This biography documents the colourful life of William Beckford, who scandalized Victorian society by indulging in homoerotic and paedophile activities until the Tory administration exiled him. In his absence his nihilistic Arabian novel "Vathek" was pirated by a treacherous friend. Beckford spent his declining years in adventures abroad, and built a Gothic masterpiece, Fontwell Abbey, where he bathed in the rain with a sylph-like Albanian footman. Reared in exotic isolation, Beckford grew up obsessed with dark grottoes, towers and awful images of the living dead. His life was a tragicomedy of a wealthy bisexual, who invented a forgery of elegant half-truths invented in retirement after the young Disraeli had sent him a homerotic epic based on his career. The faked letters and dream encounters with celebrities have led to the term "composing for Mozart".

William Beckford: Composing for Mozart

Timothy Mowl

Biographies & Memoirs

John Murray

Historic Gardens of Wiltshire

Arts & Photography

Architecture

History Press Ltd

This is the fourth volume in Timothy Mowl's county series on historic English gardens, now sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust.

Historic Gardens of Cornwall (Revealing History (Hardcover))

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

The History Press LTD

Worcestershire is particularly rich in great gardens from the last 250 years, such as: Madresfield Court, the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and the restored early eighteenth-century Hanbury Hall, both near Malvern in the south of the county; Hagley Hall of the mid-eighteenth century and William Shenstone's Arcadian masterpiece The Leasowes, both near Halesowen in the north; Croome Park by Capability Brown and the Victorian extravaganza of Witley Hall with its magnificent restored fountains.

Historic Gardens of Worcestershire

History

Tempus Publishing

Historic Gardens of Warwickshire

Redcliffe Press Ltd.

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Books by Timothy Mowl