to fall out of love, pathetically so. I fell back in love with someone who didn’t love me back—a feeling whose use-value accounts for a world literature rich in sympathetic losers. It was an excellent time to read one Anne Carson.

She writes a lot about not getting what you want. I discovered, with Glass, Irony & God, that she’s never found peace with the lover who abandoned her (“It is stunning... when one’s lover comes in and says I do not love you anymore”) and that her oeuvre may well be a perduring dialog with that loss. In Plainwater, published the same year, she opens her “Anthropology of Water” by prefacing, “Water is something you cannot hold. Like men. I have tried. Father, brother, lover, true friends, hungry ghosts and God, one by one all took themselves out of my hands”; and in the ominous poem “New Rule” from Men in the Off Hours, “The night of hooks?// The man blade left open on the stair?/ Not enough spin on it, said my true love/ when he left in our fifth year.” Then in Decreation, re the Bloomsbury set, with its members at last in matrimonial equipoise, Carson shits on the premise of their futurity:

I wonder if they paused to look at each other, these mated and unmated people, on the exposed plane of an ordinary moment of that curious, heavy, historic, wrong day. Sudden feeling of oldness. Black upland wind. Bring a coat, they had been told, and a piece of smoked glass. It will get cold. It will hurt your eyes. Totality is lightless, and should be colourless, yet may intensify certain questions that hang at the back of the mind. What is a spouse after all? Will this one stay, can this one keep me alive?

I mean, it wasn't exactly a great time to be alive. Two world wars, bad cures for cancer, and the ungenial environment for genius women. Still, you get the sense her worry’s sincere; she wants these aristocratic oddballs to find some warmth, some flame of reason. Carson’s apocalyptic scene-setting puts me in mind of Bo Bartlett's Dreamland, a painting full of strange celebrants on their way from a wedding. They are curious, serious, strolling up a hill. A few appear to look back at their viewers. There’s a bride, a pilot, a priest, a baby with a crown; a lady rich in her furs; and leading them all, a fool.

—

In The Paris Review, Carson describes a childhood moving past fixed friendships as her father moved from bank to bank in Canadian backwaters. Uprooted every few years, she regarded her schoolmates as bad bets; better to shy away from relations whose half-life guaranteed painful, present decay. (These are facts. My mom suffered same as a preacher’s daughter, leaving midwest ministries every three years or so for the next Methodist parsonage. I asked her what that was like, and she said, “I was always learning new rules. I never understood them. What music people liked. How I should dress. What was funny. I made good grades and was very pretty but was teased constantly because I was quiet and the minister was my dad and I tried always to be nice. I felt very alone.” Another comp: Anne Carson’s father and my mother’s father both died of premature, catastrophic, late-stage Alzheimer’s.)

When you’re young, you learn how to keep people close: you learn to trust that they last and even if they don’t last, you at least learn that faculty of trust (that people stay), which is a kind of peace. Trust-breakers remain outliers. They do not pertain to a worldview of paralyzing detachment. But “I’ll be leaving,” thought Carson; “this won’t last.” Her work continually makes evident that it has never resolved, never made sense of leaving, and that she has never learned enough from it to move on. Further, her work emphasizes that she has chosen not to move on. That, sometimes, choosing obsessive disappointment is as liberating and galvanizing as choosing what we superficially call “freedom.” “I’ve avoided enlightenment resolutely,” she says. “As it is, I’m just sad.”

In her brother’s epitaph, Carson includes Michael’s note admonishing her, “Don’t go back to the farm don’t go alone,” and, “Put the past away you have to.” The siblings were not only worlds but timescales apart. He wrote from Copenhagen where he was hard-scrabbling, existing on cigarettes and shopkeeping—but wifed-up—still, insect-pinned to a crime he committed in 1978 and never going home. Meanwhile, Anne led university students in Michigan through cases of Attic Greek (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and vocative) and composed odd poems about ruined expectations. On the one hand, several millennia of precedent: Simonides of Keos, Herodotos, Sokrates [her characteristic spelling favors a k where other scholars rely on the less economic ch], Archilochos, Augustine, Basho, Sartre. On the other, she inhabited estranging tactics: Is this a poem or prose translation? Is this a poem or academic gloss? Is this a poem or… opera? And then too the voices of dead starlets, Free French mystics, Romanian-born/German-language suicides, and (famously, for Anne Carson) Sappho. Her brother wrote “don’t go back” and “put the past away” but seemed sorely oblivious to her present case. Up stakes? From where? How can you return to where you’ve never left? How do you come back from where you’ve never gone, etc. (I’m asking for myself.)

Alice, a character in Complicite’s Mnemonic, tells her ex-lover Virgil, “You have to wait now and this time you follow,” crazing him. “Can you hear the inherent contradiction in that?” he reports to a friend, continuing: 

You have to wait and follow. It’s impossible. And I suddenly realized what’s happening to her . . . What’s going on is that she’s feeding back on herself. It’s feedback, turbulence. Her internal state is like weather. Our internal lives are a mystery. We don’t even know what causes us to sleep. My doctor can tell me I’ve got insomnia but he doesn’t know how or why.

I write that Anne Carson has never made sense of leaving, never moved on, and yet her formative years were spent in transit, dislocated, grasping and still removed. In her “Praise of Sleep,” she ends remarks on Elizabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, The Odyssey, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Plato’s Krito with an ode whose last line reads: “Exit wound, as they say.” I consider this a hypothetical—a pretense—of feeling, because she hasn’t exited. Anne Carson is standing stock-still on blue icy hinterlands in dark Ontario. Others left, she stayed, and the wound (this is odd to say—actually, it’s certainly painful to write)—the wound is that we stay. If we exit, maybe we can find a goddam bandage or two. If we exit, maybe we can avoid further harm? In a play, as in life, exits create new scenes. You actually have to leave to move elsewhere, to move on. Acknowledging this is obv v silly but that doesn’t make it wrong. I corrected a friend on the same matter a few days ago: “This is not a metaphor.” 

“An epitaph is a way of thinking about death and gives consolation,” says Carson, in The Economy of the Unlost. “Salvation occurs, through the act of attention that forms stone into memory, leaving residue of greater life. I am speaking subjectively. There is no evidence of salvation except a gold trace in the mind.” 

Here my patience quavers.

Memory isn’t stone; it’s a blood sponge with connective neural byways and low electric activity. And gold is not found in persons whatsoever—not the element [unless thru surgery]—and only meekly by virtue of right action, as a simile, and a tired one.

—

[The sorrow of] unrequited love compels its sufferers to do strange things. Sometimes monstrous things. Of course requited love feeds upon its own vagaries—obsessive texting; fucking in closets at parties; betraying your right conscience to do wrong things (e.g, the one time I went on a big gay camping trip while my grandmother died, not too far away, to shore up my relations with a man. My brothers, who’d flown in to comfort my mother, found my absence unspeakably bizarre). Success in love absorbs these bursts of mania and incorporates them rather too smoothly into the usual narratives of banal romantic triumph. A rehearsal dinner’s tear-stained anecdotes; the party fodder; nostalgia. And despite the severity of love’s work in these broken measures, the idiocy of courtship (and situationship and relationship) have become a civic pastime—a tax some lucky ones pay to perdure in the dreamscape of public life as married, home-owning child-bearers.  

You have to be absolutely nuts. Just out of your mind. You have to be so accommodating, nearly incorporeal, to integrate another’s habits and tastes. Their family—and that family’s customs? You have to know how much regular sex to expect, and money, and if perhaps you care to swing when you travel? Obviously I could not. But then, the happily-in-love don’t write essays on love. They bask cage-jawed behind love’s silencing muzzle. The happily-in-love are editors or novelists or reporters. There are no stings for them, no impalements, and they are galvanized to look elsewhere for the stories of their day. They’re great gossips, for instance, in the miseries of the unloved, because the unloved bring them news. 

[fragment ends]

[chillentertainer]

A potential ao3 summary for those who are interested:

Declan O’Hara contains multitudes: he’s Irish, divorced father of three, former alcoholic, a journalist, temperamental, and—lest society ever lets him fucking forget—a werewolf. 

What he isn’t: gay. 

What he will never, ever be: attracted to Rupert Campbell-Black, town cad and vampire. 

Or: the AU in which Declan is actually a good father who leaves Maud years ago, and moves to Codswolds by himself. Because Taggie grew up without her mother wrecking her self-confidence at every moment and her father actually paying attention to her, she’s off running a highly successful catering job in London. Patrick’s away at uni. And Caitlyn spends the summers with her mother due to the custody agreement they made. So it’s just Declan, in a big house, with Gertrude and stacks of books and whisky and not much else. Except for his neighbor Rupert Campbell-Black who is a downright pain in the arse. Oh, and is a fecking vampire

and if i said i was planning a werewolf!declan x vampire!rupert au instead of writing my finals research paper

[jouissanceangel]

Frank O’Hara, “À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein”

[astrognossienne]

scandalous beauty: vivien leigh -an analysis

“I'm a Scorpio, and Scorpios eat themselves out and burn themselves up like me. I swing between happiness and misery. I say what I think and I don't pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my own actions.” - Vivien Leigh

The quintessential Scorpio, Vivien Leigh is one of the best actresses of all time. Immortalized for her fiery film performance as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, one of the most successful films of all time, she is the only British woman to win two Best Actress Oscars (interestingly enough, both for playing Southern belles). To her public, she was forever the lady — beautifully mannered, exquisitely dressed, radiating charm. But among those who knew her well, she didn’t give a damn. I’ve often said that I see a lot of myself in Scarlett, and it was Vivien who breathed life, neuroses and her own dangerous sexuality into her. Vivien’s beauty was like that of her beloved Siamese cat, her eyes the same extraordinary shade of blue, her light movements almost feline in their grace. As Stevie Nicks said, “she is like a cat in the dark and then she is the darkness”. Her beauty was matched only by her talent. She had a fierce single-mindedness in her professional and personal life; whatever she wanted, she got it. She had a near-photographic memory and knew her lines after one or two readings of a play. A true Scorpio, she didn’t have any concept of balance; she only knew extremes: she was a bipolar nymphomaniac; when she was high, she was very high indeed and almost uncontrollable, when she was low she was suicidal. However, these mood swings would later be defined as manic depression, a mental illness that quite a few Scorpios seem to suffer from, from what I’ve noticed...she had violent mood swings and uncontrollable behaviour, which at times bordered on insanity. Her mental illness often manifested itself in sex addiction, which led her to having sex with strangers in London parks. Yet, while Leigh was incredibly unstable and as such, could at times be impossible to live with, she was said to be in other ways a “kind and generous person”. This tiny, frail actress from the Himalaya Mountains who won enduring fame for playing unforgettable characters, was as enigmatic as she was tragic. The parallels between her character and Leigh in real life seemed only too real. Her Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois remain so powerful today because she revealed herself in each of these characters, and in doing so gave us a realistic glimpse into the human condition. Regardless of her many flaws, demons, and hectic personal life cut short at the age of 53, Leigh’s place in film history is secured.

Vivien Leigh, according to astrotheme, was a Scorpio sun and Aquarius moon. She was born Vivian Mary Hartley, in the British Raj (India) to Ernest Richard Hartley, a Scottish-born British broker, and his wife, Gertrude. Gertrude, of Irish and Anglo-Indian parentage, was a devout Roman Catholic. Vivien was a child of the Empire, and while pregnant, her mother spent half an hour a day staring at the Himalayas in the hope that some of their beauty would be transferred to her baby. Her faith was repaid: even at an early age is was clear that Vivian would be stunningly beautiful. It was a life of privilege; her parents were well-off and she was waited on hand and foot by servants. Like Dolores del Rio, she was an only child, and as such, she was a spoiled rotten princess, constantly reminded by her mother that she was special. Once when she asked why fireworks were being let off on 5th November, she was told “it's for your birthday, darling". But her pampered childhood came to an abrupt end when she was sent away to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in England at the age of just six and a half. It is believed that the change had a profound effect on young hypersensitive Vivien's mental health. She was two years younger than all the other children and didn't see her mother for almost two years. But it was at the convent that her interest in drama began. One of her friends there was future actress Maureen O'Sullivan, two years her senior, to whom she confided:  "When I leave school I'm going to be a great actress".

She was removed from the school by her father, and traveling with her parents for four years, she attended schools in Europe, learning French and Italian along the way. The family returned to Britain in 1931. After seeing O’Sullivan’s films, Vivien told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Shortly after, her father enrolled Vivian at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (RADA). Vivien also knew what she exactly what she wanted when it came to finding a husband. In 1932, at the age of 18, she caught sight of a handsome man on horseback out riding with the local hunt. "I'm going to marry him," she told her friend. It made no difference that the man, Leigh Holman, was 13 years her senior and already engaged: Vivien, not for the last time, got her way, and they married in December 1932. Soon after, she quit RADA. But settling down to a life of domesticity held no interest for the wannabe young actress. When her daughter, Suzanne was born on October 12 the following year, she simply wrote in her diary "had a baby - a girl". Vivien pestered her husband to allow her to return to drama school; to gain his approval she took his Christian name as her stage surname. She hired an agent name John Gliddon, who recommended her to British film director Alexander Korda as a possible film actress, but Korda rejected her as lacking potential. Her big break came in the West End production of The Mask of Virtue in 1935. The "staggeringly beautiful" young actress earned rave reviews and was soon the talk of London's theater-world. After this success, Korda soon admitted his error and signed her to a contract.

In the autumn of 1935 Vivien first set eyes on a young actor named Laurence Olivier. "That's the man I'm going to marry", she told a friend once more. Again it was pointed out to her that her latest prey was married. However once again, Vivien was determined to go to any lengths to get what she wanted. At Leigh's insistence, she had an actor friend introduce her to Olivier at the Savoy Grill, where he and wife Jill Esmond dined regularly after his performance in Romeo and Juliet. She went backstage to visit Olivier in his dressing room and in front of astonished onlookers, kissed him on his shoulder. And when she learnt that Olivier and his wife were going to Capri on holiday, she went there too, taking along a friend of her husband's as cover. Soon Leigh and Olivier were having an affair. The first film they made together was Fire Over England, where they played the role of lovers. Finally, after appearing together in a production of Hamlet, they announced they were leaving their respective spouses and setting up home together. The news scandalized the socially conservative Britain of 1937. Even after capturing Olivier, the ultra-ambitious Vivien still had more mountains to climb. Despite her relative inexperience, Leigh was chosen to play Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet. It was around this time that she started to exhibit the madness that she was known for; her mood rapidly changed as she was preparing to go onstage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at Olivier before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap, and by the following day she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. Leigh appeared with her old schoolmate O’Sullivan, along with Lionel Barrymore in the film A Yank at Oxford. During production, she developed a reputation for being difficult and unreasonable, partly because she disliked her secondary role but mainly because her petulant antics seemed to be paying dividends.

Hollywood had launched a talent search to find an actress to play the part of Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of the best-selling novel, “Gone with the Wind”.  Although she had found fame in Britain, Leigh was still a relative unknown in Hollywood. Yet Leigh was not discouraged. She immersed herself in Margaret Mitchell's novel, learning passages of it by heart. She traveled to America, ostensibly to be with Olivier, who was filming Wuthering Heights, but really to meet his agent, Myron Selznick, brother of Gone with the Wind's producer David O. Selznick. Leigh persuaded Myron to take her, dressed as Scarlett, to the set of Gone With The Wind and introduce her to the film's producer. Selznick was enchanted with the beautiful young British actress. The director, George Cukor, concurred and praised Leigh's "incredible wildness". She secured the role of Scarlett soon after. Leigh's mesmerizing performance won her the 1939 Academy Award for Best Actress, one of eight Oscars the film received. Yet although she had achieved global stardom at the age of 26, personal contentment proved elusive. While filming Caesar and Cleopatra in 1944, Leigh, then pregnant, slipped and fell, suffering a miscarriage. Also, that same year, she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis in her left lung and spent several weeks in hospital before appearing to have recovered. The stress triggered a mental breakdown and Leigh entered an even worse manic depressive state which was to blight the rest of her life. In 1951, Leigh won her second Oscar for her portrayal of the neurotic Blanche DuBois in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire. Her performance is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest in the history of the cinema, but it proved catastrophic for her mental health. Leigh later claimed that playing DuBois - who at the end of the film is taken away to a lunatic asylum - "tipped me over into madness". She even started to utter the character's phrases from the film in real life.

Vivien had another problem, too: nymphomania. A by-product of Leigh's mental illness was an insatiable desire for sex. The first signs came early on when, during periods of depression, she had distressing sexual fantasies. She sometimes had a compulsion to insist her taxi driver should come into the house with her. At other times, it was a delivery man who caught her attention. Leigh also had frequent sexual encounters with strangers. She propositioned whoever took her fancy. In 1948, while touring Down Under with her husband, she embarked on an affair with the young Australian actor Peter Finch. Her affair with Finch resumed on the set of the 1953 film, Elephant Walk, when Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be flown back to Britain. Vivien was fiendish about sex. Once she rang a friend and asked her to have tea with her. The friend arrived half an hour later, but Vivien wasn't there. Eventually Vivien returned. It had been raining- she was bedraggled, covered in mud and looked terrible. She had been in the square with someone. That sort of thing happened all the time. She even tried to seduce the controversial critic Kenneth Tynan, who would always write poor reviews of her stage work, yet praise her husband.

While outwardly, Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier were still the golden couple of the British film and theater world, their marriage came under increasing strain. Olivier could not satisfy his wife's sexual appetite and there were frequent rows, sometimes of a violent nature. Finally, in 1960, after 23 years together, the great romance was over. Olivier left Vivien for Joan Plowright (also a Scorpio, albeit a much more dignified and controlled one) and the Oliviers divorced soon afterwards. Leigh was heartbroken. She blamed Plowright for the break-up, forgetting about her own affair with Peter Finch, but soon she took up with and mrried an actor named Jack Merivale, who was incredibly patient with her and, together with her first husband, with whom she remained friendly, took care of her for the rest of her life. Her manic depression continued to plague her, and she had to be treated with electric shock therapy. A friend of Leigh's went to see her after one such bout of treatment and recalls seeing her crawling on the ground digging with her hands. Leigh didn't even recognize her. Leigh's last film was Ship of Fools, made in 1965. In ailing physical and mental health, she played a down-on-her-luck divorcee, giving what many consider a quite moving performance. Two years later, Leigh was rehearsing to appear in a play when her tuberculosis resurfaced. Following several weeks of rest, she seemed to recover. However, her tuberculosis returned; when Merivale left her as usual at their flat to perform in a play, he returned home just before midnight to find her asleep. He entered the bedroom and discovered her body on the floor. She had been attempting to walk to the bathroom and, as her lungs filled with liquid, she collapsed and suffocated to death. A true water sign, she drowned in her emotions and passions, and quite literally consumed herself.

Next, It’s only natural that I focus on her husband, a most respected and distinguished actor and one of the greatest actors of all time...he was a classic Shakespearean actor whose passions were almost as intense as his talent: Taurus Laurence Olivier.

.  

STATS

birthdate: November 5, 1913

major planets:

Sun: Scorpio

Moon: Aquarius

Rising: Taurus

Mercury: Sagittarius

Venus: Libra

Mars: Cancer

Midheaven: Aquarius

Jupiter: Capricorn

Saturn: Gemini

Uranus: Aquarius

Neptune: Cancer

Pluto: Cancer

Overall personality snapshot: She was often torn between being the dispassionate observer of life and the intensely engaged redeemer of human suffering. Sometimes she could not help feeling isolated and cynical; other times she found her identity with being one of the gang, and her conscience sends you out into some all-consuming cause. She had a real job combining her immense pride with her lofty idealism, her blunt, piercingly astute observations with her need for congenial companionship. But when she successfully managed it, she became a powerful force in her own circle and in the world at large if she so deemed that a cause merited her total dedication. She pursued truth with an intensity that would exhaust more laid-back, luke-warm types. When the impartial spectator within her married the passionate experiencer of life’s mysteries, she became a natural scientist, philosopher or artist, who brought together the heights and the depths. This satisfied her need to understand from her lofty eyrie and make sense of what can at times seem a deeply threatening world. Life for her seemed both a tragedy and a comedy in which both the light and darkness of the human situation are mysteriously and inextricably intermingled. And her fine intellect got lots of mileage from this awareness – she could be a master of satire and a sharp social critic. She was all too aware, however, that the paradoxes and ironies she observed in society lie within herself as well, and she may have used a well-developed sense of the absurd as a kind of defense against the pain of being alive.

She had powerful desires and feelings and a real need to achieve. Her standards were high; she knew that personal achievements reflected her essence, so she made sure that her achievements were worthy of her. But her essential seriousness and emotional control often belie some very tender feelings and a deep need for friendship, for underneath that solid ego was immense concern, affection and even compassion for the suffering to which she was so sensitive. Sometimes, however, she suspected the worst of her fellow human beings, seeing them as predators and, even worse, monstrously indifferent to the plight of other living beings. Like Dylan Thomas, she may have felt that life was summed up by the fact that "we are born in others’ pain and perish in our own". But she had enormous resilience and tenacity, a capacity for regenerating social structures, and she could take her perceptive mind and emotional commitment into the healing professions or politics and accomplish much. She saw what needed doing and got on and did it, regardless of what others thought. A certain ability to plunge into experience and observe the consequences made her an excellent trouble-shooter. Her personality combined sheer survival instinct with aspirations for nobility. She could turn despair into hope by clinging tenaciously to her uniqueness and to her common bond with all humanity.

She displayed a warm attractiveness and ripeness. Her most outstanding feature was her eyes and her gentle smile and voice. She enjoyed dressing well, preferring soft colours. The philosopher in her meant that she found ideas and opinions more important than fact. She was very optimistic and was easily distracted by anything new. When opportunity came knocking, she was quick to recognize it and take advantage of it. Sincere and versatile, she had a strong social sense. Her fresh outlook and breezy manner meant that she related well to people. Although she may have been careless over detail, she had an instinctive idea of the truth. She was especially good at seeing through sham, however always expressing the truth could be seen as tactlessness by others. She possessed writing talent. She needed to be able to show her originality and independence in any job for complete satisfaction. She was capable of routine work, but ultimately found it too dull and boring. She needed scope for her inventiveness, because she was able to bring a fresh view to any job. She had trouble trusting those who had authority over her. She tended to be fairly materialistically oriented, working hard for eventual success. Her sense of duty and responsibility were well-developed. Her powers of concentration are strong, and she was an honest person. She could be extremely efficient in the way that she tried to get maximum result out of minimum effort. She didn’t like extravagance and waste. She was a thoughtful and resourceful person, who was well-informed on many subjects. Success came gradually and as a result of hard work. Success and growth, for her, were expressed by material and financial achievements, bringing status and prestige.

Her attitudes and ideas tended to be on the conservative side, but they were profound and she was able to constructively develop and apply them. She was very serious about everything that gained his attention, although high nervous tension plunged her into periods of depression. At times, she could lack emotional warmth, preferring her life to be ordered and disciplined. When things didn’t go her way, she could fall into a bout of depression or feel very bitter and vindictive. Her sense of humour tended to be rather black and low-key. She belonged to a generation in which humanitarian ideals became extremely important, as well as the belief in absolute freedom for every individual. As a member of this generation, she came up with radical new ideas which she stubbornly followed. Knowledge was acknowledged as bringing freedom. As a member of this generation, she felt deep spiritual convictions, although she may not have seen herself as religious in the traditional sense of the word. She was part of an emotionally sensitive generation that was extremely conscious of the domestic environment and the atmosphere surrounding their home place and home country. In fact, she could be quite nostalgic about her homeland, religion and traditions, often seeing them in a romantic light. She felt a degree of escapism from everyday reality, and was very sensitive to the moods of those around her. Vivien Leigh embodied all of these Cancer Neptunian ideals. Changes were also experienced in the relationships between parents and children, with the ties becoming looser. Was part of a generation known for its devastating social upheavals concerning home and family. The whole general pattern of family life experiences enormous changes and upheavals; as a Cancer Plutonian, this aspect is highlighted with Leigh’s ruthlessness in her determination to land Olivier, when she left her first husband, barrister Leigh Holman, and five-year-old daughter Suzanne at home 'with hardly a backward glance' and took off for Los Angeles. She only became close to her daughter when she became a grown woman herself.

Love/sex life: No lover expected more from love than she did. For her, love was the highest ideal possible and sex was a rapture that exalted her being at every level: mind, body and soul. This made her a lover to be reckoned with—someone who was completely focused on the relationship. The intensity of her approach made life very difficult for those who loved her. She didn’t stand for halfway measures and she demanded a level of commitment that made many shy away. But when she loved, she did so with such utter devotion that the brave few who stuck with her would have no regrets. It was not unusual for the intense emotionality that characterized her love life to spill over into her philosophical and spiritual beliefs. When this happened she became a particular potent and thoroughly devoted idealist. Of course, she expected the person she loved to share her idealism and she could become quite resentful when they didn’t. At some point the question was going to be asked; “What did she love more, the ideas in her head or the person sleeping beside her?” That’s a question she probably didn’t want to answer too quickly. In early 1940, both divorced their spouses and married later that summer, but even the great Laurence Olivier soon found he couldn't keep Vivien happy. Soon she was seeing other men and Olivier would later state that satisfying her sexually would eventually become burdensome. Leigh would fulfill her sexual needs with many other lovers, including celebrated actor Peter Finch who was a close friend of her husband's. Some biographers have labeled her as a true nymphomaniac. Leigh, who many experts now believed was bipolar, would continue with her wanton ways right up until her death in 1967, her list of bed mates as long as Clark Gable's. Lover Peter Finch would say after her death, that sex was a "sickness" with the one-time Scarlett O'Hara, a stimulant as powerful and addictive as any drug.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Pisces

Lilith: Pisces

Vertex: Libra

Fortune: Aquarius

East Point: Taurus

Her North Node in Pisces dictated that she needed to develop her emotions and overall sensitivity. She needed to try to be less critical and demanding of both herself and others. Her Lilith in Pisces ensured that she was a natural born mystics and cultivated her own myth. Her Part of Fortune in Aquarius and Part of Spirit in Leo dictated that her destiny led him to a prominent position in life as a leader of some sort. Fame and prestige brought her success and material rewards. Success came to her when she stepped forward into the spotlight. Her soul’s purpose asked her to embrace unique and unconventional life experiences. She felt spiritual connections and the spark of the divine when there was a humanitarian benefit to her efforts. East Point in Taurus dictated that she was more likely to identify with the need for pleasure (including the potential of liking himself) and comfort. Her Vertex in Libra, 6th house dictated that she longed for a union of souls that was based on a model of pure peace and justice. Images come to mind of a mythical life on Venus, the planet of love, where there is never a discordant beat between lovers, but rather, continual harmony even if played in the minor chords. Physical lust was certainly a necessary aspect of two beings eternally intertwined, but the platonic component far outweighed it in importance for her. She had an attitude of duty, obligation and sacrifice when it came to heartfelt interactions. The negative side was the tendency to become hypochondriacal or martyristic to get the love she so desperately wanted. There was a need for others to appreciate the sincerity of her intentions, to the daily tasks she executed in a conscientious and caring way and for others to know that her actions, no matter how routine they may seem, were based on devoted love.

elemental dominance:

air

water

She was communicative, quick and mentally agile, and she liked to stir things up. She was likely a havoc-seeker on some level. She was oriented more toward thinking than feeling. She carried information and the seeds of ideas. Out of balance, she lived in her head and could be insensitive to the feelings of others. But at her best, she helped others form connections in all spheres of their daily lives. She had high sensitivity and elevation through feelings. Her heart and her emotions were her driving forces, and she couldn’t do anything on earth if she didn’t feel a strong effective charge. She needed to love in order to understand, and to feel in order to take action, which caused a certain vulnerability which she should (and often did) fight against.

modality dominance:

fixed

She liked the challenge of managing existing routines with ever more efficiency, rather than starting new enterprises or finding new ways of doing things. She likely had trouble delegating duties and had a very hard time seeing other points of view; she tried to implement the human need to create stability and order in the wake of change.

house dominants:

10th

6th

3rd

Her ambition in relation to the outside world, the identity she wished to achieve in regard to the community at large, and her career aspirations were all themes that were emphasized throughout her life. All matters outside the home, her public image and reputation were very important to her. Her attitude to people in authority, and how she viewed the outside world, as well as the influence of her father and her own attitude to him was highlighted. The general state of her health is also shown, as well as her early childhood experiences was a defining force for the rest of her life. Her workplace in respect to her colleagues, and the type of work she did as well as her attitude to it was emphasized in her life. Her everyday life and routine and the way she handled it was highlighted. How she went about being of service to others in a practical way, and the way he adjusted to necessities of mundane existence was a them in her life. Also, how she aspired to refine and better herself was of importance as well. Short journeys, traveling within her own country were themes throughout her life; her immediate environment, and relationships with her siblings, neighbours and friends were of importance. The way her mental processes operated, as well as the manner and style in which she communicated was emphasized in her life. As such, much was revealed about her schooling and childhood and adolescence.

planet dominants:

Uranus

Venus

Sun

She was unique and protected her individuality. She had disruptions appear in her life that brought unpleasant and unexpected surprises and she immersed herself in areas of her life in which these disruptions occurred. Change galvanized her. She was inventive, creative, and original. She was romantic, attractive and valued beauty, had an artistic instinct, and was sociable. She had an easy ability to create close personal relationships, for better or worse, and to form business partnerships. She had vitality and creativity, as well as a strong ego and was authoritarian and powerful. She likely had strong leadership qualities, she definitely knew who she was, and she had tremendous will. She met challenges and believed in expanding her life.

sign dominants:

Aquarius

Cancer

Scorpio

She was an original thinker, often eccentric, who prized individuality and freedom above all else. Her compassion, while genuine, rose from the intellect rather than the heart. She was hard to figure out because she was so often a paradox. She was patient but impatient; a nonconformist who conformed when it suited her; rebellious but peace-loving; stubborn and yet compliant when she wanted to be. She chafed at the restrictions placed upon her by society and sought to follow her own path. She needed roots, a place or even a state of mind that she could call her own. She needed a safe harbor, a refuge in which to retreat for solitude. She was generally gentle and kind, unless she was hurt. Then she could become vindictive and sharp-spoken. She was affectionate, passionate, and even possessive at times. She was intuitive and was perhaps even psychic. Experience flowed through her emotionally. She was often moody and always changeable; her interests and social circles shifted constantly. She was emotion distilled into its purest form. She was an intense, passionate, and strong-willed person. She was not above imposing her will on others. This could manifest in her as cruelty, sadism, and enmity, which had the possibility to make her supremely disliked. She needed to explore her world through her emotions.

Read more about her under the cut.

Vivian Mary Hartley was born on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India. She lived there for the next six years. Her parents wanted to go home to England but because of World War I they opted to stay in India. At the end of the war the Hartleys headed back to their home country, where Vivien's mother wanted her daughter to have a convent education. She was one of the youngest in attendance, and it was not a happy experience for her. One of the few consolations was her friendship with a classmate who also became a successful actress, Maureen O'Sullivan While there her mother came for a visit and took her to a play on London's legendary West Side. It was there that Vivien decided to become an actress. At the end of her education, she met and married Herbert Leigh in 1932 and together had a child named Suzanne in 1933. Though she enjoyed motherhood, it did not squelch her ambition to be an actress. Her first role in British motion pictures was as Rose Venables in 1935's The Village Squire (1935). That same year Vivien appeared in Things Are Looking Up (1935), Look Up and Laugh (1935) and Gentleman's Agreement (1935). In 1938, Vivien went to the US to see her lover, Laurence Olivier, who was filming Wuthering Heights (1939) (she had left Herbert Leigh in 1937). While visiting Olivier, Vivien had the good luck to happen upon the Selznick brothers, who were filming the burning of Atlanta for the film, Gone with the Wind (1939), based on Margaret Mitchell's novel. The role of Scarlett O'Hara had yet to be cast and she was invited to take part in a screen test for the role. There had already been much talk in Hollywood about who was to be cast as Scarlett. Some big names had tried out for the part, such as Norma Shearer, Katharine Hepburn and Paulette Goddard. In fact, most in the film industry felt that Goddard was a sure bet for the part. However, four days after the screen test, Vivien was informed that she had landed the coveted slot. Although few remember it now, at the time her casting was controversial, as she was British and many fans of the novel it was based on felt the role should be played by an American. In addition, the shoot wasn't a pleasant one, as she didn't get along with her co-star, Clark Gable. The rest, as they say, is history. The film became one of the most celebrated in the annals of cinema. Not only did it win Best Picture during the Academy Awards, but Vivien won for Best Actress. Already she was a household name. In 1940, she made two films, Waterloo Bridge (1940) and 21 Days Together (1940), though neither approached the magnetism of GWTW. That same year saw Vivien marry Olivier and the next year they appeared together in That Hamilton Woman (1941). By the time of the filming of Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), her life had begun to unravel. She had suffered two miscarriages, contracted tuberculosis, and was diagnosed as a manic depressive. However, she gave another excellent performance in that film and her public was still enthralled with her, although the film was not a financial success. She rebounded nicely for her role as Blanche DuBois for her second Oscar-winning performance in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) opposite Marlon Brando in 1951. She wasn't heard from much after that. She made a film in 1955 (The Deep Blue Sea (1955)). In 1960, her marriage fell apart, as Olivier left her to marry actress Joan Plowright. She appeared on-screen again until 1961 in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), co-starring Warren Beatty. Vivien's final turn on the screen came in Ship of Fools (1965), and that was a small part. She died at the age of 53 after a severe bout of tuberculosis on July 7, 1967. (x)

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NEW ABOUT RIVALS 💯💯💯💯

New article in the Harper's Bazaar UK, October Issue, to promote "Rivals"!

Amazing photoshoot !

Here is the article of the Harper's Bazaar Uk magazine !!

Thanks to Emma Jones for the written transcription ! 🙏👍🌺

Harpers Bazaar - October 2024

BEST OF ENEMIES

Bazaar recreates the fictional county of Rutshire to meet the cast of Rivals, a new TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s racy 1980s blockbuster

As Jilly Cooper’s Rivals leaps rambunctiously to our screens, we meet the cast of the saucy new show

It’s 1986 and, high over the Atlantic, a London-bound Concorde is about to break the sound barrier. Most passengers continue smoking, flicking through magazines and ordering martinis, while the rattling WC door indicates that two are currently joining the mile-high club. Moments later, an unruffled, glamorous couple emerge triumphantly from the loo and the tannoy announces that supersonic speed has been reached: everyone whoops; glasses are clinked; and the thumping chorus of ‘You might as well face it/you’re addicted to love’ is amped up. This is the opening scene of Rivals, the much-anticipated new television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bestselling novel, and it’s so unsubtle that, even alone in a dark screening bunker below the streets of Soho, it makes me splutter with laughter. It is also irresistible.

The 1988 book is a classic of the Cooper canon and part of the Rutshire Chronicles, a series based in a fictional Cotswolds county that follows the lives and loves of the affluent elite – an area the team behind its new, and first, on-screen adaptation are well-versed in bringing to life. Produced by A Very English Scandal ’s Dominic Treadwell-Collins and written by Laura Wade, who was behind The Riot Club, Disney+’s eight-part drama is also executivelyproduced by both Cooper and her literary agent Felicity Blunt. It is largely faithful to the novel but, as that has 700 pages and 79 characters listed by name and personality trait in an A-Z at the front, the show necessarily homes in on the central plot lines.

The two main protagonists are Rupert Campbell-Black (played by Alex Hassell), a former Olympic-gold show jumper turned Conservative MP (and, incidentally, the ‘best-looking man in England’); and Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), an Irish broadcasting star who leaves the BBC to move to Rutshire with his actress wife Maud and children Taggie, Caitlin and Patrick. Declan’s new employer, Corinium Television, is run by David Tennant’s vile Lord Tony Baddingham and his sidekick Cameron Cook, an American producer he has lured over from New York, depicted by the US native Nafessa Williams. They are joined by a large supporting cast that includes Danny Dyer and Emily Atack.

The titular rivalries are many and varied, primarily centred on the struggle to win the local TV franchise; simultaneously, characters lock horns over love, money, class, pets, politics and property, while presenting chat shows, throwing parties and playing nude tennis. The resulting viewing experience is both a period drama that seems set on another planet and a series exploring themes that still resonate today.

Cooper – who, at 87, is still in full ownership of her signature cloud of coiffed hair, inimitable charisma and a hundred-mile-an hour conversation – loved working on the project. ‘It’s terribly exciting,’ she tells me, with an amazed shake of the head. ‘Other books of mine have been televised and it was awful – but with this, we took casting very seriously and I can’t fault any of them.’

During a break on Bazaar ’s shoot, Turner tells me how Cooper gave a cocktail party for the cast in her garden, and what a ball they all had filming in the West Country last summer. (The latter is clear: he’s delighted to see his co-stars, including the mongrel Pontie, who plays Gertrude, the O’Hara family dog, and some of her canine colleagues brought along for a day in front of the camera.)

The series appealed to the Poldark star immediately. ‘I thought the scripts were really, really funny – line-wise, I have some crackers,’ he says. Turner’s Declan is a big-hearted if self involved journalist, wrestling to reconcile his bosses’ desire to monetise his charm, his own dream of writing a Yeats documentary and the need to bread-win for his profligate family. Although this push and pull between being commercial and creative, between the professional and the personal, plays out in a larger-than-life fashion, it still somehow feels familiar to a modern viewer. ‘That’s the sign of really good television, isn’t it, when it holds the mirror up to our present,’ says the actor. ‘What have we thrown in the trash? What still needs to change?’

The ways in which prejudices have evolved in the past 40 years are thrown into quite harsh relief in the show. Casting a Black actress to play Cameron Cook, the damaged but resilient hot-shot American producer, gives the series an opportunity to delicately include a glimpse of the regularity of what we’d now recognise as racist micro aggressions. Equally, Cameron’s strength is joyful to witness. ‘Such a spicy, smart character – especially a Black woman, who can carry her own and get her way in the male-dominated world of that time – I wanted to sink my teeth into that,’ Williams says. ‘I also love the glamour: the red lip, the red nails.’ (The cast have embraced the scarlet-stiletto emoji – a replica of the original image on the classic book cover – as their unofficial series motif when posting on social media.)

The changing dynamics between men and women are portrayed with a light touch. Victoria Smurfit read Cooper as a teenager, and has now adored playing Declan’s wife Maud O’Hara – an insecure, attentionseeking former actress, the kind of mother who arrives at her son’s New Year’s Eve 21st-birthday party in the Cotswolds on a camel. ‘There are aspects of Rivals that make you think, “Oh my Lord, can you believe they got away with this back then?”’ the Irish actress says. ‘But in the show, it’s delivered in such a clear, fun, gentle, appalled way that a 2024 audience can digest it very easily.’ When I suggest the series has made more of the women and ensured they have three dimensions, perhaps to modernise the story a little, she makes a good point: that Cooper’s male characters – be it the rakish Rupert Campbell-Black or the angelic Lysander Hawkley of The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous – may seem the most famous because it was mostly women reading the books, and the author had designed her heroes – or antiheroes – to be ‘their perfect man’. ‘But look closely, and the women are not less than the men,’ she says. ‘Essentially, every character wants something they don’t have – usually love and safety – whether from their partners, animals or colleagues. Women in this world are entering the era of “having it all” and are learning to be open about what they want – and, by the same token, we are starting to see a softer side to the men.’

This is embodied perfectly in Bella Maclean’s Taggie O’Hara, the delightful, very dyslexic cook and daughter of Declan and Maud: on screen, she has slightly more twinkle in her eye than in the book – a good decision, as otherwise Taggie could be seen as almost too virtuous to be true to a modern audience. ‘But it’s so nice playing someone with a really strong backbone – it slightly rubs off on you,’ says the actress, who appeared in the latest Sex Education series and has just shone as the lead at the National Theatre’s London Tide. ‘Among all the silliness, the shoulder pads and mad hairdos, there’s always an undercurrent of something thought-provoking,’ she says of the show that could prove to be her career’s turning point. ‘There’s a love story that blossoms out of something really unpleasant. There’s light and shade.’

But the figure with perhaps the most chiaroscuro is Rupert Campbell-Black, Cooper’s number-one character, into whose shoes Alex Hassell is amazed to be stepping. Hassell is a seasoned RSC actor, with turns in The Miniaturist and His Dark Materials, whose theatre company The Factory counts Mark Rylance and Emma Thompson among its patrons. ‘I’m also from Essex, with dark features,’ he points out wryly, in reference to the white-blond locks and blue eyes of his new alter-ego, both of which are oft-alluded to in the books, and about which many young women dreamed in the 1980s and 90s. (Cooper was initially appalled.) ‘Rupert exudes privilege and confidence, so I had to learn a loucheness. It was helpful that everyone was told to treat me as if I was extremely attractive,’ he continues, laughing. ‘When you walk into a room of supporting artists who’ve been briefed to fall over themselves looking at you, smouldering becomes a lot easier. They imbued me with a certain power.’

In the Rivals prequel Riders, there are some pretty unpalatable aspects of Rupert’s personality – particularly the way he treats women and animals – that haven’t aged well. ‘We never explicitly had this conversation, but for my portrayal of Rupert, we’ve kept some parts of that history and taken out others. In our version, there’s a loneliness to him: he is a shit, but he has a kindness.’

However, there are two elements of Cooper’s storytelling to which the show stays steadfastly loyal: the abundance of sex and wordplay. Rupert’s dialogue is riddled with quips – some very clever, some very… Eighties. Hassell’s favourite is delivered just as Rupert is getting down to it, and involves a pun that combines Tories and the clitoris. ‘It was a hard sell,’ he says, laughing.

His character and storyline – which takes Rupert on, dare I say, a journey – are key to the show’s charm, pace, plot and sociopolitical signposting. What would Hassell like viewers to make of the series? ‘I hope people enjoy it, have conversations about the knottier topics it raises, and maybe have sex later,’ he says. ‘I say that jokingly, but – and maybe this is high hopes – perhaps for people who don’t talk to one another that much, as the series goes on, watching it with someone else might allow certain things to come to light.’

Cooper is delighted by this possibility. ‘Well, we’re philanthropists, aren’t we? I keep reading that the birth rate is going down like mad. Putting Rivals on the telly may help,’ she says, with the enthusiasm of a writer who has long had one foot in showbusiness: in her forties, she appeared in her capacity as a celebrity columnist on the BBC game show What’s My Line, and wrote a sitcom about a four-girl flat-share with Joanna Lumley in the lead role.

Revisiting the world she created – and partially lived in herself – 40 years ago has been bittersweet: it made her miss the era (‘it was much more naughty’), but also her late husband (‘there’s a lot of darling Leo and his jokes in the book’). Indeed, what today’s viewers may not clock is the real people Cooper drew on to shape several fictional figures, namely the ‘glamorous aristocratic types who were floating about when I, middle-class Jilly, moved to the country in ’82’. Rupert Campbell-Black, for example, is a patchwork of Andrew Parker Bowles, the late Earl of Suffolk and the fashion designer Rupert Lycett-Green. Her ‘beloved’ Taggie is entirely made up, but the scruffy Lizzie Vereker – a novelist whose husband cheats on her – is, she admits, based on herself: ‘She is nicer than me, though. I love her – that’s terribly narcissistic to say, but I do.’

Like her conversation, Cooper herself still rattles along at a good clip – last year, she released a bonkbuster about football inevitably titled Tackle!; this May, the King presented her with a damehood for services to charity and literature, and she’ll be tapping away at her typewriter on various secret projects right up to the very moment she is dragged out of rural Gloucestershire to the premiere of Rivals.

To all these endeavours, Dame Jilly continues to bring the same philosophies she always has: a disregard for snobbery (like many great minds, she rereads Proust and loves Helen Fielding) and a straightforward goal of contributing to the gaiety of the nation. ‘Maybe one day I’ll write something serious,’ she says. ‘But, at the moment, there’s some terrible sadness and loneliness, isn’t there? So, more than ever, and more than anything, I’d like to cheer people up.’

‘Rivals’ is released on Disney+ in October.